If you buy anything online but aren’t earning cash back on it, now is an especially good time to join Rakuten.
Now through Dec. 31, the cash-back website is offering an especially big welcome bonus: $30 in cash.
Basically, if you sign up for Rakuten by Dec. 31 and then spend $30 via Rakuten within 60 days of signing up, the site will give you 30 bucks. That’s like getting paid to buy things you likely were going to buy anyhow.
How Rakuten works
Rakuten, formerly known as Ebates, is a cash-back portal. By doing your online shopping through its website or app, or using its browser extension, you’ll earn cash back — during this promotion and in the future — on purchases from any of thousands of retailers and other merchants that partner with Rakuten.
How is that possible? It’s simple: Rakuten receives a commission from retailers for referring online shoppers to those retailers’ websites. Then, Rakuten shares that commission with shoppers.
It’s free to sign up for a Rakuten account, and it’s free to use the portal. To see an example of how Rakuten works, check out “If You’re Not Getting Cash Back When Shopping Online, Use This Trick.”
Rakuten is among the oldest and best-known cash-back portals, but it’s not the only one. Others include Drop, Ibotta, TopCashback and Swagbucks Shop.
Even if you already have a Rakuten account, you might want to check out other cash-back portals because different portals often offer different cash-back percentages for a given retailer.
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