Cashback Sites

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Last Updated: Thursday, 23 May 2024 14:55
Published: Saturday, 07 August 2021 21:51
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cashback sites

Now comes the best kept secret, cashback sites. Whenever you shop online and buy something from an online store, the merchants pay out commission to whoever referred you to that site. So, if you used google search to find an item, and used the link from google search engine to go to that merchant's website, and bought $100 worth of item, than that merchant pays google anywhere from 1% to 20% of the sale to google as their commission. How does the merchant know about who referred you? Well, there is referrer id or something like that when you click on the link (in the url of the merchant), that says that this link came from google. Of course if you go on your own, then the merchant doesn't share the commission with anyone, nor do you get any reduction in price. So, merchant wins big in this case !!

It would have been nice if google or yahoo or some of these search engines shared some of the earned commission with you. Unfortunately they don't. Fortunately, there are other websites that share their commission with you. You can visit these websites whenever you shop online, and click on the merchant's websites from these cashback websites. These cashback websites end up giving 50% or more of their commission to the customer, which adds up over time.

These websites give you cash back anyhwhere from 1% to 20% of the purchase price. The only requirement is that you access the online merchant website through the link posted on these cashback (CB) websites, your cart must be empty at time of purchase and purchase should be completed within an hour or so. cashbackholic lists all the cashback websites for a given merchant, so you can use this website to decide which one is giving you the maximum cashback.

Two of the popular and reliable CB websites are Ebates and topcashback . These websites explicitly state how much CB you’ll be getting, along with the exclusions that apply, so don’t use these without reading the fine print for exclusions. Many other websites do not list all their exclusions, but won’t pay you later because it was an excluded category as per their internal rules. Ebates and topcashback are very explicit in listing all their excluding, so if they haven’t excluded a category for cashback, means you will get cashback for it. I personally never had any issues.One other thing to note is that CB appears on your portal withn 24 hours for both of these websites, so check the portal within 24 hous to make you got the CB. If you don't see the CB, then the purchase didn't track correctly (happens in < 5% of the orders). In that case, cancel the order (if the order hasn't shipped), and place the order again. Some readers claim that if the order is very large (payout being > $50), then there's a risk with CB portals not giving you CB. I never had that with either ebates or TCB.

CAUTION: Some travel websites change their prices when going thru a cashback portal, so definitely check prices of merchants both with and without going thru cashback portal.

Some more individual details about the CB sites:

  • Rakuten (www.rakuten.com): Previously this website was called ebates. Rakuten bought ebates, and became a cashback website. If you sign up with them, they give you a bonus. Better yet, if you were referred by someone they give both of you a signup bonus. They offer up to $40 in signup bonus to each of you, atleast couple of times a year. I would suggest you wait for that signup bonus to come, and then sign up using a referrer. If you don't find any, I can refer you, and collect my $40 sign up bonus. You'll also get $40 signup bonus. But before any of us can get paid, you will need to spend at least $40 or so in purchases. Read the fine print.

 

  • TopCashback (www.topcashback.com): This is again one of the very reliable cashback site. There's also a signup bonus of $25 (varies from time to time, and depnding on ongoing promotions)if you use a referrer. Both you and your referrer get this bonus ($50 total in bonus amongst 2 of you). If you don't use a referrer, then you get $10 or $15 (their usual promotions). So, better to use a referral. But before anyone can get paid, you will need to have at least $10 in cashback rewards (NOT in purchases). You will most likely need to spend about $100-$200 in purchases before you or I can see that sign on bonus. Read the fine print.
    • Referrals:
      1. My referral link is: https://www.topcashback.com/ref/member31043961639
      2. Use above link to open account if you don't find any refrrer on your own who can pay you more money. I'll pay you any referral bonus that I get over $20. So, if I get $30 in bonus, I'll pay you $10. If I get $20 in referral bonus, I pay you nothing.
    • UPDATES for Signup promo:
      1. 2024 (May): Best offer of $50 is back. Only the referrer gets $50, referred person gets nothing. The person referred needs to earn $10 in cashback before the referrer gets paid $50.
        1. Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-refer-friend-get-50-new-member-gets-0/
      2. 2024 (Mar): $35 bonus directly to the person opening the account. No referral needed. Just use the link below by DoC.
      3. 2022 (June): $30  bonus for referrer and $5 bonus for person referred. Inferior as referred people can get $10 sign up bonus on their own.
      4. 2021 (Dec): $25  bonus for referrer and $20 bonus for person referred. Pretty close to the best offer of $50 combined being offered in the past
    • Bonus offers: TCB offers top up bonuses at least once a month. During Thanksgiving/Christmas, it's almost every week. See the section below on TCB offers for more details. You will see $2.50 pop up bonus almost every month on making a purchase of $10 or more (As of 2023, it's usually $2.50 bonus on $15+ purchase). During Thanksgiving/Christmas, they offer up to $4 on $15+ purchase. Instead of making a regular purchase, you can buy TCB Giftcards for 100's of stores (including walmart, ebay, etc) to meet the $15 requirement. You get some cashback, as well as the bonus. This way you don't have to worry about what to buy whenever these offers come up.
    • Some of the best sites for CB on TCB are as shown below (which usually allow GC to be used, and still pay cashback)
      1. www.walgreens.com: Buy anything from Walgreens and you get cashback of 6% on almost everything. They have good offers going on where you get a lot of items for free after WCR, so CB is extra free money.

