Learn how to find coupons for just about anything through browsing and searching online by learning where to go and what to search.
Coupons for everything and anything are everywhere. But, finding coupons for exactly what you want can be difficult, even daunting. Here are some tips and resources for how to find coupons in a few niches without leaving your computer.
1) The Grocery Store Website
Often, the easiest way to find grocery coupons for a particular grocery store is to go to that store’s website. By now, most stores have coupons you can print and clip out on their websites. It actually makes perfect sense, because offering such coupons online helps draw people into their store.
Some grocery stores even take it a step further and offer digital coupons. Kroger has what they call a Kroger Plus Card. By giving them a little bit of your personal information, you can use the card to get special deals every time you go to Kroger. But it allows for more than just in-store discounts, you need it in order to use digital coupons.
By going to their website and picking out coupons, you can add them to your Kroger Plus Card account. Then, when you go to the store and scan your Kroger Plus Card, it automatically applies the coupons you have chosen to store on it. This way, you don’t have to use the paper and ink to print and cut out coupons, and you don’t have to wait for the Sunday newspaper.
2) Forums
Believe it or not, forums are for more than just wasting time and reading or writing fan fiction. There are forums, such as the RetailMeNot Fashion Coupon Forum where you can see what deals other people have found useful. Basically, this allows you to take advantage of coupon research that others have done, which helps you find the good deals easier and faster.
This same method can be used for a lot more than clothes and shoes, though. Anything that is capable of having a coupon likely has a forum or sub-forum dedicated to finding coupons for it.
3) Coupon Sites
Just as you can generally find a forum for any kind of coupon you can imagine, there are websites dedicated to just as many types of coupons. These websites collect coupons and deals and try to organize them as best as they can to help you find the best deals for you.
Sometimes they choose to trust user submissions, other times they choose to keep a tight control on the coupons. Both have their advantages. If they allow user submissions, there tends to be more coupons, but some of them might be fake. If they keep track of coupons themselves, then there are fewer coupons, but they are all more likely to be legitimate.
What’s surprising is just how many types of coupons you can find on sites like these. For example, by looking at Coupon Claim’s web hosting coupons page, you can find ways to save money on putting your own website or blog on the internet. There are coupons for just about anything out there.
4) Search Engines
For some people, this is the first thing they try. And for good reason. If it exists and it is good, it probably shows up somewhere in Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Using search engines are a great way to find coupons for just about anything.
But there are a few special searches you can use to find coupons. For example, if you include “inurl:coupons” (without the quotes) in either Google or Yahoo, you can find web pages that are most likely all about coupons because they actually have “coupons” in the address for that page. You can also find forums easily this way. Searching for “coupons inurl:forum” (again, without the quotes) will help you find forums related to coupons quickly, even the obscure ones.
Other special searches include “intitle:coupons” and “inbody:coupons”. Or, if you know of a site that you like, and you’re having difficulty finding a particular type of coupon on their site, grocery coupons on retailmenot.com, you can search for “grocery site:retailmenot.com” to find it through Google, Yahoo, or Bing instead. Not all of these special searches work in all of the search engines, though. Below is a breakdown:
- “intitle:” works in Google, Yahoo, and Bing
- “inbody:” and “site:” works in Google and Bing
- “inurl:” works in Google and Yahoo
There are lots of ways to find coupons. Try them all and find out which one works the best for you!
Guest Article written by Steve Miller. Image credits to Bright_Star under CC license. You can also write articles here and share your frugal spending tips.