Top 11 Online Shopping Secrets
Your Friends Don’t Know
1. Buy replacement items like Brita filters, Sonicare heads and phone chargers on Amazon.
Amazon has the best price possible on these types of items for two reasons. First, you can usually find generics that work just as well as the name brand. Second, you can Subscribe & Save to earn an additional 5% off.
- Amazon generic Brita filters: $3.99 each
- Walmart Brita filters: $4.96 each
- Amazon generic Sonicare heads: $2.12 each
- Walmart Sonicare heads: $11.73/each
- Amazon generic iPhone charger: $2.60 each
- Apple iPhone charger: $29.00 each
2. Buy toys, printer paper and coffee from Jet.
Comparing Jet prices with Amazon prices, you might be surprised to hear that Jet often comes out as the winner. Toys, printer paper and coffee are a few examples of items you can get at significantly lower price points than what Amazon offers.
Baby Alive
HP Printer paper, 20 lb, 500-ct.
Folgers Medium Roast Ground Coffee, Classic, 48-oz.
3. Sign up for Paribus and get your money back when a price drops.
When you sign up for Paribus, you get to kick back and let them negotiate price adjustments for you when your items go on sale.
Paribus monitors 28 stores and will get your money back for free. In particular, Walmart, Target, Staples, Amazon, Nordstrom and Old Navy price drops may save you a pretty penny when you’re online shopping.
4. Shop through Ibotta when you’re buying from Jet and get 10% back.
RetailMeNot doesn’t offer cash back on Jet purchases, and Ebates only offers 8% back (which typically is a great cash back amount from Ebates).
But it still can’t beat Ibotta’s 10% cash back offer on Jet purchases!
5. RetailMeNot generally has higher cash-back offers than Ebates.
I recently compared RetailMeNot’s cash back offers with Ebates and found an average of an 11.4% difference between the two cash-back sites, with RetailMeNot coming out on top. Here are a few of RetailMeNot’s current deals:
- Old Navy — $5 off $25 purchase (that’s 20%), compared to 2% at Ebates.
- Ralph Lauren — $5 off $25 (that’s 20%), compared to 2.5% at Ebates.
- Lowe’s — $5 off $50 purchase (that’s 10%), compared to 1% at Ebates.
- The North Face — $25 off $200 (that’s 10%), compared to 2.5% at Ebates.
6. Ebates has more variety and supports more stores than RetailMeNot.
For example, there aren’t any current cash back offers for Home Depot or Target (only Target optical) at RetailMeNot.
Meanwhile, you can shop through Ebates and get cash back on your discounted gift card purchase from Raise or Gift Card Granny!
7. You don’t have to shop in the store when you can get free shipping.
Many stores don’t have a minimum purchase requirement for free shipping, so there’s no reason to go in store to shop these retailers.
Here’s a sample list of stores that offer free in-store pickup:
- Target
- Walmart
- Macy’s
- Kohl’s
- Dick’s Sporting Goods
- Nordstrom
- Petsmart
- Best Buy
- Home Depot
- Lowe’s
. . . and more!
8. Use FillerItem.com to help you reach Amazon’s minimum free shipping amount.
If you’re not an Amazon Prime member, you have to meet a minimum $35 purchase threshold to get free shipping. FillerItem.com will help you spend the exact amount you need in order to reach that minimum.
So instead of adding something like a $10 book to your cart when you’re $2.46 short of $35, search for $2.46 items at FillerItem.com. It’s cheaper than paying for shipping, and you get something for your money.
9. Buy any beauty item from Macy’s online and get free shipping for your whole order.
Macy’s ships entire orders free if you add one beauty item — no matter how inexpensive — to your cart. This means you can add a $3.00 tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm in order to save the $10.95 that you’d spend on shipping.
10. Check CamelCamelCamel to be sure your Amazon item is a good deal.
CamelCamelCamel will show you a history of prices on your item so you can see if you’re buying it at a good price. Sometimes you can even see trends — like what times of year your item tends to be the cheapest — so you know what time of year to buy.
11. Add Honeyto your Chrome browser and find promo codes with zero effort.
Honey is super low effort. Once you add it to your search browser, it’ll search for codes every time you’re checking out.
It’s awesome when Honey finds a code, but your mileage may vary since there are many times when Honey strikes out.
We are excited about saving you some Money this holiday season, but more importantly saving you the headache of visiting stores to get the gifts you want.
Thank you for your time!
Bill Martin
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