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.

Oh, internet. I owe you one serious love song. And maybe a poem or two. How I adore you! You have changed my world so completely! Today I’m going to focus on one key way that you have changed the way I do things. You have saved me SO much time on a task that I both love and loathe: shopping.

When I was in college, I would hit the local mall when I was stressed out or just needed a break. It was VERY rare for me to actually purchase anything, but it was great to window shop. You could purchase clothing online at that time (this was 1998-2002), but since then the online shopping selections have EXPLODED, and the amount of time I have spent in malls has gone down right along with it.

You see, shopping is a good stress reliever. Sort of. Over time, I’ve found that the peace it used to bring me is often cut short by a few key things:

1. The traffic getting to and from the mall. I don’t so much like traffic. And I don’t like wasting time. And that’s what 20 minutes in the car each ways feels like. Just sayin’.

2. Honestly, this might sound crazy, but I think the selection of merchandise in stores is borderline pitiful as compared to shopping online. So I find shopping in brick and mortar stores to be a bit of a drag. In this season of my life, I have a much better sense for what looks good on me when I shop, so I do less browsing and more targeting searching.

3. I have a toddler. Have you ever shopping with a toddler? Me, too. ONCE. Not kidding. It’s payback for all the times that I would cry in the mall with my mom when we went shopping. I remember thinking that it was worse than a death sentence. Darah seems to agree. So I avoid it pretty much at all costs. The shipping fees I may incur for shopping online seem like such a small price to pay for avoiding having to subject both Darah and myself to shopping together.

4. Store hours. Let me tell you when I live my “non-mommy” life: between 4:45am and 6:30 am, between 1-2:30pm (but I’m stuck in the house because my child is sleeping) and after 7pm, at which point in the day I’m way too tired to schlep out to a store and shop. Especially if that means I have to put on makeup. Forget about it.

Online shopping I can do any time, in my pajamas, face NO lines, no traffic and easily hunt down EXACTLY what I’m looking for. It is bliss. I have been living in Chattanooga since August 2010, and I have been to the mall here exactly 1 time, and that was a few months ago. Wanna know why I went? Only because I felt really weird about the fact that I had never gone. I seriously don’t think I stepped inside more than 2 stores, and I got bored really fast. I have no idea why I would ever go back, unless I desperately needed something I could only get there, and I needed it today. Otherwise, I’ll just buy it online, thank you very much.

So now I want to talk about ways that you can make shopping online super efficient and fun. There’s actually a way to get paid for your searching efforts, which makes online shopping SO much more fun!

I’ve heard of quite a few programs out there, but this one is new to me, so it may be new to you, as well. It is called the Bing Rewards Preview and you can use it to earn credits that can be redeemed for gift cards, merchandise, and even charity donations. I just signed up and earned 250 credits just for signing up! Easy!

You can earn credits by installing the Bing Bar toolbar onto your browser. I like this option, as you can very easily watch those credits increase with your searches!

The other option is to just log into Bing.com and make sure you are signed in. You’ll see your Rewards credit counter in the top right of the header.

So how many credits do you need to get something you’d actually like to have? Well, a $10 Starbucks gift card will cost 1,338 credits. If coffee isn’t your thing, they have Sephora gift cards and those always popular Amazon.com gift cards. So log on and start searching. It literally pays to do your shopping online with Bing.

What about you? Do you shop online? Do you prefer going out to the stores to see and touch the merchandise before making your purchase? Do you take advantage of opportunities to make every search count online with something like Bing?