Unless there is something you need right away like a cooking ingerdiant, it is usually far cheaper to shop online.  Why would an online store be cheaper? 

1. Wherehouse vs. Storefront
When you go shopping for a computer at Best Buy, you have to go to a physical storefront that costs thousands of dollars a month to rent, or was purchased for millions of dollars.    The company also has to have employees in the store at all times to sell their items.  Those costs aren’t absorbed by the company.  They pass it on to the consumers in the form of higher prices.
On the internet the storefront is a webpage, and all the products are held in a warehouse where space can be better utilized and usually where land prices are much cheaper.   There are also no employees to pay to deal with customers, just to process shipping.  So at Best Buy, even if you buy nothing you’ve used their employee’s time, but on the web if you don’t buy, it costs the company nothing.

More Competition
How many stores are there in your community that sell light bulbs?  1? 2? 3!!?  Google “Buy light bulbs” with quotes, and you get 16,500 sites!  Its a simple concept of economics, more competition = lower prices.  The insane amounts of competition that is only a click away drives prices online as low as they can possibly go. 

The Downsides
These cheap prices come at a cost.  The first and most obvious problem is that you have to wait for the item to be shipped.   You can eleviate this pain by being conscious of where your items are coming from.  For example, I just bought a CD from a private vendor on Amazon.com.  The cheapest seller was from New Jersey, but by paying 37 cents more I could choose a seller in my state on the West coast, will arrive much sooner. 
Another downside is that you can’t try anything before you buy it.  This is essential for things like shoes.  You probably want to try on shoes to make sure they’re comfortable before you buy them.  So use your common sense here.

Ringtones seem to be the hottest way to express your personality to total strangers.  There are people literally making millions of dollars a month selling ringtones.  The trend has fallen off slightly, but the popularity and profitability of ringtones are sure to keep them in the public eye for many years to come.  That being said, how can you get the best deals on your ringtones?

Buy
If you’re on top of every trend and need to express your individuality, ringtones can be purchased from companies like Jamster.com
. Its important to buy ringtones from well known companies like Jamster, who I’m sure you have all seen commercials for on MTV. Some companies will sign you up for a monthly contract for $9.99, which ads up to $120! If you want to buy a sweet ringtone, make sure you read the fine print, and don’t get charged month after month for one ringtone.

Make your Own
There are still a lot of phones out there, like the Samsung t629, which accept transflash cards.  Transflash are just standard SD memory sticks that are SUPER tiny and fit into your phone.  The transflash cards are then put in to a hollow SD card that you can put right into your computer and load songs onto.  These can be purchased for around $20 for a 2GB card.  If you buy one of these cards you’ll never have to buy a ringtone!

Use the Stock Ringtones
You can always just use the stock ringtones that come on your phone.  These aren’t popular, but you can guarantee that you’ll always hear your phone as 8-bits of sound destroy the worlds most famous pieces of classical music.

Be very careful when you read FREE in an online advertising post.  The word ‘free’ has recently come under some heavy fire as to whether it is misleading in the context if ringtones.  Online advertising company Azoogle just paid a 1 million dollar fine in the state of Florida over the use of the word free in their advertising of ringtone offers.  Basically, they advertised ringtones as free, when in fact the user had to pay a fee to recieve anything free. (Which obviously isn’t free.)  Be very careful about going for free offers.