Shopping Online - I Finally Jumped On the Band Wagon!

Thank you to BING for sponsoring my writing today. To learn more about BING
Shopping Rewards, click here.  I was selected for this sponsorship by the
Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.



I have always been a city girl, a hard core mall groupie to the core.  I LOVE to shop.  I love the entire experience, looking at everything, trying things on and my personal favorite - seeing what's on the clearance racks!  My whole life I have lived within minutes of a mall.  The mall, my escape, my indulgence, my "me time".  Thanks to my husband's promotion, my "me time" has had to make a move from the mall to the internet.

My husband's promotion moved us to a small town in central Oregon where the nearest decent mall is over an hour away.  And when I say decent, I mean mediocre at best.  Nothing compared to what I am used to.  Only a few of my favorite stores and the chance of finding something in my size is slim to none.  This circumstance has left me to find alternate forms of shopping, which in this day and age means resorting to the internet. 

Don't get me wrong, its not that I hate online shopping it just doesn't hold the same allure as the instant gratification I get when I pick out something in person.  For starters, whatever I buy at a mall I get to take home with me seconds after I purchase it.  I know exactly what I am getting and I know I won't be disappointed with it when I put it on or see it in person.  When it comes to online shopping there are great deals to be had but I hate that waiting period that has to happen after I check out.  Heaven forbid something finally shows up and in person I hate everything about it.  Then I have to figure how to send it back, blah, blah, blah.  Yeah, even talking about it I've lost interest.  But since there is no other way I have had to succumb to the fact that if I want to shop whenever I want that online is my only option.

Since I have to shop online I might as well get rewards for doing it.  I recently discovered how easy it is to shop online and search for items using Bing.  I just used Bing to shop for some new dresses that I want to wear on business trips I'm taking this summer and it was so easy to find what I was looking for!  I also like that using Bing social search I can see the stores that my friends are fans of too.  Anything that you publicly like on Facebook will show up in your friends social searches.  For a newbie online shopper that's pretty cool in my opinion.

My first experience with this social search feature was actually with my mom.  She sent me a message on facebook to let me know that she was searching jeans skirts on Bing and as she scrolled down the page to her surprise she came across my face!  I hadn't heard of this feature at this point so I searched it too and there I was!  I took a screen shot of it too cause I thought it was kind of cool.

The best part about searching online using Bing is their Rewards Preview Program.  Now I can actually earn rewards for searching and exploring different features of Bing.  Once my credits begin to add up I can then redeem them towards gift cards, buying merchandise and even donating to charity.

There are two easy ways to start earning and tracking your credits:

1. Go the Bing Bar route. Just install the Bing Bar toolbar onto your browser and register, and you can watch the Rewards credit counter climb.
2. Head to Bing.com on the Web. Just complete the registration form and track your progress by checking the Rewards credit counter located on the top right of the Bing.com header.

And, upon signing up, you’ll automatically start with 250 credits.


Sign up here and start racking up those credits for your next shopping spree!