- Starting a business
- Find business capital
- Tips on small business

Fancy making money just by shopping? That sounds too good to be true I know but it is possible if you do your online shopping through cashback sites.

Admittedly cashback sites don’t quite hand out money for nothing but they do give you money back on products that you buy through their sites. In fact, some will give you some money just for signing up with them, so you might as well sign up for those ones just for the free upfront cash.

The way they work is that cashback sites list retailers with which they have commission deals. The retailers give the cashback sites money any time someone clicks through to them and buys something. Then the cashback site gives some of that money back to you. Handy.

It’s easy to join cashback sites and start making money. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Choose a cashback site - or several

There are plenty around. Start with the sites that give you instant cash just by signing up such as Rpoints which gives £5 or Cashback Shopper which also gives you £5, and ecashback which gives you £2.50 immediately.

However, you can't take this money out straight away. They credit your account with this cash and you can only get your hands on it once you have used the site once or twice and more money has been credited to you.

Step 2: Look at the retailers

Have a look at the retailers on each cashback site and use the sites that have the most retailers you like. Also, see which sites give the most money for the different items or services. Top Cashback is good because it gives you all of the money which it gets from the retailers and doesn’t make an annual administration charge.

Practical Advice

- Starting up
- Finance and grants
- Employing people
- Exploit your ideas
- International trade
- Buy or sell a business

Step 3: Charity giving

Consider giving money to charity through cashback sites. The site Give or Take offers users the choice of keeping their cashback money or giving it to charity and they have just doubled the amount they are giving.

For example you (or your charity) could make up to £120 taking out car insurance through them (although make sure first that you can't get a better deal, even taking the cashback into account by shopping around on insurance comparison sites).

Tips

• Do make sure that you are getting the best deal. Getting 5% cashback on a £100 Hi-Fi System is not a good deal if you can get the same Hi-Fi System for £50 somewhere else.
• Look for goods and services on comparison sites first (like pricerunner or kelkoo) and once you’ve found the cheapest then look for it on the cashback sites and buy it there. You could save double money that way.
• Many cashback sites reward you for getting friends to use the site too. This is an easy way to make extra money while helping your friends save money. If you know that one of your friends wants to buy something big soon, get them on to these sites and make some extra money for yourself.
• Warning: DON'T buy things you don't need and DON'T use these if you're not disciplined in your spending.
• Set up a separate email account – just a free one with Yahoo or Hotmail would do – to receive emails from these sites alone. Some of them are terrible for spamming people who have registered so if you don’t want your proper inbox clogged up with annoying missives just give them this special email address.

There are loads of cashback sites to choose from. It’s up to you whether you sign up for them all or just the ones that you like best. Here are a few to choose from:

Top Cashback, Give or Take, Rpoints, Greasypalm, Mrscashback, Moneyback Madness, Cashback shopper, eDealsUK, Free Fivers and ecashback

Jasmine Birtles is from Money Magpie - the website that gives you a richer life