Top Cashback Sites

Whether you’re shopping or signing up to insurance & banking products, there’s a way to make serious money, up to £1,000 a year, using internet cashback websites. Simply find the best using the unique Cashback-Sites Maximiser and with some retailers you could be paid up to £100.

Better still, it’s possible to get cashback without even needing to spend; those who are dedicated can make £100s a year.

How do cashback sites work?

Set up a free account (don’t use any that require payment) with cashback sites such as Topcashback*, Quidco* or Cashbackkings*, log-in and then click on the product you’re interested in. When you make a transaction such as buying something or signing up to a new credit or insurance policy, it’s recorded and you’re paid cash for doing so.

Why do they pay out?

Cashback sites take advantage of the way commercial payments from one website to another work. They simply list product providers and retailers, and when you click through to these websites, they get paid for ‘providing leads’; in a similar, but not identical way to how most web-adverts usually work.

Yet with a cashback site, when you’re logged in, the revenue raised from your click is attributed to you so the site can pay you some or all of the money it receives.

The technology’s rather simple: ready-made paying links are available from ‘links warehouses’ such as Trade Doubler or Affiliate Network, which primarily allow normal website owners to pick the adverts they put on their sites. These do all the liaison with the product providers; though the big cashback sites also have their own direct relationships, so they can offer a wider range of providers or earn more.

Cashback on the high street

It’s very likely that the next stage in cashback sites' development is cashback when you shop on the high-street. One cashback site, Greasy Palm* is already doing this. Here you register your debit or credit card and when it's used in store that generates cashback; the list of retailers is currently limited with only a few big names such as Superdrug, Halfords and JJB Sports. Yet this is likely to grow.

Use a cashback credit card too

To further increase your gain, you can earn up to 5% on top every time you spend by using a cashback credit card, although always ensure you pay it off in full so you’re not charged interest.

There’s no conflict between cashback sites and cashback cards, as when you spend money, whomever it’s spent with, the cashback credit card gives you some of it back. For full details read the Best Cashback Cards article.

Cashback’s great, but only with the right deal

It’s easy to be seduced by £50 cashback for signing up to an insurance provider or credit card, or an extra 5% discount when shopping. Yet don’t let the tail wag the dog e.g.

• Deirdre Deal wants a telly. A cashback site brings up Asteroid Electricals, offering 5% cashback; meaning a £20 discount off a £399 TV. Yet two minutes using a shopbot would’ve found her the same TV on sale at £299.

• Borris Bargain wants car insurance. Borris Bargain spots the Suffolk Mutual’s £100 cashback offer, so grabs its £540 policy. Yet using car insurance comparison websites he’d have found Hippo Insurance at £370, and then could’ve returned to the cashback site and got a further £25 off.

Plus, just as importantly, you need to understand that these deals don't work like cashback from a retailer.

Never count the cash as yours until it’s in your bank account; things can & do go wrong.

The reason for this is simple. The cashback sites can only pay you if they get the money from the retailers or product providers, but disputes in this area are common, so sometimes they're not paid. Even if they are there can be problems with tracking. Thankfully, most times, it's fine, but it's why cashback should be seen as a useful added extra not a core.

How to make £1,000s & get the best products

A few MoneySavers have reported being over £1,000 a year better off just from using cashback sites and they’re using the right products.

Yet it’s using them in isolation I worry about; especially with financial products like credit cards and bank accounts, where if you’re trapped into the wrong product it costs you much more over the long run. So follow these four simple steps.

• Step 1: Ensure you've found the right product
  
  Read the detailed articles or look in the Forum for things including Best Balance Transfers, Online Shopping Cost Cutting, Best Bank Account, Cheapest Car Insurance, Cheapest Home Insurance, Best Cashback Cards

• Step 2: See if cashback’s available.
  
  Then nip to a cashback site(s) to see if you can go through it, and get the top product and cashback. If you can ... hoopla! It’s a double whammy. Yet never count the cashback as your money until it's in your bank account; many things can go wrong, either with the cashback site itself or if the advertiser refuses to pay it.

• Step 3: Clear your cookies.
  
  If you've clicked through to several different sites that collect cookies, which will often include the product site itself, through a comparison site, this site, or another cashback site, it may not track unless you clear your computer's cookies first. Further information on deleting or controlling cookies is available at AboutCookies.
  
  
• Step 4: Can you finesse the deal with better cashback?
  
  For some things a big cashback pay-out may make another product cheaper (this is often true with home insurance). Yet if you’re not sure, err on the safety of getting the right product, rather than the biggest cashback.

The Top Cashback Sites

To find the top payers, I put 30 plus cashback sites through their paces for a range of goods. Plus the Cashback Sites-Maximiser allows you to compare which pays most for individual retailers.

Overall winner: Topcashback

TopCashBack* is one of a number of sites paying out 100% of the cashback it receives. It’s top because most of the other 100% payers keep the first £5 you earn a year; it doesn’t.

This, of course, raises the ‘how does it make any money?’ question. My assumption is it works in two ways; firstly because it’s likely to receive bonus payouts, which can’t be assigned to any individuals, when it hits sales target amounts of specific products. Secondly it's building a big, well visited, reputable website and that in itself accrues value.

