In my last column, I discussed how the Internet is a great tool for getting the Highest and Best Use of Your Money. However, one of the issues with shopping on the Internet is that you have to have the unique Web address (URL) for every store at which you want to shop. This normally means using search engines to locate those URLs, which also means looking through a lot more content than just store names. This takes extra time. Additionally, for every major name brand store, there are hundreds of others you have never heard of that often offer the exact same product for less in order to compete against the brand name store’s recognition. Finding those is much more difficult and takes more time.
Another issue is, how do you find all of the “loss leader” sale items available online from all of the retailers, like they appear in the Sunday newspaper? These appear on thousands of different websites as banner ads; and unfortunately, there is no such thing as the Sunday newspaper on the Internet you can look through to find all of the sales. The same is true trying to locate all of the promo codes.
What if there was a giant online shopping mall site like the Galleria or the Mall of America, that contained all of the best-known retailers on the Internet, all at one single URL, plus most of the good minor ones. Such a website would allow users to easily access each store’s site just like walking through a real mall and walking into their store.
Additionally, what if it also could aggregate all of the mall’s merchants’ loss leader sales items into one place so it was easy to scan all of them and see everything on sale at each store. It could even do the same thing with the mall’s stores’ promo codes.
What we are talking about is one website that would be the easiest place on the Internet to find everything you ever needed, from name brand stores to no name stores, all at the best possible prices. This indeed would be the best tool ever for people who wanted to get the highest and best use of their money.
The good news is such a site does exist at ShopSaverEarnMoney.com. It contains over 3,000 major retailers in almost every category you can image. You would be hard-pressed to mention any store you can think of by name that is not available in this Internet mall.
This Internet shopping mall contains a mall directory like a real mall, composed of shopping categories (such as Apparel and Shoes, Computers, Electronics, Internet/Phone, Jewelry, Travel, etc.). Using the mall directory you can find all of the merchants in the mall that sell the type of merchandise you want with a single click or two of your mouse. There is also a sophisticated search engine to allow you to quickly find any store in the mall by its name.
However, one of the most powerful features of the mall is its product search engine that allows you to quickly search for the product you want and see which stores sell it. This product search engine searches through over 100 million products in the mall’s 3,000-plus stores’ inventories to find any product you want at the best price. This mean you never have to pay more than necessary for anything again.
The search results produced not only show products available in the mall that match that search term, but more importantly, a price comparison showing each merchant in the mall that sells the same product. This allows you to quickly find the cheapest price on whatever you want to buy.
What most people do not know is the vast difference in prices for which the exact same products sells from vendor to vendor. Sometime these price swings can be quite dramatic.
For example, below are the results of recent search done in the mall for “4k TV” to find Ultra HD TVs. In the example below, the exact TV is for sale at eight stores with a price range of a high $3,999 at two stores down to as low as $1,498. That is a $2,500 price differential on the exact same TV by simply knowing where to shop!
The hard facts are that all of these stores are in business and selling their products to people every day. That means there is someone buying this very same TV from one merchant for $3,999 while someone else is paying $1,498 for the exact same thing. Quickly being able to identify which merchant has what you want for the lowest price is an invaluable tool – and not spending $2,500 extra for the same TV is critical.
The mall also has two very important features called Hot Deals and Promo Codes. The Hot Deals section contains the aggregated content of all of the loss leader sales items of every merchant in the mall. This is like the Sunday newspaper ads on steroids.
If you like the idea of making your money go further, ShopSaveEarnMoney.com is an invaluable tool. It will help you quickly and easily learn to build the habit of thinking ahead before you buy to make sure you always get the highest and best use of your dollars. In my opinion, this is one of the best personal financial planning tools ever developed.
Previous columns:
Getting the highest and best use of every dollar, Part 2
Getting the highest and best use of every dollar
