Greetings,
Firstly I would like to request cashback employees who post on here regularly to refrain from posting as I do not want the thread going off-topic like every other discussion recently has. I would like what to know what the general population of the website thinks.
What is a cashback site?
As you know you click on an affiliate link on the cashback site that redirects you to the online store, upon loading into the store the website places a cookie on your browser to track your shopping/viewing habits within the store. Generally this is no big deal as most links these days are tracked for analytical purposes.
We'll use eBay for an example. If a user buys a digital camera using an affiliate link from a cashback site the affiliate will receive up to 70% of the final fee (there is also bonuses for the affiliate if the user has not bought anything for a year). However in order for someone to use the affiliate link they'll give you an incentive, say 1.3% out of the potential 70% they receive. As most of the time these links are hidden and not seen by the end user.
Like every affiliate program out there you cannot simply buy one item and then withdraw your earnings, they are actually normally set to a specific amount where in most cases the end user will never reach the withdrawal minimum which means the affiliate will keep your earnings. So after handing over your data to another party you might not even get anything out of it, unless you spend a great deal of money through that affiliate then which you should receive your money if the deals are tracked successfully.
The issue I have with these programs being blasted on here is that in the real world the affiliate (rewards sites) have to actively advertise their services to they get paid, and we know that costs money. But what if you could use a website that is community driven by a large number of users and post your affiliate links there and make a killing? That's something that would never happen anywhere else but here.
The other issue I see is as an example would be if I was to sign up to say banggood's affiliate program and post a link here with a deal, my post would be either deleted or edited with the affiliate link removed because this is against the rules. However for an employee of a cashback site that is paid by sharing these links allowed to do this here with no issues at all. I get some of these people bring a lot of traffic to the site by posting good deals, I'm not knocking that but turning a blind eye to it seems strange to me. There is potential money to be made?
I personally would rather see the owners of this site replacing all outbound links with their own referral links and see that money kept inhouse for the OzBargain community to grow and pay the bills instead of the community being taken advantage of with cash reward sites.
I love to know what the community thinks by responding to the poll and if possible how much have you withdrawn using these sites (if anything)?
Thanks
TLDR: Cashback companies using OzB for free advertising and giving nothing in return to OzB.
edit: price -> fee, regardless of amount commission is still earned whether it's 2% or 70%.
I agree with the money making aspect, that is, if someone is an 'employee' its ok to post, but an affiliate may not.
It currently seems that cashrewards has the monopoly here, especially given some members obvious affiliation with them.