Christmas Money-Saving Tips

Have you finished Christmas shopping? Honestly, you should have started shopping for Christmas gifts right after the Thanksgiving Day, but if you haven’t then it is never too late! Start now! And in this week’s newsletter I will give you some Christmas ‘money-saving’ tips so to make sure you don’t end up with a huge credit card bill at the end of the year (it is actually a bad way to welcome New Year).

First of all, a confession: I am not a Christian and don’t celebrate Christmas in a big way (I just buy some cakes and candles and that is the end of it, lol), so this article is based on what I see people doing during this season, both online and offline:

1. Gifts and Foods: You got to give the best gift to your loved ones, right? Many people confuse ‘best’ with ‘the most expensive’ which is simply not true. You can make your loved ones happy without spending too much money. Some examples: you can buy gifts from thrift stores (with a little search, you can get some really cool gift items for your buddies), or make a gift basket consisting of a dozen inexpensive gift items (all of them should be based around a single theme), etc. If your friend is a bookworm, why not rent a book from your local library for a week or two? It would be the best gift for him, yet won’t cost you a fortune!

Buy food with care. Did your guests waste a lot of food during the previous year? You really won’t want that to happen again, so make sure you buy only as much food as you’d need! This is yet another way to save some money.

2. Firesales and Giveaways: Let’s now move back online. During Christmas, some people run firesales –they typically consist of several IM or niche products, or both. Some firesales are good and others are bad. I would not say which are good and which are bad – that would be like opening up a can of worms. :D I would simply say that apply discretion before you take out your wallet. When I look at a firesale, I don’t see how large the package is; that is totally irrelevant to me as a consumer. What I see is whether it would be worth buying that package; whether that package has anything that would help me reach my current goal. If the answer is no, then buying that package would be a distraction and a waste of money. Also there is another side of the coin.

If a firesale consists of only three products, and if it seems that one of them would help me with my goals, then I’d buy it. Affordability is of course another factor that influences my buying decisions; I certainly won’t want to pay an arm and a leg for something which is available elsewhere for free or cheap.

Move on to giveaways. As usual, there are a lot of giveaways running this season, but don’t be surprised if I haven’t sent you any email about them. It is not that I don’t want my subscribers to enjoy those freebies; it is just that I want to leave the job of sending you giveaway notifications to others (‘others’ means the ‘gurus’). And honestly, this year I am not even participating in any giveaway. ;)

If I wanted, I could have added hundreds of subscribers to my NuttieViralizer list by joining a couple of giveaways but I won’t do it, simply because in that case, the whole list would become worthless, full of freebie seekers and tire kickers. And I am quite happy with my little and responsive list. But of course, that is my personal choice. And truth to be told, the aim of this newsletter is to make friends and not money, but that’s another story for another day. Now, I’d tell you how to save money (and time) during the giveaways.

In giveaways, it is not all about saving money, because you are getting the gifts with no strings attached (I assume that is the way most contributors setup gifts, though there can be exceptions to every rule), therefore, paying for the backend products is optional for you. However, you are prone to wasting a lot of time in giveaways if you don’t apply your discretion and common sense. Don’t download just about every gift you get to see, firstly because it is time consuming, secondly because you don’t want your email address to be on hundreds of lists (it is really a great way to have your email address added to the spammers’ databases as well), and thirdly, your hard drive costs money and certainly, you won’t want to fill it up with crap and filth.

I don’t know about you, but I value my hard drives a lot. Just a few months back, I did a major ‘cleanse’ of my hard drives by weeding out a lot of junk from it!

Before you download the gifts, skim through them to see which ones are most relevant to you and your goals, and then download those. Believe me, it would save you a lot of time. Same goes for buying OTOs (One Time Offers). Don’t buy just about every OTO that comes in front of your eyes. As a mater of fact, OTOs are not really OTOs and sooner or later you will see the OTO item being sold again, maybe at a slightly higher price. If an OTO contains an item that (YOU think) would help you, go ahead and buy that, but don’t buy anything simply for the sake of it.

I know I am one who used to splurge a lot on OTOs and you won’t believe how drastically I have cut down on my purchases right from this year. Now, you might be wondering why I am asking you to save money.

No, not because I want you to save money for my products :) but because you will need money for a lot of things. You will need money to pay those darn electricity and gas bills that won’t leave you until death; you will need money so you can pursue your internet marketing goals in 2008; you will need money to pay for the bare minimum costs needed to run your business smoothly (example: hosting, domains, autoresponder, etc.), and lastly, you will need money for an emergency. I hope it doesn’t ever happen, but what if someone in your family suddenly becomes critically ill? Sure, you can run a WSO and get some $$$ within 48 hours, but having some cash stacked in your bank account always helps!

Always remember this ‘nuttie’ Christmas tip: look before you leap. It is all too tempting to go wild during Christmas and spend money to the brink, but if you are conservative like me, you will THINK before you ACT!

Lastly, I’d be interested in knowing how you celebrate Christmas. So, if you can spare a little time, tell me how you plan to spend your Christmas. I’d really appreciate your comments! Merry Christmas to you all! :)