Basic Steps To Find the Best Prices When Shopping Online
Published 10/31/07 (Modified 11/24/13)By MoneyBlueBook
I do a lot of online shopping shopping. In fact, I'm looking to buy a cheap laptop soon and will absolutely buy it online. Other than groceries or items I need right away, I try to plan ahead and purchase everything through the internet where I can often obtain the best deals.
Here are the basic steps I take when I am looking to buy something online at the best price possible:
1) Use Froogle
My first stop is to compare prices using Google's Product Search engine. The program used to be called Froogle but Google changed the name a few months ago. Personally, I liked the old name better and still refer to it as Froogle. Not a whole lot of people use it, but I use it often.
Froogle works the same as your usual Google search engine except it compares prices based on your keyword search. It scours the web for store and auction prices and surprisingly yields a decent size list of results. It gives you an idea of the range of prices online retailers are charging.
2) Use eBay
After I have a general idea of the range of market prices, I visit eBay to run keyword searches of the item I want to buy. As I mentioned in an earlier eBay related post, it is always best to run several searches using different combinations of keywords to maximize your chances.
After factoring in the cost of shipping I compare the eBay total selling prices with the Froogle prices including shipping to
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