It just occurred to me that in my ‘Making my budget better’ post 
below, I went on about Quidco but a lot of people might not have
heard of Quidco or know how it works so I thought I should let you know!
About a year ago now, I signed up to a cashback website called Quidco and I have earned about £600 so far. I love Quidco and I am sure that you will too.
Basically, Quidco is a website who pay you cash back on your online spending. The amount that you will earn varies depending on how much you are spending, the product and the company. They work with hundreds, if not thousands of different websites to give you the chance to earn extra money on your spending.
If you have a look through their merchant directory and I guarantee you will be surprised at the companies who you can use.
Heres what to do to sign up to Quidco
* Register for a free account at http://www.quidco.co.uk/ It is completely free to register and Quidco only charge you their £5.00 membership fee when your earnings exceed £5.00 and even then they just claim the fee from your earnings before they pay you.
* When you find something that you want to buy online, go to http://www.quidco.co.uk/ and search through the merchant directory to find the merchant you want to use, then click the link through to your selected site.
* You will then be taken to the merchant’s website, everything will look exactly the same but the merchant will know that you have been sent to them by Quidco and will arrange to pay them the relevant amount of cashback following your purchase.
* You can then go back to Quidco and track your cashback, you can do this on the ‘Earnings’ page. It can take up to 7 days for any cashback to show in your Quidco account as tracked and it can take up to 3 months for the money to be paid to your bank account.
There are loads of ways that you can maximise your Quidco earnings:
* When you have registered, click on the Quidclans tab in the top right corner and look down the list of Quidclans for one of the no spend clans. There are loads of offers on Quidco that don’t involve you making a purchase or spending any money and the no spend clans will update you with all of thes offers. I have been paid £7.00 to look at my credit file and £4.00 to order a kitten pack from Whiskas.
* Make sure you always renew your car and home insurance through companies using Quidco. I always check on a website like http://www.moneysupermarket.com/ to find the cheapest price first and then look on Quidco to see if the cheapest few companies offer cashback. You tend to find that the cashback on insurance is higher than on purchases and is usually between £50 and £120.
* Switch utilty companies through Quidco; again, use a comparison website to establish the cheapest company for your needs and then use Quidco to make the switch. I find that this means that I am getting paid to switch to a company who will work out cheaper for me. I do this about once a year and I review my gas and electric provider, my telephone provider and my internet provider.
**If you use a comparison website it is a good idea to clear the cookies on your computer before going back on to Quidco to click through to the merchant.**
If you haven’t used Quidco before, you might think it sounds a bit too good to be true and wonder what the catch is but really, there isn’t one. I have been using it for a year now and am really pleased with the money that I have earned.
