[Updated Method] How to Refer Friends to the new Ebates – Membership Rewards Program

[Update 3/5/19: Based on mine and Walter’s experiences (and our email conversation), it seems the method described below will not work. The correct method to get referral credit is to have the new member use your ordinary Ebates referral link (not the deep-link idea mentioned below), then tell them to type into the URL bar ebates.com/american-express (with the hyphen) and they’ll proceed to signup for the new Ebates-MR account. The Ebates cookies will retain your tracking information and you should see the referral tracked in your Ebates account within minutes. Big thanks to reader Walter for his help on this. Here’s my ordinary Ebates referral, thanks to anyone who uses it.]

[Update: Multiple data points (1, 2) suggest this will work properly to trigger the referral bonus.]

Original Post:

Ebates has a sweet referral program which offers $25 for each friend you refer. When the new Ebates – Amex Membership Rewards program began earlier this month which allows us to earn points instead of cashback, I couldn’t find any way to refer friends to that site since the referral link found in Ebates leads to the standard cashback version of Ebates.

Today, I realized that Ebates referrals links actually have deep-linking capabilities whereby you can affix the referral code to any Ebates page, not limited to the main signup page. For example, if you want to refer a friend to Ebates due to their terrific in-store cashback program, you can find the link for Ebates in-store cashback and affix your referral link to that page.

Using deep-linking, one can easily refer a friend to the new points version of Ebates. The URL for the new Ebates site is: https://www.ebates.com/american-express. Simply add your referral code (find your referral link here) at the end of the hyperlink and it’ll bring your friend to the points version of Ebates, along with tracking your referral. The link should look something like this:

https://www.ebates.com/american-express?r/johndoe

The bonus for the new member remains the same, and hopefully these referrals will track back to the referrer and get you a referral credit. It’ll take some time until we have confirmation either way, please let us know in the comments if you have a data point. Do not leave referrals in the comments of this post.