How Does Ibotta Make Money? Learn How Ibotta Works

If you use cashback apps, you’ve likely heard of Ibotta by now. We like Ibotta because of its ease of use and bonuses that could stack to get you a big chunk of your spending back. Ibotta pays you for grocery shopping as well as buying household goods, office supplies, prescriptions, clothing, and even eating at restaurants.

Many people wonder how Ibotta works and how they make money when it’s a free app. If you’re thinking about using an Ibotta referral to earn some cashback, here’s what you need to know about how it works.

What is Ibotta?

Ibotta is a cashback app that works as an affiliate marketer. If you’ve ever bought a product or service from a blogger’s link, you’ve bought from an affiliate marketer. All it means is the blogger earned a small commission from the company that sold the product because you clicked on their link.

Ibotta works on the same premise, just on a much larger scale. Ibotta has paid out over $980 million to date and has offers from over 1,000 retailers. To date, Ibotta has $92.9 million in funding and 35 million members.

How Does Ibotta Make Money?

Ibotta is a completely free app or browser extension. Members can download the app and shop on their phone or download the browser extension and shop online, in addition to shopping in-store and uploading their receipt.

Ibotta pays users rebates for buying certain products and they even pay an Ibotta referral bonus for referring friends or family to the platform.

So how do they make money?

Like we talked about above, Ibotta is an affiliate marketer. They partner with retailers, restaurants, and venues that pay Ibotta a commission for every customer they send them.

Ibotta sends stores and venues customers by having them join Ibotta and shopping via the Ibotta app or using the Ibotta extension. It’s like a referral fee that retailers and other companies send Ibotta. This is becoming a popular way for companies to market their products and services since so many companies and even bloggers have made a name for themselves and have millions of followers. Companies figure why not jump on that bandwagon and pay the affiliate a small commission?

That’s how Ibotta makes money. The company pays them, and Ibotta pays its members a small percentage of this amount. This is what keeps users coming back and using Ibotta. The more users Ibotta has, the more money they make and the vice versa.

So while it looks like Ibotta is paying you, it’s really the companies paying Ibotta for marketing that pay you the cashback.

Other Ways Ibotta Makes Money

Affiliate marketing is the main way Ibotta makes money, but they make money in a few other ways too.

Referral Program

The Ibotta referral program pays you (and other members) for referring friends and family. While this is a way for you to make money, Ibotta makes money too. The more people you refer, the more money they make from retailers.

The more members they have, the more people there are making purchases and the more commissions Ibotta earns. This is why the Ibotta refer a friend bonus is a healthy one – $10 for every friend/family member you refer and there’s no limit to the number of bonuses you can earn.

Signing up with an Ibotta referral code is really advantageous for both parties. So, if you want to sign-up with Ibotta and you’re looking for an Ibotta referral code, visit this Ibotta referral article to get a $30 FREE sign-up bonus.

Advertising

When you’re in the Ibotta app or in your dashboard online, you’ll likely see advertisements. This is another way Ibotta makes money. Companies pay them for advertising space on their sites. Since most people join Ibotta for their shopping habits, it makes sense to have advertisements that pertain to you right on your dashboard.

Ibotta makes money off the advertisement either as a flat-fee service or on a pay-per-click basis.

Selling Data

Ibotta claims they don’t sell your information to third parties, but certain areas of their Privacy Policy show the categories Ibotta may sell your information. It’s not the main way they make money, but diversifying their income is how they stay in business, and selling data is a small part of their revenue.

How Does Ibotta Work?

Now that you know how Ibotta makes money, here’s how you can use it to make money for yourself.

To become one of the members who make yourself and Ibotta money, here’s what you need to do.

First, decide how you’ll use Ibotta. You have two options – on your mobile phone or as a browser extension. Either way, you must download Ibotta to start money.

1. Create an Ibotta account

You need an Ibotta account to make money using it. Click here to sign up. All you need to provide is your name, email, password, birthdate, zip code, and referral code (optional).

2. Choose how you’ll use Ibotta

If you’ll shop on your phone, download the Ibotta app. If you’ll use it online, download the browser extension in either Chrome or Firefox. If you shop both ways, download both. There’s no cost for either one, so why not maximize your chances of earning cashback?

The mobile app requires a little more effort from you than the browser extension. To use the app, you must log into it and shop through the app rather than the retailers’ app or direct website. If you don’t go through the app, you won’t earn the cashback no matter where you shop.

If you use the browser extension, it alerts you any time you navigate to a website that Ibotta offers a rebate. You can choose to activate the offer, and if you do, you’ll automatically earn the rebate when you make the purchase.

3. Add your loyalty cards

If you have store loyalty cards, you can load them on your Ibotta app. This makes it a lot easier to claim offers and earn your cashback. Rather than uploading your receipt or risking forgetting to do it, you can link your favorite stores’ loyalty card.

When you make a purchase, Ibotta automatically knows about it and will credit your account with the rebate within 48 hours.

4. Choose your offers

Before you shop in-store, you must activate your offers. This is the tedious part of using Ibotta. This is mostly for in-store offers at the grocery store, but any in-store purchase must be activated before you go.

If you shop online, you only have to make sure you’re using the Ibotta extension or shopping through the app to get your offers.

If you’re in the store and realize you forgot to check your offers, you can use the Ibotta in-app scanner to check if the products you’re buying qualify for a rebate. If so, it automatically saves the offers so you can earn money back.

5. Buy the products

Once you save your offers or are shopping in the app or extension, it’s time to shop! Buy your products as you normally would and check out the same way. You don’t have to do anything with Ibotta at checkout.

It’s after you buy the products that you must let Ibotta know about the purchase. This only applies to in-store purchases at stores without a loyalty card linked to Ibotta. For these purchases, you must upload your receipt to prove you purchased the products.

6. Get your money back

The final step is to claim your cashback. You can cash out once you accumulate $20. From there, you can withdraw cash in any increment as long as it’s over $20. You can withdraw your earnings using your PayPal or Venmo account. It takes only a few seconds to set it up and receive your cash.

Other than these, there are more things you can do to earn more cash with Ibotta actually. Read 10 tips to earn more cash back with Ibotta to maximize your earnings.

What Stores Pay Ibotta a Commission?

Ibotta works with over 1,000 stores to earn members and themselves a commission on sales. They work with some of the most commonly shopped stores like Walmart and Target. You can even get cashback doing your grocery shopping online through Walmart Grocery.

They also work with specialty retailers including Cabela’s, Lowes, The Home Depot, Sephora, and Gap.

Bottom Line

Use an Ibotta referral to start your Ibotta membership and start earning cashback on your purchases. When you use the Ibotta refer a friend link, you become a part of a team. Ibotta sometimes offers team bonuses, making it easier for you to earn even more bonuses.

The bottom line is that it’s easy to earn money from Ibotta and they are a legit company. They make money from the companies that advertise with them, so it’s one big circle that everyone creates so everyone earns commissions and/or cashback on their purchases.

If you haven’t read our Ibotta review yet, now is the time to get more ideas about the platform. Read our thoughts about Ibotta in our Ibotta review and see if it’s really worth your time this 2021.