MSN's Cashback Online Shopping Program: How I Save Money

Very few people know about the cashback shopping program at Microsoft's MSN Live search engine (http://search.live.com). It's a brand-new initiative from the Redmond, Washington-based computer software company. It's meant to help Microsoft gain more market share from it's search engine nemesis, Google.com. Most of you won't and don't care about search engine market share. But what will catch your eye is that shopping online through the Live search engine's cashback program will earn you instant rebates on all of your favorite products!

Yesterday, I wanted to buy an Apple iPod Nano. It's well-known fact that Apple doesn't offer much in terms of sales on their web site. Sure, you can buy a refurbished iPod MP3 player from the official Apple iPod store, but I wanted a new product (it's for a gift, and nothing says "cheap" like giving a refurbished music player).

I decided to go online anyway to try and find a deal on an iPod. I knew that, in the past, Best Buy offered package deals on MP3 players. I hit up Google's Product Search (http://www.google.com/products) to find what the lowest prices were. That's when I stumbled upon Live Search Cashback (http://search.live.com/cashback).

The first thing I noticed was that Live Search Cashback is ten times better than Google's product search engine. Sure, Google gives you the price of the product, helping you ferret out the best deal. But Live Search Cashback goes one step further and tells you the "Bottomline Price." This means you won't be surprised by taxes, shipping costs (notorious for boosting the final cost), and other hidden fees. Microsoft's Live Search Cashback calculates all of that for you.

The second thing I noticed-and here's the big deal-is that MSN Live Search Cashback takes it's name seriously. It gives you instant cash back when you make a purchase through Microsoft's search engine!