Welcome! And thank you for visiting Shopping Secrets Online. We’ve designed this blog out of our own experience as avid online shoppers, to easily save you money, show you how to find the best deals, get cash back on your everyday purchases, and do so with the least amount of time and aggravation. [Make sure you read to the end of this post to find a few important Secrets; these will ensure that your computer stays protected and secure, and that your whole Shopping experience - including organizing receipts and (the most important) MAKING MONEY - will go as smoothly as it possibly can.]
To be honest, we never set out to write this blog. We just wanted to get the best deals we could. We researched (and still do) products to find the highest quality for our budget, just like everybody else. We spent hours and days finding the best prices – and therefore found out which were the best price comparison sites – just like everybody else. We looked for deals and coupons and we learned how to maximize both. And of course, we scoured eBay constantly. If you don’t do that yet, we’re going to teach you how, because it’s probably the best way to save big money online – if you know how to work the system.
In the pages of this site, we’ll show you how to:
• Get up to 30% Cash Back on your purchases
• Find and use “Stackable” coupons for multiple discounts
• Find and use online Reward websites
• Use your purchases to help your school, favorite charity, or to save for college
• Find the biggest savings on eBay - including ones you won’t find in searches
• Avoid the 10 worst scams, phishing techniques and other online dangers
Plus, we’ve hand-picked through hundreds of sites to give you:
• The top 20 comparison websites in one convenient list
• The top 20 hottest links to find bargains
• The top FREE product review websites
Before you get going, though, there are some practical matters. We want your online shopping experience to be as fun, safe and profitable as possible, so we’re passing along four Essential Pre-Shopping Secrets, things we wish we’d known when we were starting out. Each of these is linked to a longer entry, so click on the sentence for a more detailed explanation and step-by-step directions:
The Four Essential Pre-Shopping Secrets:
A. GET A UNIQUE EMAIL ADDRESS to use exclusively for your online shopping. We’ll explain why in the detailed post, but trust us: if you like to keep track of receipts, you want an email account that is dedicated solely to your shopping success.
B. MAKE SURE YOU’RE PROTECTED. Ensure that your virus protection, security and firewall are up-to-the-minute, particularly if you’re on a Windows-based computer. McAfee’s Total Protection gives you all three - and peace of mind - from the top name in Internet security.
Speaking of Windows, do you need to buy any software? Even something as big as Vista itself? Why pay for shipping and wait a week for delivery when you can click on over to Windows Marketplace and try out a whole bunch of new software. Experience it, take it for a test drive – and if you like it, buy it, download it and voila! Ready to go in just a few minutes. Immediate gratification that also reduces your carbon footprint. Everybody’s happy.
C. SECURE A HIGH-YIELD REWARDS CARD that gives you the most Rewards or Miles of any card out there – the OPEN from American Express Business Card (look at the upper right hand side of this page) is probably the best, though AmEx Preferred Rewards Gold and Discover
both offer up great deals, too.
D. SIGN UP FOR CASH BACK ON EVERY PURCHASE and make money before you even begin spending (see? We told you!) Ebates, ShopAtHome and BigCrumbs give you refunds on every single item you purchase, and all you have to do is go to their site and see which stores have what kind of percentage returns. – for every purchase you make, they’ll refund you a percentage of the total.
On your mark… Get set… Wait. Did you read those four items? Not just the list, but the posts (they open in a new tab or window). We found that these are the four key ingredients to getting the most shopping done in the least amount of time, with by far the most benefits.
All set? Great! Now… On to the Shopping Secrets!
