Coupons for Online Purchases

Here's a tip that I frequently take advantage of -- the myriad of websites that offer coupon, promotional or discount codes that you can enter in to online merchants for your purchases.

WHAT? Sometimes when you order online, the website asks if you have a promotional or discount code. Or you'll see a string of text you have to input when ordering, as shown on the catalog. Well, savvy website creators have helped consumers out by listing hundreds of stores and their current offers in the form of these codes. Most codes have a condition and an expiration date that you have to be aware of (just like paper coupons). It might be money or a percentage off an order of $X or free shipping.

WHERE? If you even type in "online coupon" or something similar to a search engine, you'll get a bunch of results for websites. Here's a few that I have used: Coupon Code.com, Coupon Cabin, and Coupon Shack. You will definitely see overlapping codes, but sometimes I will find one on one website that I didn't find on 2 others.

HOW? I literally copy and paste the text of the code (i.e. SAVE15) into the appropriate spot when checking out. Yesterday I saved $12 off my order at Oriental Trading Company by finding a code. I was ordering from them anyway, and before I did the final checkout, I looked online to see if by any chance there was a way to save some money.

THOUGHTS...if you are going to be doing online ordering anyway, this is a great way to get bonus savings. Think of it this way: choose your items, then go all the steps of the checkout until you get to a page with a place to fill in a promotional code. Temporarily stray away from checkout to look online, see if there are any discounts available, then enter the code. If you don't find any, no loss but at least you tried.

What you don't want to get in the habit of doing is finding codes first, then shopping simply because you have a coupon. It is the same issue with hard-copy coupons.

Give it a try!