Shopping online has become very popular especially around the holiday season. This is mostly of connivance, whether it be not having to fight the crowds in store, ease of finding the items you are looking for, having it delivered right to your door, not having the store near you, or whatever your reason might be, it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice the great deals and savings you find in store just for the connivance of shopping online. There are 5 steps and I am going to explain each one to you.

How to Get the Best Deal when Shopping Online

Comparative Shopping
First you want to find what it is you are going to purchase. Once you have the item, search around to see if there is a better price at another store. This may sound like a lot of work but it is as simple as taking the name of the item and entering it to the Yahoo or Google search engine! It will pull up all the stores this item is sold at. You can also try comparative shopping sites such asshoping.com,shopzilla.com, pricegrabber.com and even amazon.com.

Sales
Then once you find the store with the best price think for a moment if there are any sales holidays coming up. By this I mean Labor Day, Memorial Day, Cyber Monday, After Christmas sales ect. If one of those days are coming up and you can wait a few days to buy your item do so because it might go on sale and you can save someone that way. You also want to check the store sales fliers they post online see if next week what your buying is on sale or not.

Cash Back
Now time to learn how to get the big savings! A big way to save some money shopping online is to get cash back on your online purchases. That's right CASH BACK! How? There are a few REPITABLE sites that offer cash back. I have tried them but my favorite is Ebates. First this site offers a sign up bonus of $5 when you sign up and make a minimum purchase of $20 within 90 days of joining. This means, you purchase a birthday gift for your nephew from Toys R Us that is $20, right now they are offering 4% cash back. That means you will get $0.80 back on your purchase and get your $5 sign up bonus. Now $0.80 cash back isn't a lot but on something you were going to buy online any way why not get the money back for it? I did a lot of Christmas shopping online this year and received just over $15 back! That is extra $15 in my pocket on stuff I was buying anyways!

Coupons
Now after you have the items you are going to buy in your cart and have a sub total your next step is to start looking for online coupons. YES! Coupons are available for online purchases! Go to your favorite search engine, I have found that Yahoo and Google work best though, and type in “online coupon for _______” in the blank insert the store where you are going to make your purchase. Also check out the list of promotions and coupons on the page for that store on Ebates. A few great places to check out are Coupon Cabin, Coupon Mountain, ECoupons, and Coupon Surfer. And don't just stop after one coupon sometimes you can find coupons for a certain amount off of an order of so much or more and a free shipping coupon.

Free Shipping
Next is to get free shipping. There are quite a few ways to get free shipping. The first one is to check out freeshipping.org. Next is to search for a free shipping coupon. (See above) The final way is while you are shopping take a look at the site. Some sites will advertise on their homepage ‘Free Shipping on order of $____ or more'. Then check your total AND how much your shipping is going to be. If they are offering free shipping on orders of $50 or more and your subtotal is $38.28 and your shipping is $14 and change you would be better off buying an item under $14 (but over $11) you won't pay shipping and you get another item and in most cases end up paying less!

STILL skeptical on if all this is worth the money you will save? Here is one of my recent experiences that might change your mind. For Christmas I thought I would get my son his toddler bed since he is about to switch to one soon. I found one I liked that matched his current furniture. I found one at Kmart for $99 I decided to wait until Cyber Monday to see if it goes on sale since it was only 3 days away. Well come Cyber Monday the bed isn't on sale at Kmart but I looked at sears since its sister store and the exact crib was on sale for $89. Next I saw that they were offering free shipping on orders of $100 or more. Well shipping for the bed was going to be just over $30! Making my total over $120. Well I could spend $11 more and get free shipping. So I started looking and I found a booster high chair for my son for $16. Now I had free shipping. After looking for coupons I found one for $5 off an order of $100 or more. Using that I STILL got my free shipping. Then you add in your Ebates I got $6 back in my Ebates account on that order. Making what I paid $94 still less then what Kmart sold the bed for and I technically got a free booster high chair. If you add up my savings I got $10 off for the bed being on sale, plus $30 off the free shipping minus the $16 I spent on the booster to get free shipping PLUS the $5 off coupons AND the $6 in my Ebates account. The total amount saved on this order was $35!!

To me $35 is worth the extra 30 minutes I spent looking for the coupons and sales online.