Get Paid for Your Groceries with iBotta

(This article discusses a shopping app and includes referral links to it. You can read my policy on referral links here. As you’ll learn in the article when you use this referral link we both get paid. If you think the app is a good fit for you but you want to use a non-referral app try this link instead. Do what works for you; the important thing is that you come out further ahead financially each month!)

I once bought over 30 boxes of pasta from my local grocer whose jaw dropped when the entire lot rang up on the cash register for a whopping $0.00. At the very end of the “super couponing” heyday I had been working on a piece as a freelance writer about the phenomenon and part of the research involved learning how it was done and doing it myself to prove it was real. While it was a rush to clear out an entire shelf of spaghetti for nothing what I found was that the effort that went into super couponing was akin to a part-time job for a less-than-minimum-wage rate, produce was difficult to find ANY discounts on, and Big Data was putting an end to the consumer’s ability to pool information in an advantageous way to get their groceries for next to nothing. Recently I field tested a new method for gaining some of your grocery money back, an app that is a lot more convenient than the work that went into super couponing, gets literally every shopper some amount of money back from their groceries, and even offers discounts on produce. I’m talking about iBotta.

Big Data and You

Right about the time the TV show about super couponing reached its peak grocery stores began putting into place restrictions and “savings clubs” that impeded customers’ abilities to get really insane deals by stacking discounts together. If you want to shop at Safeway and get the best deals you need to read the weekly circular, load up their app, scan additional coupons from that app on top of the “club special” price you received, and add any manufacturer’s coupons on top of that. What Safeway and other large stores realized is that Data is king: learn as much as you can about a consumer and you can maximize the amount of money you convince them to spend with you. Large retailers have gotten so good, in fact, that Target once predicted a teenager was pregnant before she knew.

If you shop at Safeway, or Albertsons, or any of the dozen major grocery retailers in the United States (big box stores too!) they’re collecting as much data as they can about you to figure out how to influence your shopping habits. Fortunately for our pocketbooks, those retailers aren’t the only ones interested in knowing more about us and they’re willing to pay us cash to find out. Enter iBotta.

What is iBotta?

iBotta is an app that offers coupons and rebates to consumers for their purchase habits. You download the app, which is available for iPhones and Android devices, load the rebates you want, buy your groceries, scan your receipt, and when necessary scan the relevant items. iBotta sends you cash through Paypal or Venmo for the things you’ve purchased.

Why would a third party pay you for the shopping you do regularly? The primary business model of iBotta is partnering with the companies they’re paying rebates for to influence your behavior and getting a kickback for doing so. There are approximately 1,000 types of peanut butter available for purchase in the United States. A container of Jif brand peanut butter might cost $3 but be profitable to the manufacturer if it’s sold for $2. Working to reach iBotta’s customer base Jif offers a $.75 rebate through the app and pays iBotta $.25 for doing so. You buy the product for $2.25 after rebate, iBotta makes $.25, Jif makes $2, and you save over the price of the cheapest option of peanut butter which was on sale for $2.50.

Additionally iBotta makes money through advertising; sometimes to unlock a rebate iBotta displays an ad for a product or plays a small video. I would also assume they’re building a data-based picture of who you are as a consumer to better target you with deals that you’re likely to be interested in. Depending on how you feel about your privacy this may or may not be a dealbreaker for you. Just remember: your grocer is already building this information about you whether you like it or not. With iBotta you get a bigger cut of the profits by getting paid by an additional party for your data.

My experience with iBotta

Having found the world of super couponing too tedious even before it was put out to pasture by Big Data I was interested in giving iBotta a try to see what it offered. My experience so far has been pretty smooth. To date as we exit June I’ve earned about $100 for the year, a savings of about $17/month and a target savings of about $200/year if that trend continues. With the missus and me spending about $150/week on groceries we’re looking at a free week of groceries plus some spending money for Christmas come December thanks to spending we were doing already. Because the effort I put into iBotta is so minimal it’s a pretty “super” form of “couponing” for me.

So what are the pros and cons of using iBotta?

The Pros of iBotta

My favorite parts of the experience with iBotta so far, in no particular order:

·         Payment is pretty painless. Once you earn $20 you can have them deposit the money directly into your Paypal or Venmo account. The turnaround is pretty quick.

·         Bonuses! In addition to rebates on the products you buy every week iBotta also offers bonuses. You can work with family or friends who are using the app to combine your savings tally in an effort to unlock extra bonuses. They even offer bonuses for the spending you do in a normal month, allowing you to level up into more and more savings. For example in June I redeemed eight rebates on products I planned on purchasing anyway which unlocked the Level 1 bonus and earned me an extra $1.00. In March I unlocked a $10.00 bonus by redeeming fifteen rebates. The bonuses stack up quickly alongside your regular spending.

