The point of this article to help consumers find the best deal, and keep themselves from being ripped off. Enjoy.

Are You Ready to Step Up Your Game?

Although many people today do use supplements to help them in achieving their ultimate goals, there are a few important things to remember. Supplements are only meant to enhance and already well designed diet/fitness plan. If you aren’t done mastering your diet/fitness plan, you will probably won’t see the results that a lot of people report from supplements. If you have your plans nailed and are ready to step up your game then enjoy this guide, which will hopefully save you some money!

What to Look For

You should already know what category of supplement you are looking for (think creatine, protein, etc.) the next step is to know what to look for from companies. Remember one of the most important things you can do when picking a specific brand of product is research, research, research.

One more time, research, it will be the best way to filter out company advertising from actual results. That being said, make sure you are reading from a credible source, you can get tons of research done here. I have used the forums over at bodybuilding.com for a long time, there are logs, and all sorts of other information on results from supplements with some good background.

The sites you want to look for should have cheap shipping, price matching, or super low product prices. Don’t forget to make note of what each sites product price, and shipping are. The research aspect also helps to find a trustworthy site, do some research on a potential site.

What to Avoid

You really need to avoid supplement retail stores. I don’t have anything against the stores, or the people that work there, but the prices in stores are simply outrageous. If you have always bought supplements from a store like this then the savings you will see by following the above method will be huge. Another great reason to avoid the retail stores is the fact that there are sales people in the store, yes sales people, meaning they want you to buy things, and they may tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to buy something. I have seen people give information that they may have thought was true about a product, but in actuality was completely false. This kind of misdirection and over pricing will not help you get great results and save money on your supplements. If you want to talk to sales people then stop in and learn what you can from them but try to order things online, it is almost always cheaper.

How to get the Best Deal

When you have narrowed down your category and brand it is time to start shopping. You can google, or even froogle (http://froogle.com) for cheap brands, but you have to pay close attention to the actual price of the items, and the shipping. Many sites will lure you in super low prices and huge shipping charges that pretty much eat up your savings.

A common practice I have used which has helped me on my savings journey is the following; I search and search for the absolute lowest product cost, I then go to a popular supplement website that price matches (again a simple search will show you which I mean) they price match by 5% so you pick the same item and paste the URL, and the price they have the product for. Generally this will slow your order by a very small amount of time and can save you money. Now you need to check your price matchers shipping against your super low price websites shipping. Who is cheaper? It generally depends on the product however, you can check other sites and see how much money you just saved.

Finding the best deal is generally a somewhat time consuming practice however, the money you save may well be worth the extra time and research.

Best Places to Shop

Here is a small list of some of my favorite sites for supplements:

• Supplement Warehouse - this would be your price matching site, they are very fast and always have accepted my price matches
• BodyBuilding.com - a great site to price match, usually they have very cheap shipping, and very fast shipping
• Supplements101 - usually have some low prices that may not need to be price matched, generally free shipping

Beginner Supplements

Some good beginner categories are as follows:

• Protein – you should always use protein when building mass, it helps speed recovery
• Creatine – a great, inexpensive way to increase strength and endurance
• Vitamins – I hate retail stores, but I love GNC’s Mega Men Sport
• Glutamine – another supplement to increase recovery

More advanced categories will be added in later articles.

Final Concerns

Some concerns that a lot of people have with shopping online is the thought of identity theft, make sure you are using sites that have secured payment options. Most websites show you who has checked their site and approved it, this is a great way to find legit sites.

If you still don’t feel comfortable purchasing things online, you can always buy an American Express, Visa, MasterCard gift card to use online, since when it is empty you can toss it.

I hope this article helps everyone in the supplement market save some money and get ripped!

Related posts:

1. General Supplement Rules