How would you like to get up to 37.5% of your cash back when you make an online purchase?
What if I told you that it didn’t involve opening a new credit card, getting charged an annual fee, or incurring any extra cost whatsoever?
Sounds too good to be true you say?
Let me introduce you to a wonderful new site I started using recently called Ebates.
I have to thank Amazon Retail Arbitrage guru Jordan Malik for introducing me to this tool. The basic concept of the site is that you login to Ebates and it’s a shopping portal for over 1,800 stores.
Cashback rewards range from 1% to as high as 37.5% percent at the time of this publication.
I’ve only used the site for a couple transactions and was pleasantly surprised when I logged in to see that I was already accumulating cash back rewards.
Using the portal is very easy.
Suppose we were going to buy ourselves a nice pair of slacks at JCPenney (Macy’s is there, but we’re being frugal).
Simply search for the store in the search bar.
Now that you found the store, simply click the orange colored “Shop Now” button and voila…
You shop as normal on the JCPenney website and checkout in the same manner you would have if you went directly to JCPenney.
After about a week, your account gets credited for 6.0% of what you spent during your online shopping trip.
In your “Account Settings” you can choose payment via a snail mail check or PayPal. Ebates pays their cashback rewards on a quarterly basis.
“Surely as a financial education blogger you’re not advocating frivolous shopping trips James?!?”
Of course not.
However, let me point out the obvious by saying even the most frugal among us spend money somewhere. If you’re like the majority of people, you’re likely spending more of it online.
Why leave cash on the table? During Christmas time alone, this could be a game changer for some of you.
The title of this article is “Making Money with Ebates”, so let me explain how I’m doing that.
Earlier I mentioned Jordan Malik and “retail arbitrage”. For those of you not familiar with the term, it simply means buying retail goods at a low price and selling them at a higher price.
I do arbitrage as a component of my part-time Amazon sales business. When certain goods go on clearance, I fill my cart (preferably a digital one from my living room) knowing that I’ll profit handsomely on Amazon (and sometimes eBay).
With 1,800+ stores, I’m finding that Ebates is a great tool for me to increase my margins. The money I’m spending through Ebates is essentially a business expense that I would be incurring anyways, so now I just happen to be getting some cash back three months down the road.
This is the same concept as using cashback or rewards credit cards, but the difference here is that it really costs you nothing.
If you do have a credit card that gives you some sort of cashback option, you can use that through Ebates as well and get even more money back.
While I’m using this tool for my arbitrage efforts, you can just as easily use it for whatever common business expenditures that you might have (ink, equipment, supplies, etc.). You simply have to remember to use the platform.
If you’re forgetful like me, then do what I did: set it as your homepage.
If you have any questions on how to use the platform, simply leave a message in the comment section below.
If you have a good idea on how you could apply this site to your business, let us hear that too!
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Thanks for your readership!
Donna says
You always have such great advise. I just signed up, it was so easy !
Thank you
James says
Glad you enjoyed it 🙂