Ok, so it’s a little past the end of the year, but not too far past. I finally got around to tallying up all of the money I saved and earned as a result of coupons, rebates, loyalty cards, online surveys, eBay sales, cash back sites and blogging last year and I am pleased to report that I earned/saved a grand total of $4,875.05. The following is a breakdown of my savings…
I received $809.05 in the form of mail-in rebates, primarily from the Rite Aid Rebate Plus program along with a whole host of rebates I received from ‘Try Me Free’ stickers I found on the front and back of popular products. In addition to the mail-in rebates I received another $233.97 from various cash back websites including those that provide additional cash back for referring new members. I earned the most by far from Ebates referrals.
I earned $170 in gift cards from various survey sites. I selected four $25 gift cards to Macy’s, two $10 Shoppers Warehouse cards and one $50 gift card to Home Depot. I also earned $78 from Pinecone Research.
In total I sold $408.06 worth of unwanted items on eBay. The list included CDs, popular books and a hodge-podge of new and like new cooking supplies.
I earned nearly $900 in ad revenue from this blog. I have minimal advertisements, due the strict restrictions of BlogHer Ads, so I was quite surprised by that total. Thanks to this blog I also received a number of books, which were sent for my review and a handful of free household products, including a beautiful Le Creuset oval dish.
From January 1st through December 31st of last year I also saved $1395.97 using a combination of coupons and weekly sales at Giant Food and saved over $800 at CVS stores using sales, coupons and the infamous ECB program.
Lastly, I earned $80 worth of credit by referring readers to Groupon.com. Funny enough, when I posted about my success with Groupon I didn’t even know that the site provided referral credit. I just wrote a post to document my experience.
I must say that I am more than shocked that the total for all of these efforts reached $4,875.05 in savings. Each act in and of itself is very small. I earned a few cents back for purchasing something through Ebates. I saved a couple of dollars at the grocery store by matching sales with coupons and I earned a few dollars here and there by filling out online surveys. I had absolutely no idea that all of these tiny efforts would result in such huge savings.
I’m not certain how my numbers will compare this year. I have much less clutter and therefore much less stuff to sell on eBay. I think my Ebates referrals have nearly tapped out, I haven’t received a new referral credit in ages, and I’m not sure how much I will earn in ad revenue from this blog. Still I plan to continue clipping coupons, searching for sales and submitting rebates. You just never know how much it will add up to.
Wow! Could you do a post about how you are able to make so much from your blog? How do you get people to give you free stuff to review?
@me in millions – I've been contacted about all of my ads and freebies. I've never reached out to anyone, other than BlogHer, which pays very little. Just keep your posts and write about interesting topics and I bet you'll be contacted. At least that's the way it happened for me 🙂
Thanks for sharing your savings numbers with us. Did you actually put that money into a savings account or have it in hand? I am watching what I save in 2010 and whenever possible putting the cash into a jar instead of applying it elsewhere. I feel I have misused the word save by saying I saved 13.06 on groceries this week when I might not have bought some of the items if they had not been on sale or if I did not have a coupon for them. In that case did I really save any money? And if I did, what happened to the $13.06 I "saved"? For for thought for me this year.
@The Frugal Fraulein – I would say that most of this money was saved. I don't specifically move money from one account to the other, but overall I didn't increase my spending in other categories because I decreased it in others. So I'd have to say the majority of the money was actually saved.