November 29, 2015 | talktraveltome | Leave a comment When planning a year-long trip and living on a budget, every penny counts. So whenever we make a purchase, whether it be booking a hotel room or buying new clothes, we always do our due diligence and have found several ways to keep more money in our pockets. Since Cyber Monday is here we thought to change things up from our usual posts and focus on something that will help everyone save more money while shopping online and maybe put those saving towards your next trip! Over the past several years the retail industry has seen a steady increase in e-commerce sales. According to the US Department of Commerce (we did our research!) the total online sales in Q1 of 2015 was estimated to be in excess of $80 BILLION in the US alone! With more people shopping online, more people have also been trying to find ways to save money shopping online. There are literally thousands of websites out there that offer coupons and discounts, but which will help you save the most money? In our opinion the answer is simple… it’s Ebates! Ebates.com Ebates can be summed up in three words: Cash Back Shopping. As we mentioned, many people are making the move to e-Commerce and spending more time shopping online. That is where Ebates comes into play. Ebates pays its members a percentage of their purchase every time they shop online, as well as provide them with the best coupons and deals. You just have to start your shopping on Ebates before being redirecting to one of their partner sites. It’s seriously the easiest way to save money and there is no catch. Why We Use Ebates Cash Back: As mentioned above, Ebates provides its members with cash back every time they make a purchase. It can range anywhere from a few percent all the way up to 40%. To give you an example, we bought our backpacks that we used throughout our travels through Ebates. We used their partner site, Ebags.com, which offered around 18% cash back. So after spending a total of $396 we got $72 cash back! And that is just by shopping through Ebates, a few clicks saved us $72 on a purchase we were already going to make! Easy money baby! Here is our cash back from our Ebags purchases and more. Before our trip we had a lot of purchases to make, so we thought we’d show you some of the cash back we received! Coupons: What is better than getting cash back? Getting cash back and using online coupons at the same time! Typically under each partner site Ebates will also provide coupons and codes to save additional money! Cha-Ching! For instance, on Hotels.com, in addition to the 4% cash back, they also offer coupons for an extra 5% or 10% off! Hotels.com Lord and Taylor Variety of Partner Sites: We use Ebates not only for travel purchases but for everyday online shopping. They work with over 1,800 of the top retail companies like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Sephora, Brookstone, etc. So whether you’re looking to buy some travel gear at Campmor or buy a new pair of jeans at Nordstrom’s you could be getting some cash back. Travel and Vacation Women’s Clothing Getting Paid: Ebates will send you the money you’ve earned every 3 months. However, you need to have at least $5.02 in your account to be paid. If not, the money will rolled over into the next payment period. You can be paid in one of three ways: 1. Check mailed directly to you 2. PayPal 3. Charity/Organization/Family Member. Here is the first cash back we got in 2013! Yup, we’ve been using Ebates for over 2 years! We hope that our own personal experience using Ebates has shed some light on how great Ebates is when making an online purchase. Saving money is really important to us, which is why we wanted to share this with our readers. Signing Up: If you’re interested in singing up it is both free and easy. Plus, they almost always have cash bonus incentives just for joining. Currently they’re offering $10 just for signing-up when making a $25 purchase through their website within your first 90 days. Ebates is giving you discounts on things you’re going to buy anyway and an additional $10 just for signing up! Like we said, easy money. Honest Policy: We’ve been telling people to use Ebates through word-of-month for years and now finally wrote a blog post about! We’re currently using the Ebates Tell-a-Friend program, which means if you sign up after clicking one of the links in this post and then make $25 in qualifying purchases, we’ll get a small referral commission. So don’t forget to sign up for Ebates and help us, help you, help us! As always, our opinions are our own as we Talk Travel! Did you find this post helpful? Please share it with your friends and/or comment below!