Everything you need to know to get started with Ibotta
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Anyone who knows me knows that I hate to pay full price for anything if I don’t have to. I’m totally the person that will cut coupons, shop off sale racks, run towards clearance items, and of course use discount codes when shopping online. For the past 4 years, I’ve also been using the ibotta app and I have to tell you, if you’re not using it yet, you’re missing out!
What is ibotta?
If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what ibotta is, you’ve come to the right place! Ibotta is a cash back app that gives you actual cash back on tons of items that can be purchased from most major retailers, like Target and Walmart. The concept is pretty simple: check the app for any products you planned on buying, save the deal, submit your receipt, and get money back! If it sounds too good to be true, IT’S NOT!! I promise! I’ve been using the app for 4 years and have gotten back almost $450! While that may not seem like much, that’s a little over $100 a year in extra money, and really, it should’ve been more, I just haven’t always been as religious with the app as I wanted to be.
Want to find out how to get started with ibotta? Keep reading! And at the bottom, you can sign up with my referral link and get an instant $10 in your account!
Register
Registering for ibotta is super easy – you can either sign up with your email address or Facebook login information. I will tell you, my personal preference is to sign up using your Facebook login for a few reasons. Reason number 1 – you don’t have to remember ANOTHER password! When you sign up with Facebook, for all future logins, you just click “login with Facebook” and ibotta does some magic behind the scenes to log you in – it’s that easy! Reason number 2 to sign up with Facebook – your Facebook friends will already be connected to your “team.” This is actually a pretty important feature that I’ll get to later.
Find your first deal
Ok, so you’re all signed up. Now what? Now comes the fun part – finding your first deal.
Let’s start by setting your favorite retailer. From the home screen, you’ll navigate to the “Find Offers” screen by clicking the magnifying glass at the bottom. Then, you’ll see a cute little cactus with some money telling you that you don’t have any favorites. Click the box that says “Pick Some Favorites” to add your favorite retailers to your favorites list. For me, I’ve added Target, Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Meijer, and JOANN. Once you have your favorite retailers added, click the retailer you plan on shopping at from the “Find Offers” page.
Once here, take some time to scroll through all the options available just to get yourself accustomed to the type of cash back deals available. If you’re in a hurry and are shopping for something specific, you can filter by category. For example, if I’m planning on buying Nutella and I want to see if I can earn cash back, I’ll go to “Pantry” and scroll down. I can also go to the magnifying glass in the top right hand corner of the screen which will bring up the search bar. There I can search specifically for Nutella.
Once I find my Nutella deal, I simply click the plus sign to add my deal. Some deals may require you to watch a short 15-second video or answer a survey question in order for you to earn money back, but it won’t be all of them.
Go shopping
This is the easy part! On your shopping trip, pick up the items that you have saved cash back deals for. One thing I will caution you on: be sure the item is an exact match. Sometimes there are specific sizes or flavors that the deal applies to, so be sure to read the description. To make this a super easy process, you can use the barcode scanner within the ibotta app. To get to the barcode scanner, click on the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner, then click the picture of the barcode that appears at the end of the search bar. Then, you’ll scan the barcode of the item you want to check. If it’s a match, the item will come come up on the screen with a green check mark to let you know it’s a match. If it’s not a match, you’ll receive a message letting you know there are no product matches for cash back deals.
Scan Your Receipts
Once you’ve made your purchase and made your way home, it’s time to scan your receipts. Within the ibotta app, click the “Redeem” buttom at the bottom of the screen. The next screen will prompt you to select which store you’re submitting a receipt from. You’ll then be shown the store and date-range for which your receipt must match. Then you’ll hit “continue” on the screen which will open the camera. You’ll get the camera close enough that the receipt will fill your entire screen. Don’t worry if you have a long receipt, you can add multiple sections to ensure you get it all. Click “Take Photo” then “Add Section” if you have more to include. When you’re done, hit “finish.” Most of the time the deals you have saved will automatically be captured, but sometimes you’ll need to select which products you purchased that were on your receipt. Additionally, some can be redeemed multiple times, so you’ll have the opportunity to select how many of each item you purchased. Once you’ve done that, you’re done! Your money is on the way to your account!
Collect Your Money
You did it! You earned money with ibotta! 🙂 Now, it’s time to actually get that money into your bank account! There are a few different ways to get paid. You can do PayPal, Venmo, or select a gift card. There are several gift cards available, but to be honest, I’ve never understood why someone would choose a gift card that can only be used at a specific store when cash is an available option. If you’re one of those people, would you please enlighten me? I would love to understand this!
If you select Venmo or Paypal, you can get your money really almost instantly. With both options, you transfer your money to your PayPal or Venmo account, then from there, you transfer it to your bank account. Super easy! And this way, ibotta doesn’t have access to your bank account, so your information is more secure.
Make a little more
So, you thought that was it huh? Wrong! I’ve got one last tip for you, and that’s how you can make just a little bit more through ibotta.
First, remember the team members I mentioned above? Well, those team members will help you earn bonuses. Each month, there are team level bonuses in ibotta, meaning that if the entire team redeems a certain amount of deals, and you as an individual redeem a certain amount, you can get extra money! The Level 1 team bonus is usually only $1 or $2, but once you get that one, you can keep going for the month and possible earn even more. There are also bonus deals that you can get for buying a certain number of a product, a specific combination of products, or from an online retailer. If you pay attention to your bonus opportunities available on the “Bonuses” section of the “Account” page, you can easily earn an extra $5-$10 on top of your regular ibotta earnings!
The second way to make a little more is through referrals. A typical referral will earn you $5, but at various times of the year, that gets increased to $10 per referral. Additionally, ibotta offers referral bonuses, so for example, right now if you refer 3 people this month, you’ll get $5 for each referral AND a $20 bonus! And the best part of this, your friends that you refer get money too! When your friends join from your referral link, they’ll get $10 automatically deposited into their account!