What are Cashback Sites?

Australian Cashback sites will give you a % of money back on every purchase you make at a retailer that you access from a link on their site. These range from 1-30%, but are typically about 4-8% of the sale price. So if you spend $100, they’ll give you back between $4-$8 back. This can usually be paid back to your bank account every month or as requested. You simply shop as normal at the retailers website and buy what you otherwise would have, but you have to get there from the cashback sites link to that store. I discovered about 8 Australian cashback sites, but there may be more. Below I review each one and give you my recommendations.

How Can They Do This?

Many online retailers offer commissions to those who refer online traffic to them. Cashback sites offer hundreds of retailers and so by sheer quantity can pass part of what they receive on to you. So an online retailer may pay the cashback site $10 and they pass onto you say $8 and keep $2 for themselves. You can see how this is profitable over thousands of sales, but also beneficial to you too. Best of all, you don’t pay any different than if you went to the online retailer direct from a google search.

Something For Everyone

Australian cashback sites offer cashback at over 1100 online retailers. And that’s just the ones I found, there will be more. There’s sites for pretty much every possible purchase imaginable, from pet supplies to wigs, alcohol to holidays. If it exists, there’s an online retailer selling it and a cashback site willing to give a percentage back to you. I’m certain if you have a look at my Ultimate-cashback-guide (nb. file is safe to open if warned) that you will find sites that you have visited and bought from occasionally or regularly. Several major online retailers like Coles, Woolworths, Target, Dan Murphy’s, Ebay, Expedia, Booking.com, Greys Online, Virgin Australia and Etsy are all represented. The only exception is a few of the major retailers like bunnings, Harvey Norman, JB Hifi, Kmart and the like……unfortunately. For these check out my post on rewards programs, these usually offer cashback,% discounts, offers and more for a subscription fee.

Is it Worth It?

In short……yes, I think it is. If you were going to make a purchase online anyway, getting something back and hence reducing the price is worth it. To not do so is to let go of the opportunity to reduce the overall cost. Nor is it that hard to find a cashback site with the retailer your looking to purchase from, especially with my ultimate guide. I’d suggest downloading this and when you are about to purchase, check who’s offering the best cashback for that site, sign up and make the purchase. You can often also double up with other vouchers, discounts, etc.

A few caveats though. Don’t purchase something you otherwise were not going to purchase.

The Ultimate Guide

Spending money to save a few dollars is really just getting a small reduction on the waste of a lot of money. Click To Tweet Not worth it. Only spend what you were going to spend anyway. But chances are you will almost certainly find yourself at one of the some 1100+ sites that you can access cashback on.

So here’s my Ultimate-cashback-guide. I’ve listed all the sites and the amount of cashback they offer for the best 6 Australian cashback sites. I did this to easily compare these cashback sites and to have an easy resource to check before spending online. No need to go looking at every cashback site to know which has your store. Nor do you have to worry about finding the best deal. Just use my ultimate guide to find which cashback site has the store your at for the best cashback offer. Of course more stores are added daily and commissions do change, so it will need updating. Something I’ll aim to do every 6 months or so.

Also be aware many sites have restrictions, only on these products, etc, make sure to read the fine print. You’ll notice that this took some time. In return I’d appreciate it if you use my referral links. These will pay me a one off referral fee or a percentage of sales you make, without impacting your earnings at all. I’ve listed my links on the guide, along with what I’d receive as a referral. Thanks for respecting the hours of work that has gone into this. You may even like to share the article on facebook, twitter or Pinterest.

The Best Cashback Sites

So here’s my review of each Australian Cashback Site, from the best one to the worst, in my opinion. Here goes.

Cash Rewards do not offer quite as much as Cashback Club below, but they do have far more stores from a far wider range of products and services. They will also offer you $10 for signing up from my referral (I’ll get $10 too), provided you make a purchase of $20 or more. The best way to do that is via a woolies e-gift card (no shipping costs) and you can pick one up for any price! So go ahead and get your $10! The e-gift cards come with a pin that you use when paying at the checkout, easy. I’d also rate this as their best deal. These wish gift cards come with a 5% cashback too. So you can get these to shop at Woolies, Woolies Petrol, Big W, BWS, Dan Murphy’s etc. That’s 5% off on what is for most of us, normal everyday spend. As mentioned their store range is very extensive. For most things Cashback Club and Cash Rewards will cover most stores.

Other notable stores on Cash Rewards include the best return fro Virgin Australia flights at 1.5%, the addition of BCF in just the past week and by far the most extensive hotel offers. Cash Rewards also have a browser extension that will show any site from which a cashback is available and prevent the need to sign in back at their website every time. Which is ok, or a pain, depending how you see it. The one negative with Cash Rewards is they do have a minimum withdrawal amount of $10.01. I guess that’s why they offer the $10 sign up bonus in part. That get’s you straight to the minimum withdrawal amount. But this is a pain for those who are infrequent shoppers. You don’t want that money locked up with them. Again, the best way around this is via the Woolies gift cards, you spend these anyway and a $100 gift card takes you up to the withdrawal limit.

