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Internet Loyalty Schemes

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One of the best options for making money through the internet, is to use one of the several loyalty schemes which reward you for using certain sites to carry out your shopping or for filling in surveys and making applications for more information. They do not cost you anything and you can generally limit the amount of emails sent to you and best of all, the loyalty rewards are not generally limited to a few obscure internet sites !! You do however, have to beware, that sometimes, it may be cheaper to shop around than purchase an item through a loyalty scheme, since the cheapest suppliers often have too low a margin to support any form of affiliate program - for example, DVD.co.uk is the cheapest supplier of DVDs and Playstation games that we have found on the internet, yet is not linked to by the majority of loyalty reward sites.

Luckily for those who do not have their own web-site (or the knowledge of how to set one up), you can also make money whilst you use the internet for shopping and general surfing. There are several programmes which allow you to do this, although the biggest on the internet appear to be Rpoints which award you loyalty points for purchases you make on-line (similar to Nectar and other loyalty card schemes) and theMutual.net.

All of these programs offer rewards on a wide range of internet resellers, including top brand names (Rpoints offers links to over 1900 UK websites, including Amazon, Dell, ebay , Tesco, Boots & John Lewis). These loyalty points can then be exchanged for cash, in much the same way as Sainsbury's Nectar and Tesco's Clubcard programs work. Rpoints is quickly becoming one of the main cashback sites, with higher returns than many others, and an easy to understand points scheme (1 point = 1p). Quidco is another popular site which is very similar to Rpoints, except that they charge an annual fee of £5 to be a member of their site. This fee, is however, deducted from your earnings for the year, therefore it will not cost you anything if you do not earn enough rewards. The other difference with Quidco is that you receive 100% of the commission for clicking through from their site, unlike Rpoints, which shares the commission.

The other key feature to look at is the rate at which you can earn loyalty rewards - for example, some of these programs offer a reward equal to an average of 2.5% of your shopping (although theMutual.net loyalty scheme includes some offers which give a reward equal to a whopping 25% back of your shopping, including purchases of mobile phones through the mobile republic site) - compare that with the .5%-1% which tends to be on offer by both Sainsbury's Nectar and Tesco's Clubcard.

This is certainly not an easy market to crack and for the consumer, you need to carefully look at each scheme and what is on offer. Alas theMutual.net is now starting to lose its market share - originally you could trade points received for shares in the company itself as an alternative to cash. This saw theMutual.net grow very quickly and increase its turnover dramatically. However, since merging with mutualpoints, theMutual.net now only allows you to trade your points for cash.

GreasyPalm is very similar to theMutual.net in the range of merchants it offers, but it has now introduced the option of registering your debit or credit card with them, and you will then earn cash back on certain offline partner stores, even if carry out your purchase on the high street. This is certainly an interesting idea, and as the site only stores details of your card number, the security aspect would seem acceptable.

Interestingly, Rpoints and GreasyPalm are the only sites which offer you points for joining and referring other people. The other sites no longer offer this facility or incentive - perhaps they believe that they are sufficiently well known.

Although Sainsbury's Nectar and Tesco's Clubcard schemes are probably the most popular loyalty card schemes in existence, they are both severely restricted on the number of partners with whom you can earn loyalty points and also where you can spend those points. That said, however, they both offer rewards based on approximately 1% of your shopping in-store (although both programs offer bonus points on certain purchases) and also provide financial products, such as credit cards, insurance and loans, on which you can earn loyalty points. Although the credit cards can be used to earn points wherever you spend using the credit card, you only receive points equivalent to 0.5% of your purchases. The clubcard scheme operated by Tesco has however, proved to be one of the best value schemes, whereby your loyalty rewards are now worth 4 times face value when redeemed through one of their partner programs (as opposed to spending your vouchers in-store). As an example, you can take out full RAC Roadside/Recovery and Onward Travel cover (but not Home Start) for £28.50 in Tesco clubcard points - a massive saving on the normal price of £114 and certainly the cheapest price we have been able to find anywhere for this sort of cover!! This alone could make it worth your while visiting Tesco for your weekly shopping (or using their excellent website).