Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Free Money

One of the things that I like to do on the internet is shop.  I can get computer parts, books, movies, or whatever for a significant discount to what I get at a typical brick and mortar store.  Sure, I can't rifle through things as easily, but it's worth it for the value.  Really, I'm the ultimate Mom and Pop-hated customer.  They can't stand me because I'll step right past the rotting corpse of their store if Wal-Mart is a buck cheaper for a jar of pickles (unless Mom and Pop are incredible on the service end).  One of the added benefits of this is the referral bonus.  For a long time I just surfed straight to the sites that I was going to buy something at, but then I came across Ebates (click to explore/join).  For the extra effort of just a couple of clicks, you can get cash back for what you purchase.  It doesn't seem like it will add up, but it does very quickly.  For example, last November I got this in the mail
$242.50 for clicking through them!  That's an incredible little perk if you ask me.  I'm currently up at over $1100 in cash back from them, and while I do a lot of online purchasing (one of the aspects of running IT), I think that it's still worth it even when you're not a mega purchaser.  Instead, it's free money for slightly altering your patterns, and if that's not worth it, I don't know what is.

1 comment:

Sparklebot said...

Yeah, I've been doing ebates for several years now and I'm always amazed at how quickly 2 or 3 percent of my online purchases adds up. Yours adds up to more than mine does though.