Shopping for a good deal used to mean buying the paper to look for advertisements and flyers for sales, then traveling the world over to look for the item that you wanted on some special unadvertised special, only to be disappointed when you found it somewhere else for less a week after you bought it.
Online shopping has eliminated a lot of these headaches and there are plenty of ways to be able to ensure that you’ll find a good deal when procuring the items that you want online.
Online Marketplaces
An online marketplace, like Amazon, is a bit similar to going to the Mall, only online. You’ll find a multitude of different types of items for sale from different sources, letting you comparison shop between vendors while you only visit one website.
The great thing about this is that you can sort your selection by the total price, eliminating the need for comparison shopping because the lowest price automatically comes up first for you.
Another great feature of an online marketplace, like Amazon, is that they often rate their vendors, so you’ll be able to ensure that you are buying your item from a vendor that has a high satisfaction rate among the customers that it has served.
Online Coupon Sites
Gone are the days of clipping and saving coupons out of the paper, in hopes that you can keep them organized enough to find once you reach the cash register at the store. There are online retailers now that deliver coupon codes directly to your e-mail inbox.
When you do your online shopping at the merchant’s online store, you simply type in the coupon code that they provided into the appropriate field and you’ll automatically receive your discount at checkout.
There are also sites on the web that do nothing but give out those coupon codes. So if you are in the market for a particular item, but aren’t on the merchants mailing list, you can pay one of the coupon code sites a visit to see if there are any discounts available on the items that you are looking to purchase.
Auction Sites
Not all online auctions are full of used and worn out merchandise, many have brand new and still in the package items up for auction. Since merchants and vendors are competing for your business, many are likely to try and undersell their competition. You may not be able to find every item that you are looking for in the condition that you would like it in, but if you do happen to come across it, you’ll very likely be able to get a great deal on it.
Online Classifieds
Online classifieds are similar to auction sites, in the fact that there is no ‘stock’ items, you may or may not be able to track down what you’re looking for at any given time and much of what you find in online classifieds will be used. If you are shopping for yourself and don’t mind a bit of a treasure hunt, or the fact that you’ll be buying something secondhand, you may be able to find a treasure that’s the steal of the century.
Many online classifieds, including the Granddaddy of them all, Craigslist, let people advertise for free, so some people are more willing to put their items up their than have to pay the fee of an online auction site. This usually means that there are hundreds of thousand of new items listed daily, some good and some bad, and maybe just what you’re looking for at an incredible price – right in your neighborhood.
