Ebates $10 Sign Up Bonus and Online Shopping Tips

By Pinyo, on August 25, 2008

If you like to shop online but haven’t tried Ebates before, here’s chance for you to get a $10 sign up bonus and save on your future purchases. Ebates works with over 900 online merchants to provide you with rebates and discounts on your purchases.

Note: The $10 sign up bonus is good through September 12th, 2008, otherwise, it’s normally $5.

Online Shopping Tips

To maximize savings for my online shopping activities, I follow these steps:

1. Search Ebates for the products that I am looking to purchase. There may be a few online merchants that can beat the price, but they are usually smaller eBay sellers and Yahoo! Stores.
2. Before making the purchase, I check RetailMeNot.com for additional coupon code — yes, they work in conjunction! RetailMeNot.com coupons are usually good for a few more percents off or free shipping.
3. To complete the purchase, I use my Discover Card for the extra 1% cash back bonus.
4. Next I head over to PriceProtectr and register my purchase. If the price goes down during the price protection period, PriceProtectr will send me an email with instruction on how to claim the difference — I already saved a few dollars this way.

Here’s a bonus tip. Since New York State sales tax is almost 10%, I try to pick a merchant that doesn’t have presence in NYS.

Do you have online shopping tips you’d like to share?

Pinyo is the owner of Moolanomy Personal Finance and an entrepreneur with over 20 years of business experience. He is interested in business management, investing and wealth management. He has written for many online publications, including American Express Currency and U.S. News Money. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Add Your Question or Comment (4 Comments)

1. Lauren:

   August 25, 2008 at 11:04 am

   I’ve never heard of PriceProtectr. That is a really great idea.

   I hear you on the NYS sales tax. What’s really going to start hurting is when the IRS starts buckling down on taxing online purchases. They just passed a bill in Congress that makes it mandatory for online retailers to submit their sales reports to the IRS.
2. Pinyo:

   August 25, 2008 at 11:59 pm

   @Lauren — Definitely give PriceProtectr a try. As far as Internet tax, I think that is more negative than positive for everyone.
3. Michael:

   August 27, 2008 at 11:38 am

   We’ve been using Ebates for the past few months. We got the original card and have gotten several $10 checks since then. I like it because it doesn’t really encourage me to spend more than I was planning like other deal sites. I usually will find the item I want online and then go to ebates to see if they offer any cashback at the store I was already going to buy from. Their list is pretty extensive.
4. Dustin:

   September 15, 2009 at 6:21 pm

   Even better than ebates is bigcrumbs. You get a percent back for referrals five generations down and it is free.