If you are like most people, including myself, then you would like to save money or earn points and miles when making purchases online. Basically, you want to make the most of every dollar that you spend.
One of the best ways to get the most bang for your buck is by using shopping portals. By purchasing your items through the portal, you can earn extra cashback, credit card points, or travel miles/points.
The problem most people have is knowing what shopping portal is the best to use for their needs at the time. This is where Cashback Monitor can help. The site tracks nearly 50 shopping portals. It is a one stop shop in knowing what portal is the best.
In this post, I want to share how to use Cashback Monitor. I also want to show you some advanced features that can help when you are trying to maximize the dollars that you are spending.
What is a Shopping Portal?
A shopping portal is a site that offers you cashback or bonus points/miles when you go through them first before making a purchase at an online store.
The portal makes their money from the store by earning a commission when a person uses their portal. The portal then gives a certain percentage of their earnings back to a customer for using their site in the form of cashback, points or miles.
How Does CashBack Monitor Work?
Cashback Monitor is a site that does all of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to tracking shopping portals. They track nearly 50 cashback sites or shopping portals so that you don’t have to.
All it takes is just a few clicks to see what portal is offering the best cash back or points/miles offers.
Before Using a Portal
When using a cashback portal, you need to have an account set up. You can do that once you go to the site from Cashback Monitor. The same is true if you want to earn travel miles/points.
If you want to use a portal to earn credit card points, you need to have a credit card from the bank to be able to use their portal. For example, if you want to use the Chase portal. You need to have a credit card that earns (UR) Ultimate Rewards points.
How to Use Cashback Monitor
Once you visit the site, there will be two main categories on the homepage. The first column displays the “Most Viewed Stores” which gives you what are the most popular stores being searched for that day.
The second column is “Stores Sorted by Rewards”.which shows you the top rewards for stores estimated by the value of currency no matter if it is cash back, miles or points.
Even though you can browse stores and brands by reward type, the easiest way to do a search on Cashback Monitor is to type in the store that you want in the “Search Store Here” box.
It will then show you all of the cash back and points options available for that store.
The cashback and miles/points will be listed from highest to lowest in each column. It is then easy to see which one is the right fit for you.
You then can click on the shopping portal that you want to use. I clicked on RetailMeNot.
In the case of RetailMeNot, it is asking for you to sign up or sign in. Once you do either one it will then take you to the store. You will then shop like you normally do.
View Best Rate History
Cashback Monitor has a feature where you can view the history of the offers for a store that you want to shop at. All you need to do is click on the “View Best Rate History” which is under the store name.
There will be 4 rate history graphs that will be shown.
- Cashback
- Travel Miles/Points
- Credit Card Points
- Other Reward Points
The graphs will show you the bonus for each store over the last 15 months. These 4 graphs are for Petco.
You can hover over the graph and it will show you the amount of the bonus, the date it was offered and what site offered it. As you can see for cashback, the highest rate was at the end of November during Cyber Monday.
This information can help you decide if you want to purchase the item(s) now or wait for a better offer.
How to Track Portals
If you like to use certain portals over others, you can customize the portal to show the ones that you like to use.
First, you need to sign into the site. Next, click on the My Monitor tab. It will take you to the following screen where you can choose 8 of your favorite portals to track.
You also have the option to select specific stores that you want to track.
Once you add preferred portals and stores, you’ll see the rates under the My Monitor tab.
You’ll still see the best possible rate even though it isn’t one of the portals that you chose. So, if you want to see what portal is offering the best rate you can always check it.
How to Set Alerts
To make your experience even more streamlined, you can set alerts for specific stores and receive emails when the store reaches a certain number in a specific shopping portal.
So, if a store that you are monitoring is offering triple points you will be alerted about the deal that is going on.
Set Your Own Points Values
If you are into travel, credit card, and reward points, you know that they aren’t all created equal. Cashback Monitor allows you to customize the values of each one of these.
If you aren’t sure of the value of certain programs, there are a number of different sites that have values for travel points and miles. The following sites offer points values.
After you set the values, make sure that you hit the Save button.
Once you have the defaults changed to the values that you want, the My Monitor will show each result as a percentage with the new value factored in.
Final Thoughts
If you are into getting the best deals without a lot of work, then Cashback Monitor is a site that you will want to use. The site helps streamline the process for you when searching for the best deals in shopping portals. So, give it a try and I think you will agree it is the way to go when it comes to shopping online.
If you want to learn more about travel, saving on travel, and credit card points and miles make sure to check out my blog Travelwidstom.
