What are your favorite online shopping portals and stores? Share them with me in the comments. Happy Shopping!

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Holiday shopping season is here again and the Global Influence network has some great gift ideas for you, tried and tested by real moms. Click on the links to check out what our team of reviewers had to say about each of these gift ideas, and then take a moment to enter our fun giveaway and take a chance at winning some of these fabulous products.

Featured Reviews

Pouchees -Busy moms need all the help they can get to stay organized and keep life as simple as possible. The Pouchee is the perfect solution to keeping all those little things together, putting everything you need, right at your fingertips.

Duck Hunter –

Duck Hunter turns the excitement of the hunt into an activity the whole family can enjoy. Launch the duck in the air and try to hunt it down with the toy shooter as it flies freely in the air. A fun choice for those who love outdoor sporting.

CardStore cards

-Personalized holiday cards are an important item on everyone’s to-do list and often a hassle to create and print. Cardstore.com has everything from family photo cards to invitations for your big holiday party, simplifying your holiday season.

Great Holiday Gift Ideas

Things Remembered

Custom Couture Jewelry

Just Elfin’ Around

Card Cubby

Harumika By Bandai

Harumika Runway Showstopper

Harumika Style Starter

Baby Alive Whoopsie Doo

Strawberry Shortcake Playset

Kota Monty Rex

Wall to Wall Basketball

Nerf Pocket Vortex

Busy Ball Popper

Talking Chuck Truck

Leapfrog My Pal Scout

Leapfrog Tag Jr

Leapfrog Scribble and Write

Animal Planet Polar Land Playset

Animal Planet Dinosaur Playmat

Onionhead Adult/Teen Feelings Pack

OnionHead Children’s Feelings Pack

Onionhead A-Z Feelings Magnet Set

FotoboxPlus

MeTime Tees

Fun Holiday Giveaway!

For this holiday guide, we want to share the love with the blogosphere! Some of our generous sponsors have donated prizes to be given away to lucky readers! To enter to win one of the following fabulous prizes, simply fill out the form here: http://tinyurl.com/y8t92rw

Prizes include: Things Remembered Custom Couture Jewelry Pouchee Elfing Around Harumika Onionhead Feelings Pack Nerf Wall to Wall Basketball Baby Alive Whoopsie Doo MeTime T-shirt Entries will close on December 6, 2009 at 11:59 PM EST. Winners will be contacted by email after the close of the contest.

Global Influence Member Guides Need more ideas for this holiday season? Check out the guides that some of our Global Influence members have put together on their own sites! Thrifty Jinxy, Happy Healthy Hip , And Twins Make Five , Because Two People Fell In Love, Mommy Musings , Lipstick to Crayons , Bargain Briana , Mommy PR , Shop With Me Mama, Santa Picks, Rave and Review, Connected 2 Christ , 3 Boys and a Dog, The Classy Closet , Contest Corner, Lisa Reviews , A Giveaway Every Day, HulaHoopinMom, Spalibrations, High Impact Mom, From Cribs to Car Keys

All reviews listed in the Global Influence gift guide were product provided. Featured positions were purchased by sponsors. Member gift guides are not affiliated with Global Influence.

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“With the economy still slow and many Americans on a strict budget, retailers are going to be offering a lot of great deals this holiday season,” said Luke Knowles, co-founder of Coupon Sherpa, a comprehensive resource where consumers can find online coupons, printable coupons and grocery coupons along with a free, downloadable iPhone application that provides access to mobile coupons. Ask Coupon Sherpa is the site’s blog that publishes money-saving tips. “Black Friday is an ideal time to take advantage of deep discounts.”

Among the tips in the Ask Coupon Sherpa article about Black Friday are:

Buy the newspaper: There’s a reason the Thanksgiving Day newspaper is the fattest newspaper of the year. Advertisers annually stuff this paper with coupons and circulars advertising their best sales. You can increase your savings with online coupons. Just make sure they can be used in combination with in-store sales or newspaper coupons.

Do your research: If you have your eye on a particular item, surf the price-comparison Web sites and record the prices for reference while shopping. Don’t forget to add any fees to the price. Some stores allow you to place an order online for in-store pickup the next day. You’ll still want to hit that store pretty early, however, and bring your printed-out receipt as sales clerks may not focus on filling online orders when pressed by throngs of shoppers.

Develop a game-day plan: Draw up your shopping list and establish your priorities before you hit the stores. Decide which stores you want to shop and in what order.

Are all parts included? Is the sale item stripped down or sold with all necessary parts? For example, some stores will low-ball the price on a computer printer but not include a printer cartridge, which can run to a pretty hefty figure. As a matter of fact, you should always check the price of printer cartridges before buying a printer. A $50 printer isn’t a great deal when the cartridges cost $50 each and run out quickly.

Hitch a ride: Parking on Black Friday is a nightmare and can waste precious time. This is one instance, however, when biking or taking the bus doesn’t make sense as your arms will be weighed down with packages at the end of the day. Ask a friend or relative to drop you off and pick you up.

Stick to your list and budget: In the tumult of Black Friday, it’s easy to wander off target, so make sure you stick to your list. And NO personal shopping. Wait for post-Christmas sales to treat yourself.

Coupon Sherpa is a comprehensive resource where consumers can find accurate and up-to-date online coupons, printable coupons and grocery coupons along with a free, downloadable iPhone application that provides access to mobile coupons. With the iPhone application, consumers can present the coupons (on their mobile devices) to the respective store’s cashier and receive the applicable discount. Merchants can post an unlimited amount of coupons on the application for free. For more information, visit www.couponsherpa.com.

