Archive for November, 2009

Seri­ously, folks, when you start to see Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in all the stores, you can tell that Hal­loween can’t be far away! It used to be that retail­ers waited until Thanks­giv­ing to roll out their Christ­mas sales, but every year it gets ear­lier and ear­lier. With well over 100 retail­ers on our Sho­pOn­line shop­ping pages, my email box is flooded every day with announce­ments from stores about their pre-Christmas sales that are going on right now.

I have two objec­tives with this site. The first is that I want to earn tons of com­mis­sions for all of my part­ner char­i­ties. I want  com­mis­sion checks to be rolling through here on their way to the wor­thy orga­ni­za­tions that we sup­port through shop­ping on these pages.

But my sec­ond objec­tive is that you, the shop­per, get the absolute best deal that you can when you shop online here. I appre­ci­ate you using this site to help fund these char­i­ties, and I know that the char­i­ties them­selves are thank­ful for the rev­enue that comes their way as a result of your shop­ping, but we all want you to not spend a penny more than you have to when you shop here, so I want to tell you about these sales.

The num­ber of sales that are run­ning online now are just too numer­ous to list. You can pretty safely assume that almost every­one is hav­ing a Christ­mas sale of some kind right now. The best time to shop seems to be on Sat­ur­days, Sun­days, and Mon­days. More stores run spe­cials on these days than any other time of the week. Another way to save while you shop here is to find online dis­count codes, write them down, and come back to your charity’s shop­ping page here at Sho­pOn­line and use them at check­out with your retailer. You get the check­out dis­count, but your char­i­tys­till gets the com­mis­sion from your purchases.

Here’s another smart money tip — save some of your Christ­mas shop­ping money for after Christ­mas. This is a les­son I have to re-learn every year. After-Christmas sales are even bet­ter than before-Christmas sales. All the retail­ers are look­ing to dump their over­stocked mer­chan­dise as quickly as they can after Christ­mas. You can really scoop up some great deals in the cou­ple of weeks fol­low­ing Christ­mas. We were able to give late gifts to sev­eral friends and busi­ness asso­ciates that we didn’t think we could afford to buy for at Christ­mas, because we got at really deep dis­counts by wait­ing a week (or two or three) after Christmas.

So if you’ve got to have the lat­est and great­est Christ­mas wish list gizmo, by all means, buy it now before the stores run out. But if you’re the kind of per­son who can delay grat­i­fi­ca­tion (espe­cially if delay­ing brings the oppor­tu­nity for even more grat­i­fi­ca­tion), here’s a bright idea for you — the Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian church cel­e­brates Christ­mas on Jan­u­ary 6th. Not being Ortho­dox myself, I’ve always thought this to be strange (most likely because I’ve never heard their rea­son for it), but from a shop­ping per­spec­tive it just sounds down­right smart. So buy presents for the lit­tle kids on your list so they have some­thing they can tear open under the Christ­mas tree on Christ­mas morn­ing, but strike a deal with the grown-ups on your shop­ping list to cel­e­brate Ortho­dox Christ­mas this year — and save a pile of cash.

Have you vis­ited our part­ner char­i­ties’ shop­ping pages lately? We’ve grown to well over 100 online stores. It’s got­ten so that we can hon­estly say that if we don’t have it, you don’t need it. Many of the stores that we offer are com­pa­nies that you’ve bought from for years, either online or in their “brick and mor­tar” stores located in shop­ping cen­ters and malls.

So why should you shop online here at “Sho­pOn­line” with stores like Wal­mart or Best Buy or Men’s Wear­house or Sally Beauty Sup­ply or…? Well, you get the idea. We offer a lot of stores that might be right down the street from you. So why buy from their online site instead of just pop­ping into their store?

There are sev­eral good answers to that ques­tions. The most obvi­ous from the stand­point of Sho­pOn­line is that when you buy from the store, they don’t pay a com­mis­sion to the char­ity of your choice. This site exists to gen­er­ate com­mis­sions from online shop­ping for char­i­ties. You’ll pay no more for hav­ing shopped online, but your char­ity will receive a com­mis­sion on all of your pur­chases from this site.

