Save Money When Shopping!

If you fancy saving money when shopping online, check out these tips.

If you're the kind of person that loathes shopping centres and would quite happily never set foot in one ever again, no doubt you've embraced Internet shopping with open arms! There are certainly advantages to being able to shop from the comfort of your own home -- not least as you can often save money when compared to the high street!

However, did you realise how many ways there are to save? I decided to find out the cheapest way to buy one of the most popular items on the market today, an 8GB Apple iPod nano MP3 player. By checking the Apple website, I found I could buy it for £169, with free delivery -- so my quest is to pay less than that!

1. Price Comparison

Well, first things first, I decided to find out if there's a cheaper place to purchase my iPod, online, than Apple. As I don't have several hours to check multiple retailers and their delivery charges, I decided to use a shopbot. ShopBots are shopping robots, and, a bit like using a broker to search for financial products, by plugging the details of the item you wish to buy, a shopbot will search a number of retailers to find the cheapest place to buy it. What's more, because they include delivery costs, you can get a proper costing of the price you'll pay.

Most famous of the shopbots are Kelkoo and Pricerunner, although there are many more. And while they obviously don't search every retailer on the planet, they will check a fair few, including a number you'll probably not have heard of.

Of course, cheapest is not necessarily best. For this reason, you may prefer to use a shopbot that allows shoppers to give feedback on their experiences -- you may decide its worth paying a little bit more for better service!

I plugged the details into Pricerunner and found a number of retailers selling the iPod at cheaper prices than Apple, and decided to choose Dixons online, currently charging £146.85, with free delivery. I've therefore saved myself £22.15, for a few minutes work. Cool!

Incidentally, once you've run your search, don't forget that sites such as Amazon offer free delivery if you spend over £15 -- if it has the lowest price (excluding delivery) and you have other purchases to make there you could still save money.

However, I think I can save more money than this, so I now turn to cashback sites.

2. Cashback Sites

Cashback sites do exactly what they say -- spend money with retailers through their sites and you'll receive a percentage of what you spent back, as cash. The cashback comes as a cut from the fee the stores pay to use the site and a vast number of big name retailers including John Lewis, Boots, Marks & Spencer and Tesco have signed up.

You do usually need to have accrued a fair amount of cashback before you see any money yourself -- some sites charge subscription fees, and others won't let you take any money until you've typically earned £20. However, if you can do the majority of your shopping through a cashback site you could build up a healthy sum in a relatively short amount of time.

I checked cashback site Quidco and found that Dixons is a participating retailer; if I were to buy my iPod through its site, I'd earn 2.5% back as cashback. So, by paying £146.85, I'd get another £3.67 back -- effectively bringing the price down to £143.18.

Further checks did reveal that Quidco keeps the first £5 cashback earned as a subscription fee, so I'd need to earn another £1.33 before actually making any money. However, after this point the money earned would be credited to my account, monthly, with no minimum required.

Cashback site GreasyPalm offers a meaner 1% cashback on any spending at Dixons, meaning I'd get £1.47 cashback, but doesn't have a yearly subscription fee. Additionally, it gives £2.50 to all new customers, so I'd effectively get £3.97 back (effectively meaning the iPod would cost £142.88), but I would need to save up £20 in cashback before anything would be credited to my account. Other cashback sites include Rpoints and Funds4Me.

3. Cashback Credit Cards

And finally, my last way to cut the cost of my iPod is to use a cashback credit card. For example, the Morgan Stanley Platinum card, which normally pays 1% cashback on all spend up to £2k is currently offering triple cashback until 1 May 2007. So I could get 3% cashback (£4.40) on my £146.85.

So, if I were to buy my iPod at Dixons through GreasyPalm and pay with the Morgan Stanley Platinum card, I could potentially save:

Making my total saving: £30.52

So, for relatively little work, I could save myself over £30, shaving 18% off the cost of my new iPod, compared to buying direct!

Of course, this is a very simple example of the maximum savings possible, and relies on many assumptions. For a start, it assumes that I'd be spending far more with Greasy Palm (or another cashback site) as until I had done so I wouldn't be able to get my hands on the money earned.

Additionally, it assumes that I would be willing to take out a cashback credit card. Although careful use of a cashback card can mean effectively earning free money over a year, they are only for the organised. Those that aren't financially disciplined could end up easily negating any savings made by failing to pay off their card in full, each month, and should avoid credit cards at all costs!

However, it does show that, with a little work you really can shave pounds off the price of the products you buy. Indeed, anyone can spend two minutes running a price comparison search -- it costs nothing and in this case saved over £22!

So, next time you need to make an online purchase, why not spend a few minutes following some of the ideas above -- you could make yourself a tidy saving!