SHOPPING SITE TUTORIAL

LIVINGFREESHOP.COM

   Welcome to a different type of shopping site that can save you money and make your money go farther. Livingfreeshop.com has over 3,000 retailers that you can shop with, and most of those give you cashback when you shop. After I switched my shopping over from brick and mortar stores to the internet, I found that we had money left at the end of each week because I was spending less, and I was saving time, energy, and gas as well. I love shopping from my sofa in my pajamas, and I love saving money!

There are at least 8 ways to save money on this site, and I will go over them briefly so that you will understand just what you can do with it. First, I will explain how to open a cashback account and never miss a deal or cashback.

BECOME A PREFERRED CUSTOMER

Go to livingfreeshop.com, click on the Sign Up link at the upper right, and in just a minute you can create a cashback account. Make sure that you use a password that you are going to remember. Once you become a Preferred Customer, I will be your Personal Shopping Consultant, and I can help you with problems and questions. My name and contact information will be on the site.

SHOPBUDDY

After you create your account, locate the word Shop at the left of the search bar. Click on the down arrow next to it and click on ShopBuddy. It takes just a minute to download this, but it is one of the most important features that we have on the site. It will do the following:

Before ShopBuddy, if you wished to shop at one of our over 3,000 stores you had to go to livingfreeshop.com, locate the store, and then go to the store from there in order to get your cashback. Now you can just shop on the web, and if you go to a store directly, for example Walmart, ShopBuddy will pop up and give you a link to connect you to your cashback account, so you never miss your cashback.

But that is not all, it will give you the Hot Deals on the site, which are updated daily, and any coupon codes. When you go to checkout, it will search the coupon codes and apply any that you are entitled to use.

When you search for an item on google, the search results will let you know which of our stores carry the item that you are searching for, and will tell you if that store gives cashback.

So to summarize: ShopBuddy ensures that you always get your cashback, ensures that you can find the Hot Deals and use the coupon codes that you are entitled to, and helps you find products that give you cashback.

COMPARISON SHOPPING

    If you search for an item on livingfreeshop.com, you will be able to click on an item you are interested in and see the top stores that carry that item, the price, and how much cashback each one will give you so that you can find the best deal. Be sure to check out the shipping on each one, as that can be a big factor also. Most of the time I get free shipping on what I buy. Instead of going from store to store, you can just look it up and find the best price.

OPTIONS

   We have two types of stores: Partner Stores and One Cart Stores. When you shop with a partner store, such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot, etc., you are shopping directly on that store's website, and you need ShopBuddy to help you with deals, coupons, and cashback.

   

   When you shop with our One Cart Stores, you are shopping directly on livingfreeshop.com, and you can shop with different stores but pay once with our one cart technology. When you look up an item, there are options available that you will see on a floating menu at the right of your screen, such as My Lists, Gift Registry, Price Alerts, eGifts, etc.. These options can save you time and money, especially the Price Alert. When you click on these, just follow the onscreen instructions. 

   One note: our Gift Registry allows you to add items to it from all of our One Cart stores, so you are not restricted to picking items from one store. When you give people the link, they can then shop on one site for items from many stores.

GIFT CARDS AND STACKING

   If you search for gift cards, you will see a number of options. Some of them give cashback but charge a fee, and some of the sites carry discounted gift cards, which can save you a LOT of money. Over the last three years I have saved over $800 through the discounts alone, and that doesn't include the cashback that I have earned. My favorite site is Raise.com, and if you check this site when you are shopping or going to a restaurant, you can save a lot of money. Here is an example:

  

 When we were going to eat at Applebee's a couple of years ago, I was getting out of the car when I realized that I hadn't checked for a gift card. I got back in the car, looked it up on my iPad on our shop.com app, went to Raise.com from there so that I would get my cashback, and looked up Applebee's. I bought a discounted card, it was delivered within a minute or two to my email inbox, I clicked the link and brought up the voucher, and then showed it to the server when we paid. You must buy a voucher instead of a physical card in order to use it right away, so make sure it says voucher and not physical. We saved $10 that night, but I have saved more than that at times.

