Saving Money Online: Yapta, Watch That Page, and Discount Codes

I’ve found a couple of interesting ways to save money online and thought I would take a few minutes to share them with you. Yapta tracks airfare post-purchase and alerts you to changes. Watch That Page makes it easy to track any web page for changes, including price changes. Finally, discount codes can often be used to get a discount and/or free shipping on an online purchase.

I’m heading to London for a business trip later this month and I’m taking my wife and one of my daughters along. I bought the ticket on the United web site and then created an account at Yapta to track it. I told Yapta the flight information and the price that I paid ($794 per ticket). Six days later, an email alert from Yapta informed me that the price had gone down to $668 and that I could call United to get a travel voucher. I decided to wait a few more days to see which way the price would go. It bounced around a bit and we called United when it got up to $693. They sent us a pair of travel vouchers for the difference, $101 each. So Yapta saved me $202 (about the price of a decent meal for three people in London, but that’s a different story). You can also use Yapta as a comparison shopping tool and there are some browser plugins to streamline the process of transferring your flight information into your account.

 

My wife had her eye on a hot-looking dress from Revolve Clothing for a couple of months but thought that it was too expensive at its original price of $246. In early January she spent a couple of days visiting some friends in Idaho. Before she left she asked me to keep an eye on the price since she thought it would come down after the conclusion of the holiday shopping season. I was certainly not going to spend time checking the site every day, so I put the page in my Watch That Page account (I actually have a favelet for it) and forgot about it. A few days later I got an alert and found that the price had dropped to a much more reasonable $123.

I added it to my cart and then did a Google search for “revolve clothing coupon.” This took me to Retail Me Not, where I found and used not one but two coupons — one for 20% off and another for free shipping! I ended up paying just $104 for the whole thing and Carmen was very happy with my Google-fu (this is a woman who can out-negotiate the beach vendors in Cabos).

In general we’ve found that it is always worth searching for “coupon” or “discount code” during the checkout phase of any online purchase. 30 to 40% of the codes typically work, which makes this search quite worthwhile. Carmen prints up marketing cards for her Real Estate business using Vista Print and we always get a discount or free shipping.

My friend Chris Pirillo also posts lots of discount coupons on his site.

And that’s all I have for you tonight.