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Make Money Shopping Online

This post is sponsored by Giving Assistant.

Giving Assistant’s goal is to solve one of online shopping’s most frustrating problems. Promo codes rarely work! You know, you find a code, enter code, and it’s denied. Repeat 5 times and then give up. The entire process is frustrating.

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Giving Assistant is a free digital loyalty program, over 1,100 largest retailers, avg. of 5% cash reward after each online purchase. Giving Assistant’s solution is to always provide a discount. They have 3 types of discounts.

  1. Promo codes – Percentage off, coupons, and deals. For example, Walmart has lots of online deals listed like up to 80% off electronics.
  2. Charity Donation – You can designate a percentage of your cash back to go to a charity of your choice. You can pick any percentage from 0% to 100%. Amazon, which is one of my favorite online retailers. You cannot earn cash back from them, but you can donate to your favorite charity every time you purchase. So, even if you can’t get something back, you can help out your community when you shop. I’ve selected my favorite local charity as my designated Charity.
  3. Cash Back – You can get cash back through Paypal or as a mailed check. For example, Bed, Bath, & Beyond offers up to 10% cash back on purchases. Your cash out minimum is $5 so it’s pretty easy and fast to rack up cash back credits.

How Giving Assistant Works

  1. Retailers pay them a commission for purchases originated from their website. Typically a percentage of the sale (avg ~5%).
  2. For purchases originated by members they pay the entire commission as cash back directly and digitally to the members.
  3. For non-member purchases they retain the commission, and make a small donation to Feeding America to give one meal.
  4. Members are given the option to automatically donate any % of their cash back to any charity of their choice.

My Experience

I tried out Giving Assistant for the first time this week and it is so easy to use! I needed to order a wedding present for my sister from her Bed Bath & Beyond wedding registry, so I created my account on Giving Assistant (which took less than 5 minutes), searched for Bed Bath & Beyond, and went to their page.

For each retailer there’s a list of instructions so you know what you need to do to earn your cash back and what you can earn cash back for.

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If you’re looking for deals before you shop, just close this little pop-up and you’ll see the full deal page.

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I didn’t need any of these deals so I just clicked “shop now” and did my shopping. Once at Bed Bath & Beyond’s website, I searched for my sister’s wedding registry. I selected and purchased her gift.

A couple of hours later I received this e-mail.

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So, I bought a wedding present AND earned some cash back. Pretty awesome and easy! In my Giving Assistant account it lists this total under Pending Earnings and it says that the cash back will be released between 15 and 60 days depending on the retailer. It won’t actually be in my PayPal for a couple of weeks still, but it will be a nice surprise when it arrives.

Earn $5 for Signing Up

One more great deal. Sign up through my referral link and you can earn $5 just for creating an account. And I get $5 too! Pretty awesome. Then go shop at your favorite online retailer and you’ll be all set to get your Cash Back in the mail or via PayPal (just set this up under your account settings)

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This is a sponsored post. This post contains affiliate links.

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Free Date Night

If you don’t know about it already Bing rewards you for searching using their site. (sign up using my link and I get 500 points) You can earn up to 30 points a day for online searching and 10 points a day for mobile searching for a total of 40 a day, plus they have bonus points and double point days and such, so points add up pretty quickly. Every 450 points I redeem a $5 Groupon credit. There’s other things on there, like Xbox credits and Amazon gift cards, but groupon is my favorite.

So, last month, I had $20 in Groupon credit sitting in my account. I like to spend it on restaurant discounts and then me and my husband go out to dinner or lunch for “free”. WooHoo. So, Groupon e-mails me a discount, if I spend $30 and purchase a groupon through their mobile app (which is already on my phone) I get $10 off. The math is pretty easy, $10 off a $30 groupon = $20, which is the amount of my current Groupon Credits.

I go search Groupon for anything $30 to $40 and see if there’s anything interesting. For $30 I can get a groupon for $60 at the Tennessee Riverboat Company. Not bad, Dinner cruises are $25 to $30 a person so I go ahead and get it. Now, I have a free $60 to spend at the Tennessee Riverboat Company. Of course, we pick the Mystery Cruise because it sounds like fun.

So, the mystery was pretty much what I expected, not that entertaining but still fun, and I think they just threw all the names in a hat and pulled out out and that was our murderer for the night.

Plus you get a 2 hr cruise down the river on a little riverboat. – to put little in context, I’ve been aboard some of the larger old Ohio riverboats like the Delta Queen when it was still operating as a riverboat. I think one paddle-wheel is bigger than the boat we were on for our cruise. Anyways, little riverboat, it was a very nice 2hr ride. It rained the first 20 minutes, but we were inside eating – and the food was DELICIOUS! – so it didn’t matter. After dinner we went up on the deck and the weather was perfect. Saw some really pretty houses – we’re house hunting currently so it was fun to see some of the large houses on the river.

It was fun to do something different for a change (we left the kids with my MIL) and get some time to ourselves. Not sure I would actually pay $60 for the dinner cruise but if you like being out on the water, it’s lots of fun and the food is good.