      2.  www.groupon.com: Again, you get a hefty 10% CB here for any local deals. Usually, you can buy any local restaurant deal or local hair cut, oil change etc. If you can't find anything, buy $25 Krispy Kreme GC which go for $20, on top of 10% CB. You can pay with Groupon Bucks and still get CB.

      3.  www.homedepot.com: Buy anything from here as they give about 10% CB on a lot of stuff (furniture, decor, etc). They have very good return policy on everything (30 days for almost anything), so you are not stuck like other furniture stores.

      4. www.lowes.com: lowes also has 1% or more cb on almost everything. However, I've seen some orders where no cashback was allotted, even though the item was eligible for cashback. So, Lowes is little risky on how the cb is tracked.

      5.  www.ebay.com: Here also, you get CB on almost everything (except regular cash like items as bullions, coins, GC, etc). I've always gotten every CB from ebay. ebay is good site for buying cheap items, mostly electronic parts for projects or toys for kids. Just keep things in your cart on ebay, until you get this offer. Then you go ahead ad buy. ebay is your safest bet, as TCB gives cashback on redemption of ebay GC too.

  •  Slickdeals (www.slickdeals.net): This is primarily a deal website, but have gotten into cashback lately. It doesn't have a good tracking mechanism, and you will need to download their extension and install it, which is not something that I would advocate. However, from time to time they do have good cashback for some of the merchants. Particularly, for Macy's they sometimes have $10 cashback on $25+ purchase, which is pretty awesome (40% max cashback). Their rewards portal to sign up is: https://loyalty.slickdeals.net. NOTE: this rewards account is separate from their slickdeals account, though they both have the same login and password. Here you will see details of any CB earned. As I said, tracking is not good as of 2021, so email them if you don't see your CB in 10-15 days. They have offered $5 Target GC in past for installing their extension, not sure what their current offer is (probably none).

 

  • Swagbucks/Mypoints (www.swagbucks.com, www.mypoints.com): The parent company of swagbucks is Prodege LLC, which is a marketing and consumer insight company. swagbucks (SB), mypoints (MP), upromise, etc are multiple cashback websites owned by Prodege. SB, MP are primarily websites for making money by offering your time to do activities, like watching ads, doing surveys, buying promotional items, etc. They also have cashback when you buy items from 3rd party websites linked on their portal. Both SB and MP are almost same, except that SB is the biggest brand and most reliable. Sometimes, MP will have a better offer than SB, so in those case, you can use MP too. When I say SB below, the info applies to both of these sites. I've recently started using them for cashback whenever their cashback rate is higher than other CB sites mentioned above. Their cashback is reliable (As long as under activity->visited, you see a "pending" icon, you'll get cashback).  I use them occasionally when they have extra reward like $5 in swagbucks on making a purchase, or when I'm planning to use a gift card for a purchase (TCB and ebates never pay out cashback anymore on paying with Giftcards, while swagbucks still does as of Oct 2023. I've paid using GC on HomeDepot and Lowes and got CB all the time. Not sure how long that will last). I prefer to use other CB sits over SB, as SB doesn't have any customer service or it takes for ever if you have to resolve anything. I primarily use them for opening bank accounts, brokerage accounts, or buying things that are a money maker. They pay you in their own currency called "swagbucks". That can be redeemed for 1 cent per swagbuck. Or you redeem it for 10% more once a month for no more than $25. So, every month, you can get a $25 virtual Visa gift card for $22.50. Swagbucks is totally legitimate website, and I've gotten decent cash from them.
    •  If you open an account by using my referral link below, we both get $3 in free money (i.e 300 SB), when you earn at least 300 SB in first 30 days. So, use the link below to open an account only when you have an offer going on that you are interested in. Referral link: https://www.swagbucks.com/p/register?rb=20277812
    • One risk with swagbucks/mypoints is that they may deactivate or block your account at any time for no reason, and there's no way you can get it unblocked. I haven't found a way to contact them once your account is blocked. You may use the link that shows on "contact". It sends them an email, but you can't put your own comments, and you will probably never hear back from them. So, all your money in swagbucks/mypoints is gone. So, it may be safe to just cash out everything at any point in time, and not go for extra 10% in rewards. You may lose all of it in case your account gets blocked. SB/MP may block you for any reason as uploading receipts, doing surveys, cashing out GC, email addr/name not matching with what you have with 3rd party merchant when shopping thru them, contacting customer service for missing payout, etc. There are 1000's of complaints about Prodege LLC, and most of them are account getting abruptly shutdown, just before the big cashout. They give big bucks, but also take it all way in a second. All said, SB/MP are both risky, and you should always take out all your money as soon as they are paid (which is usually 31-45 days). I've gotten burnt with both the websites, and I don't use them anymore (my accounts got blocked and i wasted a lot of time with no result).