·         Any Item Rebates. Remember earlier when I mentioned one of the things I hated about couponing is that you can basically never find coupons for produce? Sure highly processed foods offer discounts on their corn and sugar gloop, but fresh food is an area Mrs. Stark and I like to splurge on high quality goods. Well iBotta has you covered there with “Any Item Rebates” that reward you for buying food from a category, regardless of brand. That means at various times over the year I’ve been paid for purchasing bananas, green peppers, salad, and even the “Any Receipt” rebate which pays you just because you went grocery shopping. This is what makes iBotta so much different from a store discount program: just the act of shopping makes me money back. And who isn’t going grocery shopping at some point this year?

·         You can get paid for referring your friends. If you think your friends or family would benefit by making money with iBotta, you can refer them directly through a special link provided by iBotta and when they sign up using that link they get a bonus too. In fact, here’s my link again right here so we canboth get paid.

·         It takes way less time than couponing. Every Wednesday when iBotta uploads its latest deals I take a quick scan through my preferred store brand, add the rebates that are relevant to me on the app, and then do my shopping. When I get home I scan the receipt, scan any barcodes from the products I bought required to get the rebate, and move on with my life. The app even has a scanner you can use in-store to make sure you’re buying the product that qualifies for the rebate.

·         Their customer service has been top notch. Twice I’ve reached out to the customer service department with issues on my purchases (rebates that were missing) and both times I got a response within 1 business day and the rebates were added to my account. Customer service is a bit of a lost art and I’ve been pretty satisfied with how seriously iBotta takes it.

The Cons of iBotta

·         Rebates can run out. Occasionally from the time I’ve loaded a rebate to the time I get the product home and my receipt uploaded a rebate program has run out of rebates available to consumers. This means I’m out of luck for that deal, but I mitigate this by making sure I only buy products I would buy anyway so I’m not actually out anything compared to not using the app.

·         Falling for the marketing. The goal of the companies offering discounts through iBotta is to influence your shopping habits to switch to their products. Your goal is to save as much money using the app as possible. That means price comparing a product with a rebate offer to the lowest cost product in that category that you’re comfortable purchasing. We shop for a lot of generic goods in my household because they’re typically of similar quality as name brand for much less (they’re often even manufactured by the exact same manufacturers!). I make sure I only load rebates for products we need whether there’s a rebate or not, and price compare for anything that might be close. Two examples from this week’s shopping trip: a $1.00 rebate on up to two pints of ice cream wound up being cheaper than the kind we normally get so I bought them while a $.25 rebate on cream cheese was still more expensive than the store brand so I stuck with my usual generic fav.

·         Any Item Rebates don’t count towards bonuses typically. The Any Item Rebates are awesome, rewarding you for spending you’re doing anyway and are one of the strongest reasons you should be using iBotta (not doing so is leaving money on the table!). However they typically are excluded from the bonuses meaning it can be harder to qualify for extra payouts because a lot of your spending will be on Any Item Rebates instead of brand names in a given month. I’ve never made it to a second level bonus in a month because I just don’t spend enough on rebates to make it happen and haven’t bothered joining a team of earners.

·         Minimum $20 withdrawal. While I’ve never had a problem getting paid by iBotta you do have to have at least $20 in your account before you can get anything back. That means if you earn $19.99 and decide to give up the app you get nothing for your efforts.

·         Depending on your work threshold it can be tedious. If anyone can be credited for teaching me frugality growing up it would be my mother. She was the queen of clipping coupons, double stacking with deals, and making sure she could stretch her budget to keep two little boys well fed and happy growing up in sometimes tough circumstances. When I mentioned I was trying iBotta she said she found the process of photographing her receipt and sometimes the UPCs of products too tedious and had given up the app to focus on her coupons. I’d rather use the technology on my phone than the old school method I find takes me more effort but your mileage may vary.

·         Buying the wrong product. A few times I’ve purchased the wrong product or not enough of a product and failed to qualify for a rebate. This is pretty annoying but because I only buy things we’re buying anyway I mitigate the harm a bit. Also I’ll confess after learning the app better this is mostly user error. The app has a handy scanner in it that will confirm the product you’re purchasing does qualify for the rebate you want right there in the store. Just press the button, hold your camera up to the bar code, and voila! You’ll know instantly if you’ve got the right product. Also make sure to read the rebate icons or the rebate itself closely so you know if you need to buy multiple products to qualify for the rebate. I’ve been tricked by that once but have since learned to pay better attention.

Final Verdict

I’ve been super happy with iBotta so far, though I recognize it’s not for everyone. I’m looking forward to doing our Christmas shopping with the money we’ve saved up from the grocery shopping we were going to do anyway (Ido love paying for Christmas in unconventional fashion!). The app itself is pretty slick and easy to use, rewards me for buying the things I’m buying anyway, and lets me get a bigger slice of the Big Data profits being made from analyzing my spending habits.

You can get startedwith iBotta here using my referral that nets both of us a bonus.

If you prefer this is anon-referral link.