What if there was a way to earn cash back from your daily purchases that you already make? Companies like Ibotta allow you to do just that. What is the Ibotta cashback app and how does it work? Can you actually make money using Ibotta? Is Ibotta a trustworthy app to use?
These are all common questions you may be asking yourself. Here is a detailed review of the Ibotta cashback app. In this post, we will answer the above-mentioned questions and explain how Ibotta works, how they make money, and whether you can benefit from using the Ibotta app.
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Table of Contents
A Detailed Review Of The Ibotta Cashback App
Ibotta is a cashback app that allows consumers to receive cash back from their daily purchases. You can link your bank account to the app, and when shopping online or in store, Ibotta will automatically give you cash back when shopping at a partnered retailer.
Your savings will be deposited into your free Ibotta account and can then be redeemed to your bank account.
How Does Ibotta Work?
Ibotta has partnered with thousands of retailers across the US enabling them to offer special discounts to those who have an Ibotta account. Here’s how it works:
- Create a free Ibotta account
- Link a bank account or debit card
- Find cashback discounts available on the Ibotta app
- Select which discounts you wish to redeem
- Purchase the products that apply to the discount at the respective partnered retail stores
- Upload your receipt to Ibotta to verify the purchases
- Ibotta will deposit the respective discount amount to your free Ibotta account
- Once your Ibotta account balance reaches $20 or more, you can then transfer it to your linked bank account.
In other words, by simply selecting which products you wish to purchase through the Ibotta app, then going and purchasing them, followed by uploading your receipt to the app, you get free cashback.
Here is an awesome video review for the visual ones.
How Does Ibotta Make Money?
You may be asking yourself how this is all possible. Ibotta is able to make money through what is called affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when a person or company partners with another business to promote those businesses products.
When a referred customer makes a purchase at the promoted company, the affiliate partner gets paid a small commission for referring new customers to those companies.
What Ibotta does is simply passes on a portion of this commission to its users and keeps the rest. The end result is a win-win-win business model.
Customers win from getting free cash back, retail stores win from getting new business and sales that they otherwise may not have had, and Ibotta wins by making money off of the commission from referring customers to retail stores.
What Partnered Stores Are Available For Discounts On Ibotta?
Ibotta currently offers cashback at over 500,000 store locations nationwide and over 300 retail chains, restaurants, movie theatres, convenient stores, home improvement stores, pet shops, and even pharmacies.
What’s more, is that offers are available at both retail stores in person and via online shopping. Some of their most popular retail stores that have multiple cash back offers are:
· Amazon
· Barnes & Noble · Cabela’s · CVS Pharmacy · Rite Aid · Gap · Kohls · GNC · Best Buy · Walgreens · Walmart · Costco · Dollar Tree |
· Office Depot
· eBay · Fresh Market · Gamestop · Macey’s · Maverick · Pay Less · Target · Smith’s · Sam’s Club · Whole Foods Market · WinCo Foods · And many more… |
To view a more detailed list of all their partnered retail stores and their shopping categories, visit Ibotta’s partnered retail store page here: Ibotta partners.
We discussed how you can save tons of money in your groceries and kitchen, Ibotta is one of the ways.
How To Redeem Ibotta Cashback Offers
As mentioned above, Ibotta has cashback offers available for both online purchases and in-person purchases at local retail stores.
How does Ibotta track your purchases and confirm that you actually made them? It’s quite simple but slightly different for in-store purchases and online purchases.
How To Redeem Online Cashback Offers
To redeem cashback offers from online purchases with Ibotta, follow these steps:
- Login / create your free Ibotta account
- Select the “Find Offers” option then select “Online Shopping”
- Select the online offer you wish to redeem
- Click the link on the offer within the app that says “Shop”
- You will be taken to the partner retail website to shop. Any purchases you make will be linked to your Ibotta account.
Ibotta is able to identify the purchases you made based on the unique URL link that took you from your Ibotta account to the partner retail store.
These are called “affiliate links”, and any purchases made will be linked to the available Ibotta offers.
How To Redeem In-Store Purchase Offers
To redeem cashback offers from in-store purchases at a local retailer, follow these steps:
- Login / create your free Ibotta account
- Select the “Find Offers” option within the app
- Choose the category you wish to find offers in
- Select the desired retail store you wish to shop at and make sure it says “in-store” in red letters above or below the offer
- Choose the products you wish to purchase and add them to the “My Offers” list within the app
- Once you have made your purchases, keep the receipts and upload them within the Ibotta app by logging in and clicking “redeem offers” and upload the receipt.
- Once the purchases have been verified, your account will be credited with the respective cashback deals.
Examples Of Ibotta Cashback Offers
Offers vary based on each retail store and respective product. Within the app, you can search for offers by category, retail store, or even by-products.
Ibotta conveniently provides you a list of “What’s Hot” among the current offers available on the app.
An example online offer that you may see on the Ibotta app is 5% cashback on certain product categories on Amazon.
Often times, available offers will range from 2.5% – 5.5% cashback on product categories when shopping online at Amazon. This is just an example and may be slightly different depending on availability.
To redeem offers available for online cashback offers, you simply need to select the offer on the Ibotta app and click the link that says “Shop”.
It will then take you to the online website to make a purchase and will be recorded to your Ibotta account for the offer.
In-store offers available through Ibotta may be purchases of certain products at a local neighborhood Walmart or Walmart Supercenter.
