How We Make Money

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Cash Back Specialist is free to read. Here is exactly how we earn money, and the rules that keep that money from changing what we tell you.

Where our money comes from

  • Credit card partners. Once we are approved by card affiliate networks or issuers, we may be paid when a reader is approved for a card after clicking a link on this site. Payment is typically per approved application.
  • Cash back sites and apps. Some links to Rakuten, TopCashback, BeFrugal, Capital One Shopping, Ibotta and Fetch are referral or affiliate links. If you join through one and meet the program’s terms, the company may pay us a bonus, and you often get a sign-up bonus too.
  • Advertising. We show ads served by Google AdSense. Ads are labeled and kept out of card comparison boxes.

What partners can and can’t influence

Compensation may affect which products we write about and where and in what order product links appear on a page. It never changes our ratings, the facts we report, or our editorial opinion of a product. We include cards and sites we don’t earn money from when they are good choices, and we don’t cover every product on the market.

Our rules

  • Rates, fees and bonuses come from the issuer’s or company’s own website and show the date we checked them.
  • When we mention an annual fee or an APR, we show the card’s APR and fees together, or link to the issuer’s rates and fees page.
  • Paid links are marked with rel="sponsored" and disclosed on every page that has them.
  • We don’t buy ads that point to referral links, and we don’t bid on other companies’ brand names.
  • We never publish a rate or bonus we haven’t verified. If we can’t confirm it, the page says so.

Our disclosures follow the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides, which require that material connections, such as affiliate commissions, be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.

Read our advertiser disclosure and rating methodology.

Sources