Cashback Sites

A number of affiliates run cashback sites where a user, let’s call him Bob can sign up to the cash back site and then Bob does all his online shopping via affiliate links and the cash back site would share some of the commission with the Bob and keep some for themselves.

On on hand this is a great “everyone wins” type scenario where Bob saves a few percent on his shopping and the affiliate keeps a return customer instead of having to find new customers every time. The affiliate network is happy to see consistent sales and all in all it’s a good business model.

I can appreciate that some merchants aren’t always going to be too happy about it though. If Bob regularly bought from Comet anyway but can now do it at a 2% discount everytime there is no reason for him to go direct and once the cash back site keeps it’s share and the network get their over ride then every sale probably costs Comet 5%. However overall I think the new business more than makes up for the slight cost on repeat sales.

I noticed some interesting twists on the concept when reading Springwise where it discusses a French cashback site called Cashstore.fr. French Bob would use an @cashstore.fr email address when he was shopping with participating merchants and I’m sure this is easier than trying to track sales using epi, sid, clickref etc. Also the members of the site can form teams and each time one person in the team buys something the others are rewarded too. This would certainly encourage French Bob to tell his friends and family and help the idea spread virally. I wonder which UK cash back sites will be first to offer similar features?