Do you buy stuff online?
- Buying a new cellphone — Lazada/Shopee/Tokopedia
- Getting new shoes — Zalora
- Ordering food delivery — Food Panda
You can buy almost anything on your phone while sitting in your living room. It truly is a great time to be alive! But it gets better. With ShopBack, you can earn cashback every time you buy stuff online.
Who doesn’t want to save more money? Let’s start with explaining what is this thing called ShopBack:
What is ShopBack?
ShopBack is an online cashback company that gives you a small percentage of your money back every time you make an online purchase through their website or app. Here’s what their website looks like:
Here’s what the app looks like:
How Does ShopBack Work?
Shopback works on the concept of Affiliate Marketing. Well, what is that, you might ask?
Affiliate Marketing is the process of promoting someone else’s product or service online. If the marketing effort results in a sale, the marketer will earn a commission.
If you want more info about affiliate marketing, check out my article: How to Earn Affiliate Income.
Example: ShopBack promotes other brands on their website or app. When you go to ShopBack and click on one of the brands advertised (let’s say Lazada) and end up buying something, Lazada will know that the sale came from ShopBack.
Lazada will kick back a small slice of the sale to ShopBack (an affiliate commission). That is how Affiliate Marketing works.
To reward you for purchasing through ShopBack and not directly purchasing to Lazada, ShopBack will split their affiliate commission with you. The earnings that you receive as the buyer is called ‘cashback.’
Is ShopBack Real or a Scam?
In short, it is a legitimate business.
When ShopBack was new, understandably, many people were skeptical.
But in 2021, ShopBack has become a name brand for cashback apps in Southeast Asia.
Here are their current review on the Google Play Store:
Their customer support team is handling disputes quite well from my observations.
Also, the overall rating is 4.6 out of 5 stars, which is overall excellent.
My friends and I have been using it for several years, and we have cashed the money into my bank account multiple times.
Here’s my accumulated personal cashback:
It’s quite shocking to see how much I can save from my online shopping over 3 years.
This is by no means to promote you to shop excessively online. These are all the stuff that I needed and made a calculated decision to buy.
If you want to get the ShopBack app, use my referral link here to get RM5 deposited into your ShopBack account:
How I Saved RM 788 Using the ShopBack App
Here are my latest transactions. Mostly the cashback is in very small values but it accumulates over time. Better than nothing in my opinion:
As you can see, some cashback amount varies. From my experience, cashback from marketplaces (Lazada & Shopee) pays little, usually less than RM1.
However, I found decent cashback (get back around RM10 to RM150) shopping for:
- Zalora (fashion)
- Agoda (travel)
- Maxis (Internet packages)
Online Shopping on Lazada & Shopee
Cashback rates change all the time, but here are the cashback rates for marketplaces as of this writing:
As a regular user, you should only be concerned with the ‘Existing Customer’ cashback rates. In most marketplaces, the rates are pretty bad, at less than 1% each.
Let me show you my example: I buy a lot of electrical gadgets and stuff for my Airbnb business on Lazada and Shopee:
Thanks to online sales, I get to buy the stuff that I want cheaper, and thanks to ShopBack, I earn cashback on top of the online savings.
Here is my cashback:
The earnings are not that much, but over time, this amount will add up. Next, let’s look at other shopping categories where I earn better cashback rates:
Traveling Cashback (Hotels)
One of the highest cashback categories is for hotels. These rates changes all the time, here they are as of this writing:
6% cashback for hotel bookings, that’s huge!
So if you book a hotel for RM220 a night, you’ll be looking at a cashback of around RM 13.20. Pretty good!
I’ve done a bit of traveling and I made hotel bookings through ShopBack. Here are my Expedia cashback results:
Let’s take a look at another example of a hotel booking I made through Agoda in 2020. Here’s my confirmation email from Agoda and the total price I paid:
Here is my Cashback for that purchase at RM 10.22:
So let’s do the math here. RM 10.22 over RM 217.36 is 4.7%. Slightly lower than the advertised 5%. I think the cashback rate might be lower than 5% at the time of booking.
Next time, make sure you don’t forget to book your next accommodation through ShopBack.
To maximize your cashback, you can even offer to reserve on behalf of your friends and family.
Maxis Home Internet Registration
Amazingly, I was also able to earn cashback for new home internet package sign-ups through ShopBack.
When I was running my Airbnb business, I had 10 unit studios that needed internet access.
At the time, there was a free 1-month cashback if I signed up for Maxis home package through ShopBack.
I had at least 3 studios that I wanted to install an internet source and each application through ShopBack gets a free 1-month cashback:
So check Shopback before you register for a new internet package for your home.
Food Delivery
I order food deliveries a lot. Sometimes more than I should.
Not only can you order food on your phone while lazing about, but you can earn a bit of cashback too. Awesome!
Here’s my Food Panda order history & my cashback:
It’s crazy to think that you won’t get any cashback if you dine in at the restaurant.
But you do get cashback if you buy the same thing through the ShopBack app.
Prepaid Phone Top-Up
For those of you who use Prepaid on your phone, stop purchasing your top-up at 7-Eleven. Reload online through the ShopBack app to earn a bit of cashback.
- Open up the ShopBack app
- Click on any marketplaces (Lazada or Shopee) from the ShopBack app
- Type in the telephone company’s top-up that you want to get
In 2017, I started to use 2 sim cards (1 for business and 1 for personal), and I had to recharge my top-up every month. I bought an RM30 top-up to get this cashback:
Overseas Shopping — AliExpress
Sometimes if you want to get things in bulk at the lowest price, you have little choice but to buy directly from wholesalers in China.
That’s why AliExpress is awesome, where you can buy products directly from the manufacturer at wholesale prices.
I usually get supplies for my Airbnb business and also replacement parts for my cleaning equipment.
I use Kaercher brand vacuums and steam cleaners. Being the German brands that they are, their spare part prices are sky-high.
With a little bit of Googling, I found out the manufacturer of their spare parts in China and was able to buy from them directly at a much lower price through AliExpress:
Here are the cashback for my AliExpress purchases:
Not bad. But these are just how I spend my money. There are so many other ways that you can earn cashback:
Full List of E-Commerce Websites that Work with ShopBack
There’s a whole spectrum of E-Commerce websites that works together with ShopBack.
Here’s other online shopping that you can earn cashback through ShopBack:
- Shopping for cosmetics
- Purchasing online bus tickets
- Buying new tires for your car online (of all things)
- Getting grocery delivery
- Buying books online at Kinokuniya
- Online flower delivery
The possibilities are endless, so make sure you visit Shopback’s website and app before you make any online purchases.
Click here to sign up for Shopback & get RM5
When & How Can I Withdraw from ShopBack?
You can’t withdraw your earned cashback right away. I’m not sure the exact day number, but for me, It’s typically after three months of my purchase.
Three months? That’s so long! Why does it take so long to get my cashback?
When you purchase an item (e.g., Lazada), most websites provide some return policy.
Assuming you don’t have any issues with your orders and don’t make any returns, Lazada will confirm with Shopback that you have received your items and have been over the return policy.
To be safe, that is why one of the main reasons it takes so long.
Here’s my cashback withdrawal history after waiting three months from the day I made my purchase:
How do I Get ShopBack?
There you go, a comprehensive review of the ShopBack app and website to earn cashback from online purchases.
If you find this helpful, click here to sign up, and you’ll get RM5 to kickstart your cashback journey
Originally published at https://balkonihijau.com.