The sec­ond rea­son is that you can often find the same prod­uct cheaper online than from the same vendor’s brick and mor­tar stores. The cost of doing busi­ness is less online, so the retail­ers can often offer bet­ter prices to online cus­tomers. I’ve read lots of let­ters to the edi­tor of com­puter mag­a­zines say­ing that they have shopped online at (fill in the name of a store that sells con­sumer elec­tron­ics prod­ucts here) for a com­puter or a cable or what­ever, and then gone to the phys­i­cal store to buy the item, only to find that it is con­sid­er­ably more expen­sive in the store than on the store’s web­site. The leader of one of the orga­ni­za­tions sup­ported by Sho­pOn­line told us that when he was in the mar­ket for an auto part this sum­mer, he found it online for almost half what it cost in the parts store. So shop­ping online can save you money, even if you have to pay for ship­ping (which a lot of times you don’t). Com­par­i­son shop at your charity’s shop­ping page before you buy some­thing at a store.

The next rea­son is that there is a greater selec­tion of prod­ucts online. I have a Super Wal­mart just a cou­ple of miles from me and it is crammed full of “stuff,” but they don’t have as much “stuff” as Walmart.com (one of our retail part­ners here on Sho­pOn­line) offers on their web­site. Walmart.com has more than one mil­lion prod­ucts for sale on their site — far more than they could stock at a local store. Their web­site doesn’t have every­thing that the store has (for instance, you can’t buy many gro­cery items online), but they have lit­er­ally tens of thou­sands of other prod­ucts avail­able online that they don’t stock in their stores. Walmart.com isn’t the only store this is true of. Any of our online retail part­ners carry more prod­ucts on their web­sites than they stock in their stores. So shop for hard-to-find items on your charity’s shop­ping page. You might be sur­prised at what you can find.

The last rea­son I’m going to lay out for you can save you a lot of money. Local stores might have a small sec­tion of close­out mer­chan­dise, but many of their web­sites have a ton of deeply dis­counted close­outs. I’ve bought some brand new mer­chan­dise for pen­nies on the dol­lar in the close­out sec­tions of some of the retail­ers fea­tured on Sho­pOn­line — and every time I did, not only did I save a pile of money, I also earned a com­mis­sion for one of our charitypartners.

I used to work in a com­puter store near Chicago. Many, many times I would give a great prod­uct demon­stra­tion and sales pitch to a cus­tomer, only to lose him to a dif­fer­ent store that sold the same thing cheaper than we did. We called those peo­ple SHABEs — Shop Here And Buy Else­where. I encour­age you to become a SHABE (to some extent). Browse the aisles at local stores, then come back to Sho­pOn­line and com­par­i­son shop the same prod­ucts from the same store’s online sites. (I do not rec­om­mend you take the time and build up the hopes of a com­mis­sioned sales­per­son at a store only to order online to save some bucks. If some­one gives you great ser­vice and depend on a sales com­mis­sion for all or part of their income, do the right thing and buy from that person.)

Sho­pOn­line can be a pow­er­ful tool for rais­ing money for your char­ity. I works every time you use it. Buy­ing from the online sites of some of your favorite retail stores can help your char­i­ty­fi­nan­cially. Book­mark your charity’s shop­ping page and check it first for all of your shop­ping needs — those things that you have always bought online, and a sur­pris­ing array of things that you’ve never thought of shop­ping online for before.

When I started build­ing this site in the sum­mer of 2009, I asked many of my friends who shop online where they shop and what they buy online. One of the most enthu­si­as­tic responses that I got was from Lesa who is a big fan of a par­tic­u­lar pre­mium tea ven­dor (who will remain unnamed until they agree to be listed on this site). I pushed Lesa’s “tea but­ton” and got about an hour’s worth of infor­ma­tion about the virtues of pre­mium tea — not the kind of stuff you buy at the gro­cery store, but the really good stuff. As a result of Lesa’s pas­sion for good tea, I signed a num­ber of high-end tea deal­ers as par­tic­i­pat­ing ven­dors for “ShopOnline.”

