Saving the Most Money with Coupons - pt. 2

Yesterday I blogged about saving with coupons and talked about the different kind of deals (site-wide, category and product) and discounts (percent off, dollar off and free shipping). Today I'm going to explain which deals save you the most money and why--as well as how to find them.

So of the three types of deals, which kinds work the best?

Looking at the Apple deals available so far this year:

• Product discounts are saving people an average of $232
• Category is saving people $226
• Site-wide deals are saving people $73
  

Obviously, product discounts are the clear winner--and it makes sense too. A retailer is trying to entice people to buy certain products, so they would be able to discount specific things more than simply giving a discount on everything and lowering their prices. So, the more narrow range the coupon covers, the more money you can actually save.

OK, so now we know to look for deals from narrow to broad--but when looking at product-specific coupons, what type of discount is the best? This might take a little math, but there are some simple rules of thumb. Let's look at product coupons for bodybuilding.com. Dollar off coupons are averaging savings of $15 per person, but the percent discounts are averaging $39 and free shipping saves about $10.

Even when we look at all the different deal types for all the different retailers, percent off deals save $67 compared with $28 for dollar off or only $9 for free shipping. Again there is a clear winner, but this gets a little tricky. You have to be aware of both the discount range of the deals and the products you are looking at.

Compare the deals for higher dollar items, such as electronics where an average $73 can be saved on with percent off vs. $33 saved with dollar off discounts or home and garden supplies where we see an average of $62 in savings for percentage off vs. $23 saved with dollar off discounts, the percentage off deals are the clear winner again.

However, for lesser value items the difference disappears: flowers and gifts save an average of $10 for both percentage and dollar off deals and, in fact, free shipping could be the big winner depending on how much the retailer charges.

Overall, the very best thing you can do to help save money is find deals that are a combination.
There are plenty of deals that have percentage off a specific product AND free shipping. For example, this Lenovo deal to save 15-30% on Select ThinkPad T Series Notebooks includes free shipping--which saves an average of $238 per person!

So, let's review. In order of most to least savings you should look for deals in this order:

1. Product Specific
2. Category Specific
3. Site-Wide

And the discount types in this order:

1. Percent Off
2. Dollar Off
3. Free Shipping

Hope this helps! And Happy Saving!