The presence of online shopping is pretty much ubiquitous nowadays. Consumers no longer have to be present at a shop or go overseas to get their hands on products. The rise of several online shopping sites have led to some rather stiff competition among online retailers and coupon codes have been often used as a form of promotional tactics. A coupon code is basically a string of numbers or letters that customers can type into a promotional input field on their shopping cart's page to get a discount, freebie or free shipping. Coupon codes are usually not displayed on the shopping site itself; but rather made available via affiliate sites, email newsletters to subscribers, or on blogs. Through these various outlets, the online retailer aims to extend their reach to more consumers and gain a greater exposure at the same time. Some coupon codes are only valid on a certain day for special occasions in an effort to boost sales, while others are valid for a couple of weeks. Coupon codes are also sent to loyal subscribers by online retailers via email as a way of expressing gratitude for the support. So, for those of you who are frequent customers of a particular site, you may want to consider signing up for the newsletter so you won't miss out any savings by using coupon codes! Very often, online retailers will collaborate with prominent bloggers to do an advertorial or review on the site! The blogger may do an introduction on the shopping site, provide an honest review while including the coupon code at the end of the post as a form of incentive to encourage shoppers. Then there are the advertorials although if the blogger has a large following, he or she is likely not to make any bad recommendations to avoid tarring his or her reputation. Finally, there are the coupon code sites where the site owners will scour through various sources; be it other websites, blogs, forums or even newspapers to provide a list of codes for various products. The sites are usually updated on a daily basis and many shoppers do turn to these sites. The downside is that the coupon codes may be found to be inaccurate at times as the sheer numbers of coupon codes require a lot of time and effort to be checked for validity.