You may remember in an earlier edition of Insider’s Edge I talked about cashback sites: how they work and which are the best ones.

You can see my original article here if you missed it first time round:

How to use cashback sites

I thought I’d revisit this and let you know how I was getting on.

So far I’ve saved just over £70 using TopCashBack and that’s just from 8 clicks. Here’s a screen grab of my account to show you it in action:

This also gives you a insanely boring insight into my buying habits… a train ticket to Birmingham, a mobile phone contract… a subscription to a photography magazine, some speakers.

Back to the chart. The ‘pending’ and ‘confirmed’ columns show the money I’m owed, waiting to be transferred by the vendor. This usually takes about 6 weeks to 3 months. I actually quite like this lag. You don’t have to do anything or monitor it, the money just pops into your account eventually and it’s a nice surprise when it does.

A friend of mine made a very good point about cashback sites recently. He said:

“Yeah it sounds good but I can’t be bothered with all that”.

He’s got a very good point!

I’ve tried using two cashback sites at the same time (TopCashBack and Quidco) and I’ve come to the following conclusion. Both sites are excellent, both work, but if you’re anything like me you won’t have the patience to keep checking which site is offering the better deal at any one time.

That’s why I recommend using one and sticking to it. I personally use TopCashBack because at the moment they guarantee the best rate of cashback (and I also like the interface) but Quidco are also very good.

Either way, my recommendation is to focus on one and keep the site saved in your bookmarks (or on your browser toolbar) so that you have instant, easy access and it becomes habit.

This really is money for nothing…

Once you’re in it’s dead simple, you literally just click. Just type in the name vendor you want to buy from in the search (e.g. Tescos, Expedia, iTunes, whoever) and then click the link to the site they provide you with.

That’s all you have to do because they track the purchase in the background. You don’t have to fill in any forms each time or anything like that (apart from your initial, free registration). You just click a link and then buy on the site as normal.

I’ve found that the best deals on there are for things like insurance, mobile phone contracts, car rental and travel. Often they’ll give you a bumper payment of £20… £50 or a £100 rather than just a percentage.

There’s virtually no effort involved in this and it really could save you a good few hundred quid a year. Well worth doing.