If you're doing your holiday shopping online, time's a-wasting. But this year you'll find more help than ever to get the best online deals.
Lots of Web sites exist to point you to the deepest discounts and best products, plus coupon codes, free shipping, rebates and quirky deals. Lifehacker, which provides a handy compilation of such sites, even found one that specializes in snarky T-shirts.
If you're not exploring these sites, you're wasting money. Here are some posts that identify and explain how to use online shopping sites:
-
As we noted above, Gina Trapani presents "The savvy shopper's guide to this year's online deal finders" at Lifehacker. Here you'll find links to sites like BeatMyPrice (from the RetailMeNot people), which will look for prices that are lower than the ones you type in. Before you agree to pay for shipping, check out FreeShipping.org. Also, Gina lists five sites that will let you know when the price of stuff you want drops.
-
CompareRewards offers news and tips about online shopping, including an analysis of online cash-back rewards sites.
-
Need a coupon (and who doesn't)? The Budget Fashionista lists its top 10 coupon Web sites.
-
Which price-comparison site should you use? DiscountMore.com says it compiles the results of all of the price-comparison search engines in one place.
-
Everyone has their favorite online shopping tools. For instance, The Digerati Life offers "Best coupon sites for online shoppers." "Bectemp" lists her seven favorite online shopping sites at Girl Woman Beauty Brains Blog.
-
Do it safely. This article at MSN Money has tips to protect yourself from identity theft when you shop online.