There are many other CB sites besides these, but I wouldn't trust them. I've gotten burnt in past, where they paid out nothing, and there's nothing you can do. So, my suggestion is to go with these 3 listed above (TCB, SD, Raketen), even if they offer you a lower CB. At least you will get something. SD is risky too, as there's no way for you to track visits. I never had any issue with TCB or Rakuten.

 

 

2023:

 

 

 

Topcashback: Multiple cash back offers throughout the year

There are multiple offers from Topcashback thru out the year. Most common one is $2.50 or $10+ $15+ purchase (as of 2023, it's on $15+). Usually once a month. They usually have one on Fridays, lasting till Sunday. Sometimes they have higher cashback offers,which are only for a day. Details here:

Offer (gets updated with latest offers):

Buy TCB GC (qualifies for bonus): https://www.topcashback.com/topcashback-gift-cards/ (serach for Topcashback Giftcard) to look for this merchant. TCB is the merchant itself for these GC. Buy Walmart which is as good as cash (Since you can use walmart GC to buy silver, gold, etc).

Deals:

  • 02/14/24 => $2.50 on $15+ purchase. Valid 1 day only
  • 01/30/24 => $2.50 on $15+ purchase. Valid 1 day only
  • 01/18/24 => $2.50 on $15+ purchase. Valid 1 day only
  • 12/05/23 => $2.50 on $10+ purchase. Valid for 2 days => expires 12/06/23
  • 11/10/23 => $2.50 on $15+ purchase. Valid one day only
  • 11/03/23 => $4 on $15+ purchase. Valid one day only
  • 01/27/23 => $2.50 on $10+ purchase. Valid 01/27/23 - 01/29/23

 

 

 

2022:

 

 

 

06/14/2022: Topcashback $2.50 cashback on $10+ purchase => expires 06/17/2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-get-3-bonus-when-you-spend-10-today-only/

 

 

01/25/2022: Topcashback $2.50 cashback on $10+ purchase => expires 01/27/2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-get-3-bonus-when-you-spend-10-today-only/

 

 

2021:

 

 

 

11/16/2021: Slickdeals $10 cashback on $25+ Macy's online purchase => expires 11/16/2021

https://slickdeals.net/f/15405685-slickdeals-cashback-at-macy-s-pc-req-d-10-cashback-on-25-orders-free-s-h-on-25-orders-or-free-store-pickup-on-qualifying-items

You get $10 in slickdeals rewards on $25+ purchase. You need to install slickdeals extension though. Limit is 3 purchases per account, need to make separate purchases to get $10 on each order.

 

 

10/15/2021: Topcashback mystery offer every Friday until Thanksgiving - $2.50 cb on $10+ purchase => expires 11/29/2021

UPDATE 11/23/2021: Topcashback has $5 CB on $10+ purchase for 11/23-11/24. This is on top of Friday offers that have been for $2.50-$3.50 on $10+ purchase.

If you are planning to make any purchase, it's best to wait until Friday of that week. TCB is iffering mystery offer (usually $2 to $4) on $10+ purchase to any website which gives you cashback for that item. You have to activate the offer, by finding that offer. If you don't activate the offer prior to your purchase, you don't get the extra bonus CB. Walmart and Amazon rarely have cashback on anything of use, so don't use these sites to buy anything. Instead use below sites which don't have any exclusion on any items purchased from that site (except for few items listed specifically on the site, also don't pay with GC as some the sites exclude items bought with GC).

Few links with current offers:

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-spend-10-get-4-bonus-cash-back-friday-only-11-5/

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-spend-10-get-4-bonus-cash-back-friday-only-10-29/

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topcashback-get-3-bonus-when-you-spend-10-today-only/

 

Few sample sites to use, which give you guaranteed CB

www.walgreens.com:

www.groupon.com:

www.homedepot.com: You can always buy something for in store pickup. I usually buy salt pallets for water softener.

www.lowes.com: This gives the lowest cashback, but may have something that you can do in store pickup

www.ebay.com: Use it to buy cheap items shipped from china