There are savings to be had by shopping online, but there are even bigger savings to be made when you know how to tap into special discounts and deals. So if you want to make sure that your 2020 financial goals are actually achievable, here are three easy ways to save money on products that you already want to buy – by simply letting the offers come to you..!
1 SIGN UP OFFERS
When you’re shopping online and buying from a retailer for the first time, you can take advantage of sign-up offers. These discounts are there to tempt you to shop with a company that you’ve never used before by offering a special discount for new customers and sometimes free delivery too.
Often, these are the best deals and biggest discounts you’ll ever get from a brand so, if you don’t really mind which shop your product comes from, you can take advantage of these deals by switching to different retailers each time you purchase.
It can be time-consuming to find special offers for new customers when you’re shopping online but you can make the process more passive by going to a comparison website. Sites like Sign Up Offers are a ‘one-stop shop’ that makes it even easier to find new customer deals and lets you see what percentage discounts brands are offering before you even click through to their website to purchase.
2 PASSIVE DISCOUNTS
Let the deals come to you! When you sign up to a website as new customer, they’ll probably start sending you regular email newsletters about their products and services. Often, these emails are worth reading because they’ll contain a discount code that you can use the next time you shop. That’s when it’s worthwhile signing up for newsletters.
This is a passive way of shopping online because you are waiting for the discount to arrive and only buying when there’s a saving to be made. I find this works well with pet products, such as food and litter etc, as I never need to buy it urgently so I can stock up whenever the discount is available and the products have a long shelf-life. And if you find that a retailer isn’t sending you discount codes, you can simply unsubscribe.
3 SHOP THE ADS
I’m so easily sucked into the adverts on social media and it’s such a passive way of shopping. I’m almost never tempted to make impulse purchases of things I don’t really need when I’m shopping ‘in real life’ but those Instagram and Pinterest infomercial ads are just irresistible to me! However, in my experience, the products are vastly over-priced when you click through to the offer. It’s probably because the company has splashed out for a great marketing video and have paid to get that advert in front of you, so they’ve got to recoup the cost somewhere.
But don’t worry -you CAN still have the product that you never knew you needed until you saw it on Instagram. Firstly, once you’ve watched an ad, you’ll start to see the same product over and over again every time you go online – with different prices from each retailer. But if you don’t want to wait for the deal to come to you, what I’ve done in the past is get totally sucked into needing something on an advert, then I’ve googled it and found the same product at a fraction of the price on another website – or even on eBay. So the moral of the story is don’t always buy from the first retailer you see and shop around until you find the same product at a better price.
I know that sounds obvious but we live in such a fast-paced consumer culture that it’s so much easier just to see something, click to purchase and not consider that we might be paying twice as much as it is worth. For example I bought one of those mini tripods as a stocking filler for Christmas. It was something like £8 through the advert and I would never have paid the full price for it but it was only £1.99 on eBay.
I hope these three hacks will help you to save money when you’re shopping online or the next time you get tempted by social media adverts. Let me know your money-saving shopping tips in the comments below, I’d love to get your advice on finding bargains online 🙂
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