We all spend money every day. We buy food, drink, clothes, cosmetics, CDs, DVDs, books… we buy all kinds of good stuff. And if you’re anything like me, buying stuff makes you happy. Buying something you really want is a great feeling—especially if you’ve been saving up for it. The only problem with buying stuff is that it costs us so much of our hard-earned cash! Wouldn’t it be good if you could make the same purchases, but get paid for it? It’s be like free money, right?
It turns out that this magical idea—getting paid to spend money—is actually a reality. Let me say that again: you can earn lazy money by spending! In fact, this is a key part of the fifth pillar of lazy money: save on new purchases.
The Idea Behind Cashback and Coupons
Cashback and coupons are two of those things that sounds too good to be true, but it is actually a good deal for both consumers and business. The idea behind it is actually pretty simple!
Businesses advertise, and they spent good money trying to attract new business. The money to pay for this advertising is skimmed off sales, and this little bit of reinvesting can help businesses bring in more customers. It’s a happy cycle for them.
But advertising is expensive. It costs a whole lot of money to put up a billboard, or an advert on telly, or even for pay-per-click advertising online. And how many of the people looking at that billboard, watching that advert, or clicking on the link will ever actually spend their hard-earned cash? This kind of advertising is not just expensive; it can also be pretty inefficient.
For big business, there’s a better way. These days, they can effectively outsource the advertising, get someone else to do the work for them. They offer to pay a set reward for each new customer they get sent, which means that they get sent a whole bunch of new customers and only have to pay for the ones that spend money! In effect, they only pay for the advertising that worked!
Now, at some point, a few smart people came up with an amazing idea: passing on the referral reward to the customer. By offering to give some or all of the referral reward directly to the customers, these smart guys could attract more customers than ever! The traffic they commanded grew massively, so the big businesses gave them even more money.
Customers got paid, referrers got paid, and businesses got new customers! Everyone mades more money, and everyone was happy. Genius. “Cashback” was born.
Now there are loads of websites partnered with thousands of businesses, and virtually everyone offers cashback when you agree to spend your hard earned cash with them.