Yet just because it pays 100% doesn’t mean it always wins. Others may beat it because they include different suppliers or have negotiated themselves larger commissions.

The other top payers

It’s a close run thing between two other 100% payers. Quidco keeps the first £5 you earn each year, Cashbackkings doesn't. Two are sub-brands of long established cashback players, deliberately set up to react to the newer 100% payout model.

• Cashbackkings. Reliable cashback player Rpoints set up Cashbackkings*, as a reaction to the growth of 100% payout sites.
• Quidco. The original 100% payer, Quidco*, calls itself a cashback collective.

If you’re likely to use cashback sites a lot, it's worth joining all these sites to maximise the range and coverage you get.

Get the maximum cashback for every retailer

The Cashback-Sites Maximiser is a special free tool, which compares how much the top sites pay for each retailer/product provider, thus enabling you to get the best deal every time. Yet there are a few things to consider.

• Don’t spread your cashback too thin.

  Most cashback sites will only pay out once you hit a certain threshold, so for small transactions trying to maximise the cashback may mean you’re never paid out. Yet if you’re going for an insurance product or gas & electricity which is likely to pay over the threshold in one hit, then go for the highest.

• Check whether you’ll get all the cash.

  All sites which charge an upfront joining fee are barred from the Maximiser. Yet some of the cashback sites do charge an annual fee out of any money you’ve earned; it’s worth remembering this if using a lot of sites.

• Not all cashback sites are included.

  Due to the technology and space, not all cashback sites, e.g. Greasy Palm* can be included, though most of the main ones and all the top picks are.

Make free cash from cashback sites

Cashback sites sometimes pay out even when you don’t spend money, thus you can make free cash. This is because the advertisers who pay out to cashback sites aren’t specifically targeting them; the cashback sites have just grabbed advertising links available to normal websites. Thus the fact consumers can benefit directly and therefore manipulate the products isn’t factored in to their structures.

The following are the main ways to gain:

• Cashback loopholes – they pay more than you pay them.

  Some companies pay more cashback than the product itself costs. For example, in the past, cashback sites paid up to £25 for Cahoot’s savings account applications, yet this can be opened with just £1.

  Also common are magazine company offers paying up to £3-ish for you to take free trials. These deals often pop up on the Shop But Don’t Drop Forum board, plus there’s also the Rpoints Easy Points* section.

  There are two warnings with this particular method though. First, be careful when applying for financial products, especially bank accounts, credit cards and loans. Each application adds a search on your credit file, which potentially diminishes your Credit Score.

  The second is each cashback site has its own rules for members and they may ban you if they think you’re abusing the scheme; as if too many people do this with specific products, they’ll lose their links due to a bad ‘conversion rate’.

• Refer a friend.

  Almost all cashback sites, with the notable exception of Quidco*, pay bonuses when you get a mate to sign up for their site. Yet you tend to only get the bonus if a friend actually earns cashback; e.g. Rpoints* pays £5 for each friend you refer; Greasy Palm* pays £7; Free Fivers pays £5 (once they’ve earned £25); and Cashbackkings* pays £5 for every two friends you recruit. Usually you either send your friend a special ‘invite’ or your friend lists you as the person who referred them when they sign up.

• A few clicks a day will pay up to £20 a month.

  Fiddly but lucrative, the main payouts occur when you click on shopbots, such as High Street Web, and do a comparison. Yet to make any real money with this, you need to do it every day.

  Click through to a specific retailer via a shopbot which you go to from a cashback site and you’ll usually earn 2p to 4p for the click (not as complex as it sounds, e.g. go to Quidco*, then click on High Street Web, do a search and click through to a retailer’s site). To speed up your daily clicking routine it’s worth setting your computer to remember log-ins and passwords.

  Do this every day, at all the sites and the cash stacks up, though many cashback sites limit the number of daily paid clicks. However nothing restricts you doing the same thing on a number of cashback sites. It’s possible to make 6p/day per site from doing this which adds up to over £20 a month.

  The more sites you do this through the longer it takes, but the more is available; on top of Rpoints*, Greasy Palm*, Topcashback*, Giveortake* and Free Fivers other sites include Myshoppingrewards, Rewardcircle, Cashinco, Loyalty Shopper and Cashbacking (formerly Ecashrewards, don't confuse with Cashbackkings above).

• Get cash for clicks with Pigsback.

  Slightly different to the other cashback sites, Pigsback pays you high street gift vouchers (like John Lewis or Waitrose) when you click on links from its advertisers. Each week, special adverts (highlighted in the middle of your screen as your featured offers) appear on your homepage. Click these and you’ll get five points (worth around 5p in rewards). Systemically click these links once a week and it’s possible to make £100s a year.
  
  To make sure you’re offered the most special adverts, tick every category of interest when you sign up. You can also enter daily quizzes to win extra points. MoneySavers very kindly post the answers in the Pigsback thread.

• Survey Sites: Make money from giving your opinion.

  On a similar theme, it's possible to earn £100s a year, without any special skill or talent by stashing cash from filling in online surveys. For a detailed guide, including the best survey sites to try, see the Survey Sites guide.