3 Tips for Earning Cashback for Online Shopping
Are you getting the most out of your online shopping? In addition to earning miles and points based on credit card spend (or not) you can also be earning cashback, miles, and points by going through a shopping portal.
There is a tendency, at least when you’re getting started, to want to earn the most on every purchase, which might lead you sign up for accounts on dozen of shopping portals and spend as long figuring out who has the best offer as you do picking out your purchase. Then if you’re like me, you might get a little overwhelmed and decide it’s not worth it at all.
Eventually I found a balance between wanting to optimize my earnings and my time and developed the following strategy to make the most of my online shopping, while minimizing the time investment.
1. Use a comparison site like Cashbackholic.com to quickly identify which site has the best offer
Frequent Miler did a great review of several options for comparing offers among the dozens of sites offering points, miles, and cashback. I used to be a huge fan of evReward.com, but have found Cashbackholic to be more comprehensive and up to date.
2. Limit yourself to 1-3 earning sites
Keep it simple. You might earn more if you sign up for 10-15 sites, but it will be hard to keep track of and hard to hit the minimum earnings in order to cash out.
I picked a few sites that tend to cover the majority of my purchases and I don’t sweat it if one or two stores aren’t listed or another site is offering slightly higher cashback.
- Chase Ultimate Rewards is my favorite points earning portal (Chase credit card required)
- For cashback, Ebates and Mr. Rebates tend to cover most of the sites I shop at frequently with some of the highest payouts. I like Fatwallet too, particularly with their deal forum, but found with all the overlap with Ebates it was easier to just pick one.
- TopCashback.com offers less common options like HelloFresh and Hyatt.
3. Develop habits so you can go on autopilot
I know if I’m booking a Hyatt stay to go through TopCashback.com to earn 3-5%.
For flowers, airline shopping portals and Chase Ultimate Rewards typically have the best mileage earning offers.
For the rest of my purchases I just pull up Cashbackholic.com and see my options for Ebates and Mr Rebates.
The important thing is to find an approach that makes earning miles and points worthwhile for you. If you love the chase, spending more time and using numerous sites is probably worth it. If you just want to make sure you’re earning something, then develop a few good habits and move on. 🙂
What tips would you add for demystifying and speeding up the online shopping process?
One interesting trick with Ultimate Rewards is that earnings rates are not always the same for personal and Ink cards. I discovered this by mistake one day when Mommy Points listed some deals. Sometimes it’s a good idea to check both, particularly for larger purchases.
That’s great to know! I had no idea