With all the price comparison sites available, I’m posting them all in one post because it’s just tough to keep up and remember them all. The first three places I go whenever I shop are Froogle, Pricegrabber, and ISBN.nu.

I don’t just buy from the place offering the best price. It also depends on the business’ reputation. If no ratings are available for the business, then I search elsewhere like the Better Business Bureau and BizRate. Offertrax lets you store, compare and receive price alerts.

Pronto is a Firefox shopping comparison plugin.

Another thing to consider is the best time of the year to shop for certain items. MSN Money lists the best times of the year for the following. Also, some of these have special notes.

• Air conditioners: winter
• Airline tickets: Varies
• Appliances: Ask stores about warehouses of returns and floor models in mint condition.
• Big appliances: September and October
• Bicycles and outdoor gear: January
• Boats: January, February and March
• Cars: September
• Cell phones: any time
• Computers: July and August
• Cookware: April and May; October and November
• Flooring: Wholesalers offer “buy direct” prices online to public for over 1,000 square feet.
• Furniture: January and July. Also find out if the store has an outlet or website that sells floor samples, discontinued styles or returned merchandise with deep discounts.
• Gas grills: winter
• Jewelry: Avoid the holidays, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day
• Linens and bedding: January
• Mattresses: year-round
• Real estate: spring
• Recreational vehicles: fall and winter
• Rugs: Department stores markup rugs big time so stick with wholesalers.
• Toys: October and November
• TVs and home theaters: winter holiday sales and January
• Vacuum cleaners: April and May
• Wedding: winter

Most Often Used

Froogle results look like typical search engine results. It also explores sites that often don’t appear in the comparison shopping site lists. I’ve found some great deals here.

Pricegrabber is the one I go to the most outside of Froogle. I think its comparison chart is the easiest to read and scan.

PriceScan is similar to Pricegrabber and easier to read than the ones listed further down.

ISBN.nu.

Books

AddAll does books, music, movie, and magazine.

Best Book Buys also compares book prices as well as music, videos, electronics, and bikes.

BooksPrice searches for lowest price on new and used books, CDs and DVDs. Also includes a feature for finding the best price when buying more than one book since shipping costs could be lower due to the combined order.

FetchBook

ISBN.nu does only price comparisons for books. While I find better deals through Amazon Marketplace or elsewhere, this is a great starting point.

Local Stores

8coupons: Coupons in your zip code.

SalesHound.com

ShopLocal

General Price Comparison Sites

The following sites are similar in how they produce their results and they don’t have a neat chart like Pricegrabber or MySimon. Their results are similar to Froogle, but I think Froogle provides better results. I recommend using a few sites when looking for a specific item as every site links to different stores.

CostHelper reports what people are paying.

DealTime

MySimon is one of the first price comparison sites I’ve used. Its site doesn’t look good in Firefox.

PriceComparison

SearchAllDeals searches all deals and coupon sites in one shot.

Shopzilla

SortPrice

Yahoo! Shopping

Coupons and Discounts

Most of these sites are junky or have a ton of popups, but I’ve found coupons here.

BigSavings

CoolSavings requires free registration.

CouponHaven

CouponSaver

CouponSurfer

CouponTweet: Coupon codes from twitter.

Current Codes

eCoupons

eDealFinder

FatWallet

Free Shipping

KeyCode Coupons

NaughtyCodes

Rather-Be-Shopping.com

RetailMeNot

ShipGooder: Compare shipping rates.

SmartSource – grocery coupons

Online Deals

These sites list bargains and big sale items. The best place is Woot, but it only shows one item per day. Once in a while, it’ll post a new item as soon as one sells out for a certain amount of time (usually 24-hours).

Alice: This is a little different. What you do is enter the products you normally buy. “For each product you add, you’ll get automatic coupons, reminders when you’re running low, and easy re-ordering tools so you never run out again.”

DealHunting

Deal of Day

Dealsea: Short-term deep discounts.

Hot Deals Club

ShopStyle: Enter your favorite brands and the site emails you when there’s a sale.

SlickDeals.net

ugenie provides discounts on bundled items.

Discounted Shopping Stores

American Science & Surplus – science bargains

Cheap Tickets – travel

Dawdle: Buy and sell new and used games

Deep Discount DVD for DVDs.

Expedia Travel – travel

Farecompare – travel

Farecast – travel

Free CD Software

Kayak – travel

Lowestfare.com – Travel

Overstock

Priceline – travel

SmartBargains

Updated: September 26, 2010

I returned to Washington, DC in April 2002 as part of a leadership program’s trip to the hill. I never thought I’d call any other place outside of Texas "home," but Washington, DC qualifies since it’s the only other place I’ve lived outside the Lone Star State.

sxsw takes place right in my home state of Texas and this year I finally threw away my excuses and took the leap to attend sxsw 2002. I was awed, exhausted, befriended, and amazed.