Money Mondays: Ebates

Welcome to $Money Mondays$, a section that I am dedicating to cool online deals, websites, and general personal financial tips and knowledge. Up this week is Ebates.com.

If you never heard of it, Ebates is a pretty cool website for the online shopper. Once you're logged into your account (which takes about 2 or 3 minutes to set up), all you do is click on links to shop to go to the store's website and you will get a percentage back of whatever you buy on that site. Easy, no? The amount you get back varies by store from anywhere from 1% all the way up to 16%, but the average is usually around 5%. The website has a pretty huge range of stores, so it's definitely worth browsing to check if the store you were intending to buy from is listed.   

Some of my favorites (or at least frequently used) are: Victoria's Secret (2%), Snapfish (7.5%), Overstock (1%-5%) and 1-800-FLOWERS (5%).

While online shopping is definitely not the best way to save money and get financially fit, the way I figure it, if you're going to be shopping anyways, why not get some cash back for it? It's kind of like the equivalent of having a cash back rewards credit card without having to sign up for the credit card.

One thing to note, Ebates mails out its checks quarterly and only once you've reached $20 or more. So don't expect to get your rewards too frequently.  If you're an infrequent online shopper, it may be half a year before you get a check.

I can, however, vouch that it works, as I got a check for $21.84 a few weeks ago in the mail.

Fun bonus, if you're signing up for the first time, you can pick a $10 gift card to get in the mail (when you get your first check, but the $10 counts towards your $20 minimum)

There's a link below for anyone interested in checking it out:
http://www.ebates.com/

And a random sample of its stores so you can get an idea of what they offer/how much you get back:
Home Depot (3%) Barnes & Noble (4%) Nike (6%) Ann Taylor (3%) Target (3%) Best Buy (1%) Disney Store (5%) David's Bridal (3%) Benefit Cosmetics (3%) PetCo (6%) FTD (10%) etc., etc., etc....