Even the most frugal of us in the financial world still venture out from time to time to purchase things on the internet. The good news? There’s a pretty sweet savings hack that I want to share with you that can help you save extra money when you do.
There’s a website called ebates.com that is super simple to use. It can help you get cash back for things that you are already planning to purchase. It’s been incredibly beneficial for me, and I don’t even shop online often.
Basically, ebates is an affiliate advertiser and gets a kickback from certain websites when you make a purchase. Then, using the money they made, they give you a little bit back. If you’re planning on using the website to make a purchase anyway, you might as well start collecting your own cash back. Everyone wins. Many popular websites participate including, Priceline, Hotels.com, Amazon, Ebay, Groupon, Walmart, Target, etc.
By clicking the link below, you’ll get a special welcome offer of $10 back on your first $25 dollar purchase that you make through the site.
It’s a pretty simple process. All you do to sign up is click on the link above and enter in your information. Once you have an account, you can shop through the ebates portal. Additionally, you can enable a plugin to your web browser that will activate ebates when you visit participating sites.
If you download the internet plug in, it will inform you when you visit any participating site that you can get x % cash back during that shopping “visit.” You make a purchase, and you get rebate money in your ebates account. The plug-in looks like this:
Every three months you’ll get a check mailed to directly to you from ebates with the total money that you’ve earned during that time period.
I’ve been using ebates for about a month now, and I’ve already saved over $50, just by purchasing things I was already going to purchase anyway.
Raise.com
Another great way to save some money online is through a website called Raise.com. Raise is a gift card marketplace where you can buy or sell gift cards and e-vouchers.
Everyone knows what it’s like to receive a gift card to a place you’ll never go to. With Raise, you can sell that gift card at a small discount and get cash for it. However, on the flip side you can also buy other people’s gift cards and save a few bucks in the process.
Follow the link below to sign up for Raise and start saving money things you already buy!
Click Here to get started with Raise
Use Both For a Great Savings Hack
Using Ebates or Raise individually is a great money saving tool, but the real money saving power comes when you combine them for an awesome money saving hack. I’ll give you an example.
Recently, I needed to book a hotel room for a trip. I went to raise.com to look for a gift card, and ebates was offering 1% cash back. That’s obviously not anything to celebrate over, but it was still something. I then proceeded to buy a gift card for hotels.com from raise, which was selling gift cards at a 7% discount.
Then, I went to hotels.com and ebates was offering 4% cash back for any hotels.com purchase. I proceeded to book a room using the gift card I had just purchased. By combining the benefits of Raise.com and ebates.com, I saved money via the gift card and I also received cash back from the purchases.
It ended up working out like this:
I bought a $200 gift card from Raise for 7% off, paying $186.00. I received 1% cash back for that purchase, which put $1.86 in my ebates account. Then, I purchased my hotel room on hotels.com with the ebates portal activated and received 4% cash back, which put an additional $8.00 in my account. So ultimately, I saved $14.00 from the gift card purchase and will receive almost $10.00 back in rebates from ebates, totaling $24 dollars back on a $200 purchase. That’s 12% back on my purchase just for making a few extra clicks.
In the grand scheme of things, I realize that $24 is not that much, but if you think about it that was just on one single purchase. If you use this practice wisely you can easily save hundreds of dollars over the year for things that you already need to purchase.
I hope that “savings hack” will help you put a little bit of money back in your pocket! As you know, every little bit counts!
What about you? Do you have any online savings hacks that you’ve discovered? Let us know in the comments.