   I wanted to make this post as short and simple as possible, but I must give another example because this is an important part of saving money with our site. This is an example of Stacking your savings:

   We were picking up an order at Home Depot one day, and we looked at the lawn mowers because we needed one. We picked one out, looked it up online, found that it was discontinued but found another one just like it on sale, so I went to Raise.com on my iPad, but you could do this on your phone, and bought a Home Depot voucher. We got a good discount on the voucher and 2% cashback. I paid for the voucher with my Bank of America cashback credit card, and then went to the shop.com app and then to Home Depot from there, and ordered the lawn mower, paying for it with the voucher from Raise. We got a good price and another 2% cashback from Home Depot. We estimated that we saved approximately $25.00. Once you get used to doing this, it is not hard. I get vouchers for restaurants all the time, and even saved $5.00 on a sweater that I was buying at Penney's one time. As I said, I have saved over $800 just using Raise. 

   The bottom line is that you can save a lot of money by changing your buying habits. I am hardly ever in a store now, I even buy groceries from sites such as Jet and Walmart. Not going in stores will save you a tremendous amount of money. I have so much more time now as well as money because I can shop at night while I'm in front of the TV,  and I don't have to get ready to go out, drive to multiple stores, and then run up and down the aisles looking for stuff. This used to drive me crazy because of people getting in my way constantly. I complained and complained about the stress and energy drain of shopping, but now I don't have that anymore. It is wonderful! And I'm saving a lot of money.

ONE LAST THING

   I not only own a shopping mall as part of my franchise with Market America, I own a Market America store as well, which has exclusive products that you cannot find anywhere else. Our Isotonix line of supplements have the best delivery system, and our products do what they say they will do. We have a weight loss system, TLS for Transitions Lifestyle System, that is really about lifestyle change so that you lose fat, not muscle, and keep it off, and we have a new product that people are going crazy over, TLS Trim Tea, a black instant tea that you can drink hot or cold. We have just recently added Trim Cafe, which is coffee with the same weight melting ingredients.

   Our most popular item is Isotonix OPC-3, which I consider to be a miracle straight from God. It helps so many people with so many different problems. 

   We also have incredible skin care, home care, pet care, cosmetics, etc. I will do a separate blog for these products, because they are so good and so helpful.  

   

   If you have any questions, you can call me at 910-620-7460, or send me an email at livingfreema@gmail.com.

   I hope that this has been helpful,  and that you will utilize this website to the fullest and save money and energy as I am doing. 

Happy shopping!

Market America/Shop.com: A Winning Company

Shop.com is a win-win-win situation for everyone, customers, Unfranchise Owners, and the retailers who partner with this site. Consider the following article from Everything PR:

JR Ridinger & Loren Ridinger Keep Winning

Shop.com, located in Monterrey, California, is a comparison shopping service originally backed by Bill Gates and Amazon.com which was later sold to Market America in 2010. The company has more than 650 employees. Gates’ involvement with Shop.com began in 1997. The billionaire is listed as one of the company’s founding investors. This internet-based shopping site sells clothes, shoes, beauty related items, home furnishings, electronics, health & nutrition items, travel items as well as grocery products.

Market America Background

About the Founders of Market America

JR Ridinger (his legal name is James Howard Ridinger) and his wife, Loren Ridinger, have been involved in direct marketing since long before forming Market America. JR was a distributor for another company previously and used much of what he learned working there to establish his company. He’s the president and CEO of Market America. On JR’s LinkedIn profile, a recommendation for him comes from probably the person who would know best, his wife Loren: He’s “the most talented person I know. Genius at internet marketing and online shopping.”

One of the reasons they started their business was a desire to help others accomplish great things. JR has said in talking about Market America, “So that’s what we really do: We sell dreams. We sell an entrepreneurial experience that allows people to achieve those dreams.” The business they created they often call the Unfranchise because they’ve made it possible for people to become distributors without having to buy a franchise costing sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get started.

