Discounts add to the joy of shopping. It may be that you get a $5 or $10 off or a free-shipping but you sure are delighted to see yourself spending less than what you've estimated and are motivated to try the store or site next time. Besides creating this competitive advantage, manufacturers or retailers issue coupon codes (also known as coupons, promotional codes, discount codes, rebates etc) to introduce or promote sale on specific product lines. Now, whatever be their motive(s), being able to avail discounts frequently will surely save a hefty sum if you count them at the year end.

Though manufacturers/retailers still use the mail service, magazines, newspapers etc for distributing their promotional codes, in this age of growing popularity of the online shopping, naturally, they have a preference for the internet to disseminate their coupon codes. So, www is the best hub to look for whether there is a discount offered for what you are going to buy. You can even trace the coupons that online merchants/retailers tend to issue for exclusive customers which they won't display on their websites. At the moment there are barrage of sites dedicated to collecting coupons codes offered by the manufacturers/retailers in any media and put those up for you. And with the prodigious search engines and other online applications these sites can dig out even the exclusive coupons we just referred to. So, whenever you think of shopping, try these options to see whether you have scope to save money:

Search Engines:

Generic search engines like Yahoo!, Google, MSN etc the ones dedicated for discount are the best options to start with. Just put the name of the manufacturer/retailer and the term discount or coupon within the quotation sign e.g. ?Apple coupon? or ?Apple discount? in the search box and the search engine brings any available coupons for you.

The Coupon Code Sites:

As we've talked about them in the previous paragraph, these are the sites that are kind of treasure troves for the coupon-hunters. Sites like couponcodes4u are literally devoted to gather the promotional codes and many of them send valid coupons to their registered users. Some offer coupon notification services to deliver valid coupons from the manufacturers/retailers you have interest in as well. And a number of such sites act as a kind of social forums that allow people to deliver, share or exchange coupon codes.

Catalogues and Magazines:

You'll come across some coupons that the manufacturers/retailers may keep for the subscribers of certain newspapers, catalogues, or magazines or the coupon codes can be put as a part of some ad published in these.

Newsletter of the manufacturers/retailers:

As part of the introduction or new promotion, the manufacturers/retailers send such coupons to those on their e-mail list. These coupons are rather of exclusive kind and if you are their loyal customer, you are likely to get one.

Just invest a few minutes to try these options every time you decide to shop. You surely will find these bits of time brings you reward you never estimated for.