Cashback malls: always get something back

Before buying something online, I always check if the store offers me a little something extra.  No, I'm not after a hug or a thank-you note.  I'm after cold hard cash.  This is above and beyond any coupons or credit card cashback.  Probably 80% of stores I shop at offer some kind of cash or frequent-flier-mile incentive, though there are some notable exceptions like Amazon.com.  For example, you can get:

• $3 from Orbitz
• 3% from Banana Republic (.com)
• 30% from Match.com
• 8% from TurboTax.com
• 8% from Shutterfly
• 5% from Circuit City (both online and in person via in-store pickup)
• $25 from T-Mobile.com (though as you smart readers know from yesterday's post, this benefit is more than offset by prices much higher than Amazon)
• 3% from Westin.com (if you're like me and spend $1,000/week on hotels for business, this really starts to add up)

Sites such as RewardsDB and evreward are fairly up-to-date resources that tell you how much cashback you can get at a particular store.  The path to money back is through cashback malls: sites that pay you a piece of their commission for your transaction.  For example, if you first click through the mall to shop at Office Depot, the mall pays you (say) 2% of your transaction, which is a portion of the commission that Office Depot pays to the mall (say) 4%.

There are probably hundreds of these, but the most trustworthy ones are:

• Fatwallet: This is a comprehensive cashback mall and community site (more on the community in a future post).  I have racked up close to $1000 in cashback from them via Paypal.  They have really great customer service whenever a transaction doesn't quite go through (for me, less than 10% of clicks).  Fatwallet would be my recommendation.
• Ebates: Extensive cashback site that sends money back your way quarterly via Paypal (or paper check).  They will even give you a $10 gift card (or $5 cash) for signing up and using it once.  If you use robdeals at yahoo dot com in the referral box, you will be doing this site a favor.
• Credit card malls: Cashback credit cards such as Discover, Citibank, and Chase have similar but sometimes less rewarding programs.  These malls pay you within their existing cashback programs (e.g. Citi Dividend).

In addition, if you are a traveling point hound like myself, you can choose to earn frequent flier miles from all the major airlines for the same purchases (I generally value a mile at about a penny):

• United: Mileage Plus Mall
• American: Aadvantage eShopping
• Delta: SkyMilesShopping
• Northwest: WorldPerks Mall
• Continental: ShopOnePass

Note about marketing on this site: I will occasionally post links that have commissions (for me) embedded.  The reason being that I hope one day to cover the costs of running this website.  There are two points I want to make early on: (i) unless you are extra lazy, you should click to a cashback site so that you earn the commission instead of me and (ii) unlike many other sites, I won't post only deals that earn me a commission -- I will post the best deal for you to maintain editorial integrity.