Loren Ridinger is the senior VP of Market America and oversees the beauty and fashion areas of the business primarily. The couple and their daughter Amber are big on family, as well as on working hard so they can also play hard. They own homes across the nation and at least one outside the U.S. in Bali. One of Loren’s hobbies is in finding just the right items to fill their various homes, including artwork by Renoir and the masters, antiques, and other art and furnishings. She looks for things she can treasure and eventually pass along as a legacy. In truth, that’s what the couple does with their companies too.

Market America is an Internet marketing company specializing in One-to-One Marketing. It provides a robust business platform for entrepreneurs while providing consumers a different and better way to shop. Market America’s Headquarters are in Greensboro, North Carolina. The company was started in 1992 by CEO JR Ridinger. So far the company has earned $6.4 billion in sales. It employs nearly 750 people internationally with operations in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, United Kingdom, Mexico and Singapore.

Using the company’s shopping website, Shop.com, customers have access to over 40 million products, including Market America’s exclusive products as well as thousands of retail brands.

Ranking of Market America

Internet Retailer has ranked Shop.com #64 in the 2015 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. It is also the 18th fastest-growing Internet Mobile Retailer. By combining Market America’s entrepreneurial business model with Shop.com’s powerful comparison shopping platform, Cashback program, Hot Deals, ShopBuddy®, social shopping integration, and other features, the company has become the ultimate online shopping destination for consumers.

Members of Market America who want to become “Independent Distributors” pay a fee for the right to sell exclusive products. These products include vitamins, makeup, herbal tonics, and kitchen goods. Members are also encouraged to recruit other Independent Distributors.

People can become “Sales Associates,” which then allows them to buy and sell the products at a profit, but they may not recruit other Independent Distributors.

It’s clear that Shop.com and Market America are winning companies.

What Is Market America?

  

Market America is a business that was started in 1992 by J. R. and Loren Ridinger in their home in Greensboro, North Carolina. It has grown every quarter since it's beginning, and has evolved into a global business with a presence in Australia, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Spain, and it is rapidly expanding into other countries as well.

   What makes Market America unique? It has an incredible business/compensation/marketing plan, and like a franchise, it has systems and organization that make it easy for the average person to achieve success. The amazing thing about this business is this: if you bought a franchise, it would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you would be paying the franchiser a fee every month. It only costs $129.95 to become what we call an "unfranchise" owner (an unfranchise is like a franchise, but without the negatives of one), and for that you get:

• A national and global shopping site with over three thousand retailers, most of whom give cashback on purchases, shop.com/livingfree

•   A turn-key cosmetics and skin-care business, Motives Cosmetics

• A turn-key website sales business, MA Webcenters

•  A turn-key music industry business, Conquer Entertainment

• A turn-key business recruiting health professionals and putting our fabulous health and wellness products into their hands and the hands of their patients, Nutrametrix

•  A retail sales business selling the outstanding products that Market America has identified as being the products that people are looking for, and has sourced the highest quality products from outside manufacturers. These products are found on shop.com/livingfree also.

And YOU get paid, not the other way around as in a franchise.

   There are a few other parts to the business, but you get the idea. It is a simple business with many income streams that you can utilize to do what Market America is best at: giving people what they want and transforming lives with a business that promises and delivers, when you follow their proven business plan, a six-figure residual income. I will be talking about each part of the business in future posts, and I invite you to explore the many facets of this global company whose foundation is people helping other people to succeed.

For more information:
Market America Overview and Business Plan

Shopping Portal Tutorial

   Welcome to a wonderful shopping site, livingfreeshop.com, where you can save money with comparison shopping, hot deals and coupon codes, receive cashback from over 4000 stores when you shop, and get a personal shopper (me!) to help you. It is very important that you go to livingfreeshop.com when you sign up, because if you go to just shop.com, you will be assigned to someone else and I will not be your shop consultant.
   When you first visit this site, it can be confusing because there are so many features. Let's break it down into easy steps and find out just how this site can save you money and time.

