About Us: History & Purpose of Shopping-Bargains

A Brief History of Shopping-Bargains.com

Shopping-Bargains.com, LLC was established in February 1999 as a hobby of Mike Allen. Mike enjoyed the convenience and benefits of shopping online but didn't have much money with which to shop. Thus the necessity for frugality proved to be the mother of invention and Shopping-Bargains.com was established with the goal of helping family and friends save money shopping online.

In 1999, the commercial side of the Internet was still very young and confusing to many shoppers. As Shopping-Bargains.com took form, Mike felt that he was developing something that could actually help shoppers quickly and conveniently find hundreds of great shopping discounts that were previously available only to web-savvy consumers. He knew that many products and services cost less online but only for those who knew where to find them or how to take advantage of the right coupon code to trigger a discount.

In those early pre-Google days of online shopping, finding such discounts were difficult and time-consuming. However, over the next few years Mike added as many new stores, coupons and bargains as he could while still working full time.

Sometime in 2003, however, Mike realized that he had essentially two full-time jobs and one had to go. He enjoyed Shopping-Bargains.com and was beginning to experience enough sales to actually consider quitting his "day job." At the end of 2003 he did just that and was able to focus on implementing some of the improvements he felt were needed to make online shopping with coupon codes even easier for consumers.

Shopping-Bargains.com Today

Today, as in the past, Mike and his staff continue to find and publish coupon codes and bargains. Now serving over 1,000 stores, Shopping-Bargains.com had to develop new ways to categorize offers and deals. New features were developed for search, for keeping coupon codes current, and for sending bargains to users upon request.

Users of Shopping-Bargains.com can now browse our shopping departments to take advantage of the best savings without having to do their own hunting. Shoppers can buy with confidence since we also seek to list only reputable and secure online stores with proven customer service track records.

Some Guiding Principles

Shopping-Bargains.com seeks to be a family-friendly destination that promotes online stores with similar family-oriented values. We do not list stores whose primary purpose consists gambling, selling alcohol, tobacco or pornography or promoting violent, hateful and non-family-friendly products or services. However, try as we might, with the ever-changing product offerings and business models at the 1000+ online stores featured on Shopping-Bargains.com, we cannot guarantee that all our merchants comply with these goals.

While it would be nice to do all this for "fun," the truth is we must "turn a profit" to maintain our existence. Knowing we charge nothing for use of our coupons and bargains, many ask us how we can "make money" to stay in business. The answer lies in our partnerships: most of the stores featured at Shopping-Bargains.com pay us a small referral fee or commission based on the sales that they receive through our shoppers and site visitors buying from them. In short, only by clicking on one of our links and shopping at these merchants do we receive credit for a sale. Such sales are the primary way we generate revenue.

In addition to providing our users with what we hope is a smooth and positive shopping (and savings) experience, Shopping-Bargains.com seeks to give something back. Our shoppers, while primarily from the United States, come from around the world. We want to share our blessings with the world and have carefully selected several charitable organizations to sponsor.

Learn more about our Community Service efforts.