If you receive the Sunday paper, you will likely know how much of that thick stack is actually just advertisements. While many people immediately toss these aside, the people that actually wade through them know what kind of savings can be found. The newspaper is a great resource if you’re looking for paper coupons. (As a general rule, there are no online coupons advertised in the newspaper.) So if you’re looking to save money in physical retailers, the newspaper is a great place to start. They won’t be found anywhere in the paper itself. Rather, the advertisements you want will be the removable inserts. Often found on glossy, brilliantly colored paper, these inserts are hard to miss. Almost always organized by store, you can pull out and browse each retailer’s selection of discounts and coupons for the week.
If you’re not looking for promotions on any one specific website, search engines are probably the more efficient way to start looking for deals on the web. Any major search engine will yield hundreds of results for simple searches such as “online coupons,” “printable coupons,” or “promotional codes.” Make sure to avoid smaller search engines or category-specific search engines. The results tend to be much more scattered and irrelevant than with more established engines like www.google.com. No matter the search engine, as is true with any search, some of the results will be irrelevant for your purposes. Weed through these and click on a few sites that look promising. You will quickly find how many different types of discounts are available if you just look.
A savvy shopper should never underestimate the power of word of mouth. Word of mouth is simply the things you hear about through friends, family, and acquaintances. It can even be a bit of shopping advice you pick up around the water cooler at work. This is a great tool of shoppers, because it can be somewhat time intensive to find all the really good discounts out there. While you’re searching for coupons (online or paper) good deals could be expiring or passing you by. Hearing about current deals through everyday conversation cuts out all the time involved in searching, and you might even hear about something really fantastic you missed in your deal-hunting. So remember that savvy shoppers always have their ears perked for great shopping tips, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to go about that.
Magazines are not the most effective way to find shopping deals and discounts, but they can be found here. And, you get to sift through a magazine in the process. Remember to stay in your area of shopping interest. If you’re looking for deals on clothes, it is probably a bad idea to scour through an electronics-themed magazine for deals. If technology is your product of choice, avoid the auto media. And so on. But no matter what you’re looking for, coupons are interspersed throughout magazines, even if they take a little bit of searching to find. And magazines have the added draw of a little something for everybody, both online shoppers and purveyors of physical retail stores. Paper coupons can often be found on perforated edges to be torn out of the magazine, and online coupon codes are sometimes given within the text of an article or in a designated advertisement.
If you’re looking to get quick, up to date information about the latest savings, television is probably not the best place to look. However, savvy shoppers know that finding deals can happen at any time from any place. So while you’re settled down to watch some television, make sure to keep one eye and one ear open during the commercials. They might just have some helpful information about a sale at a particular store. Or, if you’re really lucky, you might find out about a going out of business liquidation sale. Again, if all you want is the facts about sales and promotions, television is going to essentially be a waste of your time. But if you’re already tuned in, you might as well take advantage of all those commercials you’re sitting through anyway.
Retail stores are always a great resource for information about sales. However, it will only be sales specific to that store. So if you’re looking for deals to a variety of places and for a variety of things, going to physical retailers is probably not the most effective option. However, if you find yourself already in a store, be aware of the deals around you. Sales and promotions happen every day that stores simply don’t bother to advertise. So always remember that part of being a conscientious shopper is evaluating all your options before you make a purchase. This is equally true of online shopping as it is of shopping in physical retailers. Also, if you ever have any questions, direct them to a sales associate. He/she will be more than happy to tell you about the store’s current sales and promotions.
Blogs seem to be the newest recent phenomenon to hit the internet. In fact, it is practically a staple of any website nowadays to have a blog relevant to the site content. For anybody unfamiliar with blogs, they are simply an online place for people to gather, converse, and post entries about a specific subject. It can be run by one person or multiple people, and it can span one topic or many. In order to keep up with all the latest trends and information about shopping, it’s a good idea to frequent some of these online journals. A quick search in any major search engine for “shopping blogs” will reveal various websites you can frequent for the latest information and trends in the shopping world. Remember that the smart shopper is tuned into as many information channels as possible. Blogs are a great addition to your normal routine of deal-hunting.
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