Create an account
Go to livingfreeshop.com, and at the top of the screen you will see "Sign In". Click this and then create your account. Please pick a password that you will remember, but you can also stay signed in to the site since there will be no sensitive information on your account.
  
Download shopbuddy
Go to the home page and find the square, located on the right a short way down the page, that says "SHOP BUDDY, Never miss a deal". Click on this link and follow the instructions, and in just a minute shopbuddy will be installed and ready to ensure that you will never miss your cashback. When you are shopping on the web, you will not need to go to shop.com first before you go to a retailer's website, because shopbuddy will take care of everything for you. 

This is how it works:
   As you are shopping on the web, if you go to a site that is a shop.com retailer, such as Target or QVC, a window will pop up in the upper right hand corner of your screen, and it will have a link that says "Earn Cashback Now". When you click this it links you to your account, and if you buy anything on the site, your cashback will be deposited in your account on shop.com. You will never miss your cashback when you have shopbuddy!

   Another cool feature of shopbuddy is the deals and coupons feature: 
After you link to your cashback account, you will see a small s-shaped symbol at the upper right of your screen. Clicking on this will show you all the current deals, discounts, and coupon codes for that site, and these are updated daily. You may be able to find a free shipping deal here.

   A new feature has recently been added that will help you quickly identify shop.com merchants when you use google. When you search google for a product, all the stores that come up that are a shop.com merchant will have the shop.com "S" symbol beside the search result. When you see that symbol, you know that you can go to that site and get cashback when you shop. 

Explore our helpful features:

eGifts: Look in the menu at the top of the page, and you will see a link to eGifts. Click on that to go to a page that gives you instructions on how to use this feature. You can choose a gift for someone and have it sent to them, or you can choose several gifts that you think they would like, and an email will be sent to them with the list. They then choose the gift they would like, and it will be sent to them and billed to you. This is great when you are shopping for people at a distance. Just remember to check out the shipping costs in the list before you send it because some charges can be high, while others are much lower or even free. You will be able to comparison shop to get the best deal.

Lists:
MyLists is also located at the top of the page. You can create a number of helpful lists, such as a list of items you would like to give someone for an occasion, a list of items that you are interested in purchasing in the future, a Christmas wish list for yourself to share with your family, etc.. This can be very useful when you see something as you are browsing that you may want to buy later. Just hover over the item and click on "Quick View", and then you can choose "Add to my Lists" in the window that pops up. You can access your lists from the "My Account" link at the top of the home page.

Market America branded products:
We have an exclusive line of products that are only available through Market America, and they are the finest I have ever seen. We have products in many catagories, including:

• Health Supplements
• Anti-aging Products
• TLS: a lifestyle weight-loss system
• Personal Care Products
• Skin Care Products
• Home Care
• Pet Health 
• Car Care
• Cosmetics: Motives by Loren Ridinger and Motives for LaLa
• DNA Miracles baby products

and much, much more. You can see the Market America brands on the home page , and if you click on a brand and then a product, you can get information about the ingredients, what it can do for you, the science behind it, videos, etc..

   There are other features, such as Hot Deals and comparison shopping that can save you a lot of money, but you can begin shopping and saving with the information I have just given you. I hope you will create an account, download shopbuddy, and enjoy shopping and saving with Market America/shop.com.
  

Freedom? Or a life of debt....

   I named my business Living Free for a very good reason. After trying three different multi-level marketing businesses I had given up on finding a business that actually paid me rather than the owner of the MLM. Then I saw the business model for Market America and immediately recognized that this was different from MLM, and vastly superior. I love the idea of freedom from debt, and freedom from the hamster wheel of going back and forth to work for 45 years or more, spending your life working for someone else's success. Market America was the only business I had ever seen that actually delivered on the promise of financial freedom and time freedom, money and the time to enjoy it. If you are a college student, the following is an article posted on MA Blog, and it is horrifying, to say the least. The statistics on student debt are not good, but the good news is that Market America offers hope and a solution.

The Black Hole of Student Debt

The following is a 6 minute video that shows the difference between Market America and other forms of business.

