5 Ways to Use Temptalia to Save Money on Makeup Products

- November 20, 2018

While I cover thousands of products each year in the form of reviews, there are also several resources available to everyone to ensure that every purchase is a good purchase for your personal needs. My goal is to help you make better purchasing decisions, whether that’s indulging on a luxury product, getting a cheaper and better alternative, avoiding buying that 18th red lipstick you know you already have, or just cutting through some of the hype behind a product. Here are five ways to use what Temptalia offers to save money on makeup products, resist temptation of buying a new beauty product, and getting the most out of the beauty products you own.

Create Your Vanity & Keep Track of Your Beauty Products

When you become a registered member, you’ll unlock access to your Vanity, which is area you can add and keep track of all of the products you own. The Vanity is a really cool feature that goes beyond just creating a digital list of products you have. You’ll get a visual representation of the products you have with your own “Swatch Gallery” (of any products that we have photos/swatches for). You’ll be able to filter your vanity to just see what eyeshadows you own or what MAC products you have.

For every product you own, you can also track things like when you purchased or opened it, whether you’d repurchase, how many you have or how much you’ve used, along with personal notes (that are just for you!), like “breaks me out” or “summer color.”

View Dupes You Already Own

Here’s where things get really cool and show you just how powerful it can be to take some time to add the products you own into your Vanity… You can view dupes found IN your vanity; these are dupes you already own, which can be a great way to start decluttering and help determine why you use one over another. Oh, oh, and if those aren’t enough dupes for your satisfaction? Try going to the end of the page and clicking “possible dupes,” which will give you even more insight into potentially similar shades you have!

MyTemptalia | Vanity
See products that you have that are dupes of each other

View Dupes You Already Own for Products You Want

You can also view dupes between your Vanity and your Wishlist, effectively ensuring that if you’ve got your eye on something, it isn’t already present in your stash (and if it’s similar, you’ll know that in advance and can make a decision from there).

You don’t have to add something to your Wishlist to take advantage of seeing what dupes you already have of a product, though, because at any time, you can check whether you have dupes of a product by clicking “limit results to items in my vanity” when you’re on The Dupe List or clicking “check vanity for dupes” when you’re on any product’s Dupe List!

The Dupe List
Check your vanity for dupes when browsing any product’s dupes!

Note: The vanity is going to be most useful and most meaningful for those who do tend to purchase more products that I’ve reviewed (past and present) than products that aren’t reviewed at all — but we have a system built so you can add products as you go to help streamline that process so you can still track products that aren’t in the database as well!

The Dupe List

As one of the core features on Temptalia, The Dupe List remains one of the most popular parts of the site. There are over 230,000 dupes in the database with more being added almost every single day. The way we built this feature was to help you find a dupe for any reason, whether that’s finding a more affordable option, one that’s currently available, one by another brand, or one that’s more accessible in your area (or whatever reason you may have!).

Check for Dupes Before You Buy

There are certain shades we all gravitate toward, and while some redundancy might be workable, sometimes it can get out of hand to the point where it feels overwhelming. Depending on your personal needs, two overlapping shades may be disastrous and for others, more then ten similar shades is the breaking point. It’s a good rule of thumb, though, to check out the dupes listed for a particular product you’re considering. Pro tip: limit results to items in your vanity / check your vanity for dupes to compare against what you own.

The Dupe List
Limit your search results to show only dupes you own!

Compare Any Two Palettes Before You Buy

Worried that there may be too much overlap between two palettes? You can pull up a comparison on-the-fly of any two palettes that we have swatched. Head over to The Dupe List and Compare Any Two Palettes. We’ll show you any actual dupes (that are officially on The Dupe List) along with most similar shades (e.g. two shades of browns that are listed within similar depth, undertone, shimmer level) as well.

Compare Any Two Shades

If you’ve ever asked me how A and B shades compare, I’ve most likely answered but also directed you to check out our Compare Any Two feature, which allows you to pull up swatches of any two products on-the-fly. You can easily compare swatches of two shades this way, and if it looks like a dupe I missed, you can even add it to the Dupe List!

You’re welcome!