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The folks at Dirt Devil have produced an amazing downloadable holiday buying guide filled with 100’s of tips and tricks to get more bang for your buck when shopping online. The guide includes over 300 websites, tricks and clever ways to shop online. I downloaded my guide yesterday and I have learned a lot of new tricks that hopefully will save me money as I do some of my Christmas shopping on line in the weeks to come.

Each page of the guide covers a different topic:

• How to find Red Hot deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday
• Saving big with promo codes and how to find them
• Save even more with  free shipping and rebates
• Save every day with Deal-A-Day sites
• Auctions, Outlets and other types of sites for Red Hot Deals
• Hard-to-Find and One-of-a-Kind gift ideas
• New ways to shop- ie. social shopping websites, follow deals on Twitter and iPhone apps
• Holiday travel info
• Online shopping with a Techy Twist
• Advanced shopping tips (browsers, cookies and Google…oh my!)
• Bargain Jargon-a glossary of deal lingo

Click on over to Dirt Devil and download your copy of the holiday buying guide today!

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I love Christmas shopping, it is the day-to-day necessities that I don’t like shopping for. Luckily, my husband is a good grocery shopper and he does most of the food shopping for our family. The store he does most of the shopping in has great food prices but their cleaning supplies and paper goods are ridiculously over priced so…I am in charge of shopping for them at other stores.
Today I found the answer to my prayers! Alice.com.

Alice provides you a better way to manage all of your household essentials online. You tell Alice what you buy—choosing from great deals on 1000’s of products—and Alice goes to work. We organize all of your products, find coupons and deals for you, remind you when you might be running low, and help you order just the items you need so you can avoid that trip to the corner drugstore or the big-box store. And all this convenience comes direct to your door with free shipping included.

It took me about an hour to set up my preferences and the products I buy on a regular basis. Then I took my shopping list and dragged the items I needed now from my list of products into my order and ta-dah! I paid for my order and saved $2.00 with instant coupons that I wouldn’t have had if I had shopped in my local store. Alice even has FREE shipping so I saved even more money because I didn’t even use the gas in my mini-van to go shopping!

I have set up reminders on Alice.com that will remind me to check to see if I need to place an order for my regular products. I can add or delete products at any time, I can even search for items by coupon amount so that I can save as much money as possible on a specific product. I know Alice is going to become my new best friend! You can try Alice too! Click here to start your free membership AND you will get $10.00 off once you spend $50 on Alice.com. You can’t go wrong with this great deal.

The post Shopping Help for the Busy Mom appeared first on The Mom Maven.

CyberMonday.com is well organized and easily searchable to help you find just what you are looking for. They even have a link in their navigation bar to all of the free shipping offers available on the site. Online retailers are reporting that approximately 57% of them are offering free shipping on all orders while 80% of online retailers will offer some sort of free shipping offer (may include a minimum purchase requirement).

Between now and CyberMonday you have the chance to win amazing gift cards from major retailers just by following @shopcybermonday on Twitter and becoming a fan on Facebook. On November 30th CyberMonday.com will be offering special “Deal of the Hour” items that are only 1 hour specials so make sure that you are checking back regularly to get all of the great deals.

I know on the past a lot of us have done all of our comparing early in the shopping season and then waited for the last minute deals. According to the National Retail Federation, a lot of merchants ordered less inventory this year due to the poor economy so they expect popular items to sell out quickly and for there to be fewer last minute baragins for the consumers.

Happy Shopping!

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1. Look for the “S” in security
   Make sure the sites you are shopping from are secure and have “https:” in the URL.  The “s” ensures security.
2. Stay current on security software
   One option is AVG free.
3. Think before you link. Use a link scanner tool to make sure you aren’t linking to infected websites. There is one included in AVG free or you can add the free AVG link scanner to your computer.
4. Keep your private information private. Use a separate e-mail account just for shopping. Keep the e-mail box cleaned out, print your confirmation e-mails.
5. Mix up your passwords Every account should have its own password. I know this is a hassle but it is for your own protection. Write them down and keep them in a secure location.

Some other online shopping safety tips:

• Don’t shop from your cellphone, the transactions aren’t as secure as your home computer. Use the phone for research but not purchasing.
• Help elderly family members keep their computers safe. Take a few minutes and make sure they have the latest anti-virus, link scanner and firewall on their computer. This age group are often targets for online scam artists, phishing schemes and identity theft.
• Credit cards are much more secure than debit cards when used online. (I don’t use credit cards, I shop with my Paypal debit card as it is easy to manage my account and my spending.)

Take action today to make sure your computer’s security software is up-to-date. Get more Cyber Security Services with AGB Investigative for your peace of mind. Tomorrow I will be sharing where to find great deals online this holiday season.

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To test this I sent @IMShopping a question about finding a “congratulations on your new job” gift that wasn’t flowers. Within 30 minutes I had this message. When I clicked on the link it brought me to my page of IMShopping.com which had 3 related suggestions and looked like this… The response was personal and creative.  I love that they don’t just give suggestions but they give you links to the suggestions. They make shopping easy by taking all of the leg work out of the process.

IMShopping is a helpful easy to use site and who can complain about the combination of shopping and Twitter? Give IMShopping a try and let me know what you think by leaving me a comment here or retwetting this blog post to your Twitter friends.

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