You’re buying stuff, whether you’re in college or just starting out. Even if you’re merely acquiring the basics, you’re still spending money. Consider how much money you spend each month and how much more your earnings would add up to if you earned as little as 1% of that through cash back over a year. Now think of how much you would save if that cash back is automatically happening with every online purchase you make! That’s how Cash Back applications like Rakuten would help you.

Rakuten Overview

What is Rakuten?

Rakuten (formerly Ebates) is a cash back shopping site that lets you earn real cash whenever you make a purchase through its links. The best part is that the link takes you to the site where you would have otherwise made the purchase anyways, so there really is no downside to you. After you make the purchase, Rakuten will credit you with a % cash back which ranges depending on the retail site in which you are purchasing from. Give it a couple months and the cash back will automatically be deposited into your PayPal configured with Rakuten. It’s that easy!

Why Use Rakuten?

We all need money for basic needs and shopping. But we also want to save up some money too, don’t we? Perhaps you’d like to buy a new iPhone, or you’re saving up for an extravagant travel experience. Rakuten can help you towards your spending goals with its cash back benefits. No matter the reason for saving, Rakuten can be very valuable in a number of ways as I’ll talk about in this article.

How does Rakuten Make Money?

Rakuten makes money by charging an affiliate fee to retailers, so it’s kind of like the merchant paying you cash back for purchasing through them. Rakuten just sets up links that lead you to different stores and then pays you a % of whatever amount is charged to your account after you make the purchase. It doesn’t charge anything else and it won’t cost you any fees.

How to get Rakuten

To begin using Rakuten, all you need is an email address and a PayPal account. All it does is set up links for retailers like Amazon and Sears where you would make purchases anyways. After you make a purchase, Rakuten will pay your PayPal account a % of the money spent through Rakuten.

Sign up with this link to get $30 Cashback after you spend $30 on ANYTHING. Basically free money.

The Pros and Cons (if you consider it con) of Rakuten

Pros:

• No extra fees for Rakuten’s services
• You can get paid for doing absolutely nothing more than making purchases that you were going to make anyways through Rakuten

Cons:

• Well the only downside is that you have to wait until the cash back is automatically deposited into your account, usually it takes about two months. Do you consider that a con if you’re going to get the money eventually anyway?

Rakuten has been around for over 10 years and has saved users over $300 million! Rakuten’s affiliate program is one of the most basic affiliate programs. It’s great for both shoppers since Rakuten makes money by charging retailers to advertise on their platform, and the shopper essentially gets a cut of that deal in discounts.

Always Check With Rakuten

Search on the site

Using Rakuten whenever you make a purchase is easy. All you really have to do is go to the website at Rakuten.com and type in what you’re hoping to buy or where you’re going to shop from.

Once you put in a product or brand, Rakuten will act as a search engine that automatically look for deals.

For example, if I’m looking to buy a new pair of jeans:

It’s really that simple! There’s a couple cool things here. Not only can I see immediately what Jeans are having discounts or sales, but I am also able to explore new brands that I might not have been aware of. To add to that, I even get a discount to try out new brands! Rakuten also has a very good User Interface that lets me get to my goal of exploring deals and saving money with very little effort on my end.

Rakuten will show you the amount of cash back that you would earn if you purchased through Rakuten instead of going to a retailer’s website directly. When I was looking at Levi’s jeans, it told me I would earn $20 for purchasing from Rakuten instead of going to the site directly.

Install the Chrome Extension

Another great way to use Rakuten is through its Chrome Extension. Installing the chrome extension is really a no-brainer. With the Rakuten chrome extension installed, Rakuten will automatically look for deals whenever you are on a retail site.

For example, let’s say you are shopping on Macy.com. Once you log into the page, the Rakuten Chrome Extension will automatically pop up deals it has found:

Once you click on “Activate 15% Cash Back”, Rakuten will redirect you to its own link to the Macy website; and now if you make a purchase through Macy’s, Rakuten will automatically register that and give you the cash back you deserve through its platform.

Rakuten Lets Stack Savings Discounts!

One of the best things about Rakuten is that it registers your purchase through its affiliate link, not a coupon code provided by the shopping site at checkout. What that means is that most vendors will not penalize you for shopping on their site through a Rakuten link.

Again, using Macy’s as an example. While you are getting a discount from Rakuten for shopping at Macy’s, you can still apply dozens of coupons upon checkout to take advantage of any savings Macy is offering.

The EXTRA savings from Rakuten is simply icing on the cake. How much effort did it take to capture that EXTRA saving? Hopefully you can see that it wasn’t that difficult at all.

Bottom Line

Use Rakuten. Install the Chrome Extension so that you are always passively receiving EXTRA savings whenever you are shopping. Rakuten will not always find savings for you on the sites you visit, but when it does, it will notify you. In my experience, it’s always nice to be surprised with extra savings that I wasn’t expecting.

There’s really no reason not to have Rakuten always on. There’s literally no fees and the user interface makes the experience seamless. Whenever I am trying to make a brand-agnostic purchase such as trying to stock up on wine, I always check Rakuten’s website to see if there are any great deals I can take advantage of for cash back savings!