Rakuten is an awesome cash back shopping platform that gives you cash just for shopping at your favorite companies. You don’t have to change anything that you’re already doing. There used to a company called Ebates that most people were familiar with but a similar company from Japan bought them out. Instead of keeping the Ebates brand, they brought over the Japanese name Rakuten. I think this was a mistake as it confused a lot of people. Perhaps as a result of this, they run specials where existing customers are rewarded for referring new customers. This bonus is usually $30 for both the old and the new customers but they sometimes increase this to $40 like they are doing now.
Rakuten couldn’t be easier to use. There’s no membership fee and nothing to cancel. Just sign up and either download a browser extension or go to Rakuten’s website to click through to the retailer you want to shop at. You’ll then earn cash back when your order is complete. They’ll either send you a check or pay you through Paypal. It’s free money! You still pay the retailer so you don’t have to give Rakuten your credit card.
Some people have asked if this is a legit company. Not only has it been around for decades, it’s also a publicly traded company. As reported by Forbes, they’ve recently teamed up with NBA champ Stephen Curry. Since it’s been around for so long, you can be sure that you’ll get paid out. Some people have made over $5,000 over the years with Rakuten.
Despite how easy this is to use, several people have told me that they just don’t have the time to deal with this. In fact, I’ve had about 40 people sign up and then just seemingly forget about it. I can’t believe so many people don’t want free money! A few people said that they had nothing to buy right now so I thought I’d write up this guide that will allow anyone to earn $50 in just 10 minutes with 3 easy steps.
Step 1 – Sign up for Rakuten by November 16, 2023
Use this link to sign up for Rakuten. Be sure to only use this link or else you won’t get the $40 bonus. Then click sign up. This takes at most two minutes. There’s not a lot to fill out and you could make this even easier by using your Google account to sign up if you like.
Again, there’s no membership fee or anything to cancel. If you want to stop using it, you just stop. It’s that simple.
The increased sign up bonus ends November 16, 2023 so be sure to sign up by then.
Step 2 – Make a purchase
You have to make a purchase of at least $40 within 90 days to get the increased bonus. This is what has tripped a lot of people up so if you want to just get this part over with ASAP so you make sure that you don’t forget about it, I suggest buying a gift card.
Go to Rakuten.com and search giftcards. You’ll see a few options such as GiftCards.com. Let’s click on that.
Then click on the purple “Shop Now” button. You’ll be brought to the GiftCards.com website.
You’ll see all different types of retailers from gas stations to restaurants to clothing stores. I suggest buying a multi-store gift card so you can use it at several different places. The One4all gift card is a nice choice.
While you’ll see different denominations, you can create a custom giftcard so just type in $40. You can send this to yourself by email.
This takes just minutes. Check out and pay. You’ll get 1% back on this which is a whopping 40 cents but hey, it is still free money.
Rakuten will then see that you met the bonus criteria and you’ll be paid your $40 plus your 40 cents.
*Reminder, you don’t have to buy a giftcard. This is just for people that want to do this quickly.
Step 3
Message us (via our Facebook group) to let us know what you used our link and that you met the sign up bonus. We’ll need the email address that you used to sign up with Rakuten. From there, we’ll verify that Rakuten has reported this to us and then we’ll send you a $10 Target gift card by email!
The balance of the sign-up bonus to us will be donated to charity. In 2023, we donated all of Rakuten sign up bonus to the Red Cross for disaster relief efforts.
That’s all it takes! You earned $50.40 for just about 10 minutes worth of work. While I encourage you to continue to use Rakuten (we get nothing extra if you use it or not) you are free to forget about it forever if you’d like.