Shopping for bargains

There is a growing number of websites that offer price comparisons. There is, however, a flaw in this model sometimes. Go to an insurance aggregator, for example, and you won't find a quote from Direct Line in the mix because, as Direct Line boasts, it doesn't use affiliates and hence can offer a cheaper service.

A price comparison website makes its money in one of two main ways. First, it charges merchants to have its products and prices appear on its network, second, it earns a commission from sales after customers click on a link and then go to buy from the shop, with the click-to-sale being tracked from the source website. So, a price comparison website won't always guarantee you find the best price because it will only provide links to merchants that are paying to appear.

Discount vouchers
Before you hit the "buy now" button on a website, have a look for any discount vouchers that might be available for the shop. Good places to search are Voucher Codes or My Voucher Codes.

Cashback shopping
Get cashback when you shop online. This is basically a scheme where, if you click through to shops via links on a cashback site, the sale is tracked, that site earns commission and it shares the commission with you. Cashbac is not instant and it does depend on the time it take for sales to be reported and commissions paid to the site.
Try these: Sososher.com, Greasy Palm, Unbeatable, Kelkoo Cashback.

Compare the supermarkets
Compare prices at the major supermarkets by using My Supermarket - which lets you shop via your favourite retailer but also to see which retailer offers the best prices on your choice of items.

Compare energy suppliers
The most famous energy supplier comparison site is Uswitch but you can also look up  the suppliers on Money Supermarket, Simply Switch, Unravelit and Confused.com.

Travel price comparisons
Travel is a difficult thing to compare, but the aggregators do a good job of letting you shop around. The top sites are Travel Supermarket, Cheap Flights, Low Cost Beds, Ebookers, Expedia.

General price comparison websites
Kelkoo, Pricerunner, Shopping.com UK, Ciao, Amazon, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, Nextag and Google's products search. You can also get an idea of prices at Price Inspector.

Specialist price comparison sites.
Books: Bookbrain
Cameras: CameraTAG
Wine: Wine-searcher
Mobile phones: Mobiles4everyone
Betting odds: Odds Checker
Computers: ZDnet