I’m on a blogging hiatus this week as I attend BlogHer in NYC. Yes, I realize how ridiculous it is to neglect my blogs while I’m attending a blogging conference, but I have a great guest post to tide you over.
Enjoy!
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Free shipping! Save 50%! Buy one get one free! Coupon codes are everywhere. Especially during holiday and Back to School time, stores are pushing coupons almost daily. If you spend more than 10 minutes online, you are probably getting them via email, seeing them on Twitter or Facebook, and watching them pop up in banner ads. It can be both tempting and confusing when you see a whole list of online coupons for your favorite stores. How do you make sure that you get the best deals?
First, be sure that you are looking carefully at the fine print of the coupons. Sometimes it does not appear until you actually visit the landing page for the coupon. Certain brand names can be excluded or there may be minimum purchase amounts. The former is often the case with higher end stores and the latter is true of a large percentage of online coupons. The last thing that you want is to take the time to fill your cart only to find out that you will not be getting the deal that you initially thought that you would.
Second, evaluate whether you can “stack” the codes. This means combining more than one offer such as a free shipping coupon with a percentage off or dollar off coupon. If you cannot stack the codes, you will need to weigh the amount that you would save using a free shipping coupon versus the amount that you will save with another coupon. Your first step should be to look for a link on the shopping page that gives shipping costs. If the store doesn’t have one, you may have to go the whole way through the cart and experiment with the codes.
Third, do not buy more just to save more if you do not really need the merchandise. It can be easy to get pulled into spending more money just to get free shipping. If you are close to the free shipping or coupon minimum, it makes sense to throw another low price item into your cart. However, if you are buying things you do not need just to satisfy the minimums, it is not a deal at all.
Shopping online can save you a great deal of money if you know how to use the online coupon codes properly. Be a smart consumer and evaluate all of your coupon options before choosing the best. Then shop like away!
Tricia Meyer is the owner of online coupon and cash back site Sunshine Rewards. You can follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sunshinetricia.
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