Shopback is the latest player in the cashback market. They offer $5 on signup if you spend $20 (I think you best get a gift card). They have a wide offering of retailers as broad as any. 3% for ebay is probably their best offer and may be worth it just for that. They also have the widest range of airlines and hotels if you are booking direct for some flights and stays. The only drawback is the minimum $10 withdrawal amount and the fact that your money expires after one year of not using it. So if you try it once and forget it, it will be gone. I still rate it at a close second at the moment though. You just have to check in once a year to get a grocery gift card if you haven’t otherwise used it. As I said above, I’d probably use it to get 3% back with ebay purchases. I make enough of those to keep the account active.

Cashback Club is the number 2 Australian cashback site. They consistently offer the greatest cashback return. But there is a caveat. You only get the best price if you sign up for them to be your insurance broker or home loan broker. That doesn’t mean changing insurance/loan, just that you allow cashback club to get the kickbacks from the policies, of which they pass you on a cut too. Not a bad idea doing that anyway as it costs you nothing more and you get some cashback from your existing policies. If you don’t do this the cashback amount is half that listed on my spreadsheet, so be aware. Without this the returns drop from best to worst!

Though not as extensive as some other sites the point of cashback is to get the most cash back! Cashback Club is the site that will do that, conditions above met. This would be my first port of call and the site I’d be most keen to sign up for. They also have no minimum payout. So if you get $0.40 cashback, you can get access to the $0.40 straight away.

They also offer some unique ways to get cashback that other sites do not. One of these is their real Estate referral program. If you are selling your home, you can ask Cashback Club to refer you to a local real estate agent, you may be even able to negotiate your preferred one with them. They will then split the commission on the sale of the home with the agent and give you cashback. They say often 10-15% of the sale commission price is what they give you back. That could be around $2000. Not bad to sell with the agent you may have been selling with anyway.

Cashback Club also operate as a broker of insurance and home loans as mentioned. They will give you 100% back on trailing commissions for home loans and a cut of commissions for insurance, something most brokers pocket for themselves completely. Getting a yearly cheque from your homeloan is not a bad deal. I checked out what they offer and they seemed reasonably competitive. I’d at least give them a call if I was taking a loan, refinancing or updating my insurance, you can always go elsewhere if you find a better deal. YOu can also just switch existing policies over to them.

Shop and mint doesn’t have quite as polished a website as the others, nor do they have as many sites, but they do offer better returns than Cash Rewards, but not quite as good as Cashback Club. That’s why they come in at 3rd. They don’t have too many sites unique to them, but one key one is Target online. Shop and Mint are the only cashback site to offer cashback at Target and 6% is pretty reasonable. Shop and mint also has the best return for Ebay at 2%, which makes Shop and mint one worth considering to sign up for. Who doesn’t buy stuff on ebay! The biggest negative though is a $50 minimum balance for payout. It’s not easy to get to $50, so that money is locked away until you do.

Qwibble offer similar rewards to Cash Rewards and have a similarly large base of stores to choose from, but without the returns of Shop and mint/Cashback Club, nor the benefit of Woolies gift cards. That’s why they come a close 4th. They do have several unique stores such as $40 cashback at Budget insurance for new policies. There’s no minimum payout, so if there’s a unique store I’d consider using them.

Pricepal has been around for a long time, unfortunately, their returns are consistently less than the 4 previously mentioned sites. They have a large range of sites and some unique sites. No minimum payout again. But this is well down the list.

Swagbucks have created their own currency, hence the name, Swag bucks! You can earn Swagbucks via cashback or a whole heap of other ways, surveys, games, etc. I’ve reviewed this before and essentially it’s not worth it, apart from cashback. However, they offer the fewest sites, their returns are sometimes higher, but often lower than others and they have a minimum payout of $3. So at this point for Australia, they are down the list. You can convert your Swag bucks to giftcards or get paid into Paypal. They do offer up to 26% cashback with Vista print. I do a lot of printing with Vista print, so may be worth it for that. But not too much else.

Cashback earners (NOTE: it looks like cashback earners have gone out of business!) and Lyoness both create their own currencies like Swagbucks. They also offer alternative ways of earning. I think overall this breadth of strategy takes away from the cashback emphasis. I’m sure there’s unique stores for both, but it’s more complex and typically pays out less from what I could see. For that reason I didn’t look much further into these sites. But feel free to go ahead yourself.

I hope that was helpful and you have opportunity to get cashback in hand as a result. Please use my referral links if this is helpful for you and considering sharing this post.

Cheers!