What is Ebates About and How Much Money Could You Save?

Just a little while back, my wife was nagging me to get into Ebates. On and on she went, lol. "But what is ebates about and how much money could you save?", I asked her.

Instead of only looking for ways to make money online, she was saying, why not look for ways to save money online. I thought about what she said for a minute or two and then it occurred to me that this time she might actually be onto a good thing! But only if...

My job is to look for ways to make money online from home but this is a new angle for me. Saving money is actually making money, isn't it? Especially when you were going to buy something anyway, at the very least.

So, What is Ebates About and How Much Money Could You Save?

First off the bat, though, I thought that my lovely little wifey was just wanting to do some shopping with the excuse that if we buy this then we'd save 10% off something. My usual reply when she mentions stuff like this is, "Ah, but we're not saving 10% are we?

We're actually spending some money on what we were not going to spend in the first place. To me, "Let's buy this because there's 15% off!" is not saving money. It's spending money! But then I went to their website to check it out and I thought, "oooh, ebates includes big name companies like Amazon, Walmart, Groupon and eBay.

I often use Amazon so maybe it's really worthwhile signing up for ebates so I can get some discounts on stuff I was going to buy anyway...So I signed up. At the very least it was something worth writing home to mom about.

Mom signed up too and goes crazy on the phone to me when she saves money on that "must have" item she got. Glad my Mom's happy with it. Hi Mom, leave me a comment about ebates! Tell everyone how cool you think it is!

What is Ebates?

Since it was founded in 1998, Ebates has given its members cash back when they purchase products online with big retailers like Amazon and Ebay.

They've paid out over $300 million dollars to members since they got up and running back in the early days. Millions of members now enjoy discounts for lots of stuff they were going to buy online anyway. Got your eyes on an Amazon product you want to buy?

Join ebates first and see if you can get some cashback when you buy!

Amazon, being one of the major online retailers in its own right, is worth joining Ebates for.  Even if ebates was only available for Amazon products I would still go for it because of the frequency I'm buying stuff there.

When you see the list of other outlets your jaw might drop to the floor.  There are gazillions of them.  I'm not going to write them down because that would be tedious. I will just show you a couple of screenshots of some of them.  These screenshots are taken from the ebates website.

Lots of Big Name Brands

As you can see there are loads of big names on there in the shopping arena. Not enough?  Here's another screenshot of some more big-name retailers that are hooked up with ebates.

You can see the level of discounts you get at each place. See any retailers you like on there?  I thought you might!  It's a no-brainer if you already shop online with any of those outlets.  They all have different levels of discounts as you can see.

Some have a 1% discount and some have a 40% discount. What's 40% off a $300 product?  That's $120 discount, eh?  Not bad if you were going to buy it anyways.

We're missing out on a lot of savings if we don't join ebates and get some of that cash back. 

How Will You Get Your Cash Back from Ebates?

Ebates is fully compatible with PayPal. That's the payment processor my wife and I use.

Or they will send you a check in the mail, I believe that's one every 3 months. Another payment method you might like is in gift cards.

Those three methods of payment should suit most people. It seems that my wife is a little bit more business savvy than I'd previously thought.

So, What to do next?  How do you get into ebates to save money at all these retailers?

Simply signup for a free account here and then go shopping (but only if your spouse permits you to!!!) Be sensible when you go shopping anywhere, including offline shopping.

Don't fall for that salesy stuff on things you had no interest in buying because remember, that's spending money, not saving money. Don't make your hubby or wife pissed at you for buying stuff just because there's a discount, you'll only get into a heated argument and it's not good when we argue about finances, is it?

We're living in tough economic times and those big retailers know exactly how to squeeze a few extra dollars out of us. Let's turn the tables in our favor a little bit with ebates. 🙂 Go ahead and join ebates only if you already shop with at least one of these major retailers.

Don't join just for the sake of shopping online to get a bargain. I will also be looking into other ways to save money online so keep a lookout for my future posts on the topic. Ooooh!  I almost forgot to mention that ebates has a special button you can put on your google chrome browser.

Here's a quick screenshot of the details of what it does for you, it makes life simpler because you won't have to log into ebates before you go shopping online. It does lots of the work for you.

If making money online is more exciting for you than saving money you can go here to read more posts on that topic.

I hope you love ebates as much as my wife and I now do. Remember folks, leave comments and questions below in the special comments box and I'll reply to each and every one.

I'll catch you next time, take care!

I'm Jim, read more about me here.