Often times there will be options available that offer anywhere from $0.25 – $5.00 cash back when purchasing a certain product.
To redeem cash back offers for in-store purchases, all you need to do is select the offer through the app and it will be added to your “offers” list.
Once you make the purchase, you just need to upload a picture of the receipt using your smartphone camera to redeem the cashback offer.
How Much Money Can You Earn Using Ibotta?
Most cash back programs are minimal in the amount they pay, and they make it difficult to redeem cashback as well.
However, Ibotta makes things simple by displaying your cashback rewards in dollars rather than points and allows you to withdraw money once you hit at least $20 in cash back.
So how much can you really earn? According to Ibotta, users have earned over $500 million in cash back.
Furthermore, there are many customer stories available with a basic Google search to find people who have made hundreds or even thousands of dollars cash back just by using the Ibotta app.
For example, R.J. Weiss who is the owner of “The Ways To Wealth” blog details that he has made over $400 cash back in just over a year of using the Ibotta app.
Other popular blogs like The Penny Hoarder detail how this lady has earned over $300 using the Ibotta app.
So how much can you make using the Ibotta app? While this is different for everyone based on their spending patterns, and how efficiently they use the Ibotta app, chances are you will see very similar results to the above two mentioned stories just by taking an extra few seconds each day to find offers before you make your daily purchases.
Is The Ibotta App Trustworthy?
Many newcomers that may not be as familiar with cashback apps naturally may question the trustworthiness of apps like Ibotta.
In order to confirm the safe nature of Ibotta, there are a few things that make it evident that they are legit, trustworthy and safe. They are:
- They have over 50,000 five-star reviews for their mobile app
- They have been featured in major publications like the Today, Forbes, Good Morning America, TechCrunch, CNET.com and Mashable
- They partner with over 300 retail stores and over 500,000 business locations nationwide
- Their retail partners include some of the largest companies in the world like Amazon, Apple, Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Groupon, eBay, and many others
In other words, the facts stated above solidify the validity of the Ibotta app. In fact, they are a multimillion-dollar company with partnerships in many big markets and with many big companies, which would be impossible to obtain such partnerships if they were not a safe or trustworthy company.
Tips & Tricks To Get The Most Out Of Using Ibotta
The great thing is, when using the Ibotta app correctly, you can actually maximize your cash back by applying a few little-known tips. They include:
- Upload Recent Receipts: Ibotta allows you to upload receipts retroactively. This means that if you download the app today, you can upload receipts from purchases you made yesterday and still get the available offers. Do you have a few receipts laying around in your car or on your kitchen table? You may just have some extra change available just by uploading them to the Ibotta app.
- Link Your Grocery Loyalty Card To Ibotta: Many of the major retail stores that offer loyalty cards, such as a grocery store loyalty card, can be directly linked to your Ibotta account. This means that the process of redeeming offers is streamlined automatically. For example, if you shop at your local Smith’s store and have a loyalty card that you scan, you can take advantage of the loyalty rewards through Smith’s Grocery Stores loyalty rewards points, while also redeeming those offers available on the Ibotta app. You’re killing two birds with one stone!
- Alternative Bonus Cash Back Offers: Take advantage of the alternative bonus options also available on the app. Usually listed towards the bottom of the homepage screen within the Ibotta app, is a section called “Popular Bonuses.” These include cash back offers for things not always related to making purchases. An example bonus offer is called the “Orange Flag” bonus which requires that you redeem 3 offers within the Ibotta app before a set expiration date, and you will receive an added $2 cash back. Another popular bonus is through referring friends to use the Ibotta app, and you and your friends will both receive a $10 bonus.
- Utilize Product Specific Offers At Different Stores: Say you purchase some hair products at Walmart and upload your receipt for the Walmart purchases. There may be other offers within the app that are specific to that brand of hair product that you can also use your purchase receipt for. In other words, you can use one receipt to redeem multiple different purchases that are store specific and product specific, allowing you to make even more cash back!
How To Properly Use The Ibotta App Efficiently
Often times one can get caught up searching for great offers within Ibotta and may often get carried away resulting in spending $100 in order to get $10 cash back when they otherwise probably would not have made those purchases in the first place.
By simply getting in the habit of checking the Ibotta app daily for new rewards and deals, then planning out your day on where to shop, you are spending an extra 5 minutes to make potentially $5 – $10 cash back.
That’s like getting paid $60 – $120 per hour ($5 for 5 minutes is $1 per minute or $60 per hour, and $10 for 5 minutes is $120 per hour). Not a bad return on investment!
Ready to register and start making some money back? Use our Ibotta link to register.
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I am a pulmonary and critical care doctor by day and personal finance blogger/debt slaying ninja by night.
After paying off close to $300,000 in student loan debt in less than 6 months into my real job, I started on a mission to help others achieve the same. There is no magic to this than to strap up and get it done. Some of the ways we achieved this include side hustle, budgeting, great negotiation skills, and geographical arbitrage.
When I was growing up, common knowledge in Nigeria is that there is one thing you cannot trust anyone else with, and you guessed it – your money.
Being frugal came easily to me based on my background. However, the concept of building wealth did not solidify in my mind until when I finished medical school. I wish I knew what I know now when I was 14. Still, I don’t know enough and I am constantly learning to improve my knowledge.
My goal is to reduce financial illiteracy among young professionals. I am catering to the beginners – babies and toddlers in financial literacy.
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