Your hum­ble Web­mas­ter fell in love with the tea sites that signed on with us and promptly placed an order with Mighty Leaf Tea for a green and white tea sam­pler assort­ment. The price for this 30-teabag assort­ment was $21.95, plus $7.95 for ship­ping and han­dling. With every order, Mighty Leaf lets you select two free teabags of your choice, so I received 32 teabags in seven dif­fer­ent vari­eties stored in an attrac­tive tea tin.

It was love at first sip.

The first vari­ety I tried was Green Tea Trop­i­cal, a health­ful, low-caffeine green tea infused with a melange of sweet, fruity fla­vors. Rocked my world. I’ve now tried all the vari­eties in the sam­ple assort­ment, which also included Moun­tain Spring Jas­mine, Organic Hojicha, White Orchard, and Mar­rakesh Mint. I have to be hon­est with you, some of these fla­vors didn’t appeal to me — until I actu­ally tasted them. Jas­mine is too flo­ral and per­fumy for me, but I like this tea in spite of that. Mint tea has never been “my cup of tea,” but I love Mighty Leaf’s Mar­rakesh Mint. It pleas­antly sur­prises me every time I taste it.

So what’s the dif­fer­ence between “the good stuff” and the gro­cery store stuff? A good tea is like a fine wine — it has lots of “com­plex­ity.” Dif­fer­ent parts of your tongue reg­is­ter a rain­bow of com­ple­men­tary fla­vors. It’s a party in your mouth. After I’ve had a cou­ple of cups of gro­cery store tea, my tongue feels like Astro­turf. Not so with the good stuff. The teas I’ve tried from Mighty Leaf have a smooth, almost creamy, con­sis­tency. Bye-bye “turf tongue.” And the huge vari­ety of teas avail­able from the pre­mium ven­dors offer some­thing for every palette. I’ve now got a tea wish list as long as my arm.

Suf­fice it to say that I look for­ward to a cup or two of tea every day now. It has become my 15-minute vaca­tion to peace­ful, exotic lands.

If you did the math in your head when I laid out the price of the pack­age that I bought, you prob­a­bly came to the con­clu­sion that I’m pay­ing almost a dol­lar for each cup of tea. I’m happy to point out that you would be quite wrong! I’m a big guy and I brew a big cup of tea, about 16 ounces each. Every Mighty Leaf teabag (excuse me, they refer to them as “silken, hand-woven, biodegrad­able tea pouches”) is good for a min­i­mum of two of these mega-mugs of tea, some­times three. That cuts the price per cup to less than half of what you would have guessed at first. If you brew normal-sized cups, you might be able to get even bet­ter mileage.

Some­times, for the third time that I use a “tea pouch,” I’ll use two of dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Tonight I enjoyed a blend of Mar­rakesh Mint and Moun­tain Spring Jas­mine. An out­stand­ing pair­ing! As a for­mer Diet Coke addict, I am happy to bliss­fully sip a cou­ple of mugs of tea per day, rather than mind­lessly gulp down vast quan­ti­ties of unhealthy soda pop. Another of our tea ven­dors, Ada­gio Tea, charges much less for ship­ping and offers free ship­ping on orders of $50 or more, and with all of our ven­dors, loose tea is a more eco­nom­i­cal option than teabags.

So now I’m a pre­mium tea con­vert. I recently read an inter­view with a man from Eng­land who was in Aus­tralia for a con­fer­ence he was speak­ing at. The inter­viewer asked him if he would con­sider relo­cat­ing to Oz. The Brit replied that the coun­try was gor­geous and the weather was incred­i­ble, but he couldn’t find a decent cup of tea in the whole coun­try. Tea was the deal breaker. I’m not that far over the edge yet, but I spend a lot of time brows­ing the tea site here on Sho­pOn­line, plan­ning my next purchase.

I encour­age you to take the plunge into the world of pre­mium teas. They make out­stand­ing gifts and they are a real treat for your­self, as well. Plus, all of the tea ven­dors at Sho­pOn­line pay a nice com­mis­sion for the char­ity of your choice, so place your order, brew a cup, put your feet up, and pre­pare to get cozy.