Huffington Post Reports That Amazon is Alienating Merchants...

From J R Ridinger, founder and CEO of Market America:

Amazon may be the world’s biggest online retailer, but according to this interesting article from the Huffington Post, it would seem this retail giant is starting to rub many of its merchants the wrong way! For the past year, Amazon has been increasing fees for its third party merchants – leaving many of them very frustrated.

Increased fees often mean that cost is passed on to the consumer – meaning fewer deals and ultimately fewer third party merchants that want to do business with you. At Market America and SHOP.COM, we take pride in the relationships we’ve built with our partner stores – and work hard to ensure that everyone benefits from doing business with us.

Everyone already knows SHOP.COM offers an online shopping experience that is second to none, with Cashback, state of the art search results, the personal touch of a Shop Consultant, innovative shopping tools like SHOPBuddy and eGifts, and features like AutoShip that help ensure you never run out of the products you need – but did you know we also go the extra mile for our third party merchants as well?

Our partner store team does an incredible job working with third party merchants, providing personalized account service to help make sure business runs smoothly. We don’t just see our third party merchants as people we do business with – we think of them as family, and work with them to grow both our businesses – not just collect fees.

We work with them to craft individual marketing programs to promote their products and services, and thanks to our unmatched “People Power,” we have the ability to help promote them in the marketplace and to drive word of mouth marketing to help them sell merchandise.

Better relationships with our third party merchants mean better deals that we can pass on to the consumer, and more ways to help our UnFranchise owners grow their businesses! We believe that we succeed by helping others succeed, and this principle is applied across all aspects of our business – from the consumer to our fellow merchants.

Great businesses have a knack for fostering an environment where deals are mutually beneficial to all parties involved – that’s why Market America and SHOP.COM is built to please our customers, merchants, and UnFranchise owners alike! And that’s why we are the premiere global entrepreneurial opportunity!
_________________________________________________

    There are many videos on YouTube about shop.com that you can watch for more information. Keep in mind that we still have the same features as you will see in these videos, but the site is being updated all the time so the look of the site will not be the same now. The greatest feature of all, besides the cashback of course, is shopbuddy, which you can download in just a minute and ensure that you will never miss your cashback as you shop on the web. I will be putting a post devoted to shopbuddy on this blog in the next few days.

   Not only is SHOP.COM a fabulous site for shopping, with many features to help the customer save money and get cashback, it is also the centerpiece of a business that is helping thousands to achieve financial freedom as well as time freedom. The following is a 23 minute video that gives an overview of the business and the unique compensation plan:

Christmas Shopping the Easy Way

   If you want to shop for Christmas conveniently from your home, comparison shop, get hot deals and coupon codes, and get cashback on your purchases, then check out this testimony to the ease, convenience and economy of shopping at shop.com. I have edited this letter as it was written for Market America distributors.

Dear JR and Loren,
Recently, my daughter-in-law was shopping at a large retail florist distributor and noticed an artificial, pre-lit, champagne colored Christmas tree that she thought would look great in one of the rooms in our home. Under the suggestion of my daughter-in-law, I went to the retail shop to look at the tree and found the selection to be expensive. The three-foot tree was priced at $79.99 and the four-foot tree was $229.99. 
After seeing the tree in the retail shop, I went home and did a search on my shop.com portal for "champagne Christmas trees," and to my surprise, the search produced 120 choices of trees, K-Mart offering the best price. The tree was on sale for $57, I found a $5 off coupon, received free shipping, and 2 percent Cashback.  The tree arrived 3 days later and was better quality than the tree at the retail shop, which was almost 5 times the price!

It would have never occurred to me to look at K-Mart or search kmart.com for that type of Christmas tree, but because of the shop.com search capability and comparison shopping feature, I found the tree I wanted with the best price, and was paid to shop! Such a no brainer! The portal is amazing, it's so much fun to get great deals, get paid to shop and it all makes economic sense!

Once again, thank you for your vision and for bringing all of these great features to us! Wendy & Joe Moquin