Do I have your attention? Good. What I’m about to tell you is “top secret”….ok, maybe not, 
but when it comes to shopping online I am a pro. I love to shop, like most women when I find a great deal I get excited as a turkey on Thanksgiving. Yea, maybe that was a bad analogy. But seriously you can find some really good prices online if you know what you’re doing. Here are my personal tips and what I do before making a purchase.
1) First for a little comparison pricing I hop over to Froogle http://www.froogle.com/ if it sounds familiar it’s owned by Google and it’s their shopping engine. Just type in what you’re looking for and out it goes to scour the net and come back with what you’re looking for from various sites. You can then sort by price “lowest to highest” and browse away for the best price. This is a smart thing to do before making any major purchase to make sure you’re not paying more then you need to.
2) Once i decide on what I’m going to pay and who I’m going to purchase from…I jump over to http://www.retailmenot.com/ to see if there are any discount offers or free shipping offers for the particular vendor I’m buying from. Many times you’ll find another 10 or 20 percent off that you would not have known about, so check here first. You can also subscribe to be notified of any special coupons for your favorite vendor while you’re there.
3) If you’re purchasing a big ticket item you can always use one of the free services that will monitor the price and let you know if it detects a price decrease. Check out: http://www.priceprotectr.com/
4) One final tip: When it comes to electronics and techy gadgets these are my fav sites- http://www.buy.com/ (offers free shipping on most big ticket items) and http://www.woot.com/ Woot offers a daily special and sometimes they are AWESOME! Once you become addicted to Woot you'll be a "Wooter" for life.
There you have it. A few simple “Merle Secrets” that will save you some money. Don’t worry….you can thank me later. Now get out those credit cards and “go shopping”!
