Saving money with online cashback programs

It's been well known that credit cards will offer cash back each time you make purchase with the credit cards. These benefits are offered by credit card companies, and typically range from 1% to 5%, or even better for special cases.

Do you know that on top of that, you can earn more cash back each time you do online shopping? The cash back reward may range from 1% to 8% of the purchase prices, or even more from time to time. In addition, you can even get cash back even you are not using credit card. For example, you can still earn 1% to 5% or even more cash back even you are using gift cards or store credits which can be redeemed for online purchases.

There are many competing cash back programs on the market. Some of these programs may offer higher rates of cash back, some cover more merchants, some have easier cash back payment, some offer more generous referral bonus.

The best approach is to sign up all available programs and compare all available cash back rates, and decide which program to use.

(1) Topcashback
Recently, I was introduced to topcashback.com. In my opinion, this program offers a relatively wider online merchant coverage with decent sign up bonus and decent cash back rates compared to other programs. I typically use this program to do online shopping including eBay, Walmart, NewEggs, HomeDepot and so on.
Right now topcashback is offering a referral program for $10.00 if you sign up using this link http://www.topcashback.com/ref/hongd. That means a balance of $20.16 will be deposited to your topcashback account if you follow the link. You do need to earn enough cash back through topcashback.com (I believe it is $20) and wait for the purchase to be confirmed and finalized in order to get paid.  If you sign up through the link above, log on to your account at topcashback.com, search for homedepot, and click the red cash back button, and make a big item purchase say $400, the  the 5% cash back rate will make you eligible for a total of $40.16, enough to pay for the retail tax.

(2) Fatwallet
Fatwallet.com is a very successful cashback program. Most famous merchants participate in this cashback reward program, and the reward rate is similar to topcash back, ranging from 1% to 10% range. This program pays out the rewards through PayPal account, and it doesn't set a minimum for pay out. This program also offers first time user sign up bonus. Click on the fatwallet logo bellow to receive $5 sign up bonus. The use of the program is pretty simple, simply sign up and create an account at fatwallet.com. Each time you do online shopping, log on to fatwallet.com first, then search for the merchant in fatwallet, then click the button link provided by fatwallet for the merchant, then make the purchase. The purchase amount will be recorded by fatwallet, and cash back reward will be calculated based on the rate on that day, and will show up and will be payable after a few or more days. If the purchase amount is not recorded, contact the customer service via email, the problem should be easily resolved.


(2) EBates
Ebates.com is pretty similar to Fatwallet. It offers $10 sign up bonus. The link to sign up is
http://mail.ebates.com/T/v200000157bab20a8c942d86f4bbe5c7c0/48ca4deff5db4f680000021ef3a0bcc9.