Using Reward Sites to Earn Money – 52 Week Money Savings Challenge
Welcome to week 8 of the 52 Week Money Savings Challenge Week! This week’s deposit is $8, if you’re following along. Last week I talked about Ebates and using cash-back sites to save money while shopping online. This week, I’m going to chat about rewards sites. Why did I separate them? Well, Ebates is all about cash-back when making a purchase. The sites I’ll talk about below are places you can visit and either make a purchase through or do an activity like taking a poll, clicking an email, making a search, taking a survey, etc.
I’ll be honest here, using rewards sites can be a slow process and little return, so why am I even including them in this series? Because regardless of the slow process, if you stick with certain activities, you can earn cash and gift cards with little effort. I’ll share my favorite rewards sites with you that I keep going back to because of the little effort involved. When it comes to payouts, usually, a rewards site offers gift cards, memorabilia, sweepstakes and sometimes cash, so if you’re looking to earn cash-back or to increase your savings, don’t start with rewards sites. This is something I recommend as you have time, but they are not something I count on to help us out each month with our budget.
MyPoints – MyPoints has been around for a long time and frankly, I just love this one. I opted in to get the emails where all I have to do is click and I have 5 points awaraded to my account. Sometimes I go to the main site and participate in some other activities, as well as do some searches, but mainly, I just stick to the email clicking. It’s fast, simple and I can delete the email in seconds. Rewards start at 500 for donations and 1600 for gift cards. I do not do the surveys for MyPoints.
Swagbucks – Swagbucks probably offers the most activity variety of these sites (though MyPoints is very similar). You can shop through Swagbucks, take polls, play games, do internet searches, find codes, etc. It’s easy to use and can be a very rewarding site. Rewards include memorabilia, donations, gift cards and visa cards. The rewards start at 5 Swagbucks for donations and 500 Swagbucks for a $5 gift card. I do not do the surveys for Swagbucks.
YouGov – I like YouGov because although they just offer surveys, these aren’t the kind that drag on and on and on, only for you to be told after 10 minutes that you don’t qualify. The rewards start at 20K points and you receive 500 or 1000 points per survey. I opted into their “more” surveys and usually receive about 2 per week, maybe 3. The rewards for YouGov include memorabilia, donations, gift cards and visa cards.
How about you? Do you have a favorite reward site?
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I’m so glad to have you on this journey with me. I’m looking forward to each week and I hope these posts and the emails are not only helpful to you, but encouraging as well.
- If you are new and just now joining, subscribe to the weekly email and download your own copy of the 52 Week Money Savings Challenge printable. All current subscribers are entered into an Amazon drawing held at the end of the month.
- If you want to catch up on the reading of each week, go to our 52 Week Money Savings Challenge page and check out each week listed, as you’re able. Don’t worry about catching up on savings amounts unless you’re able to, just start with the current week and add extra if/as you’re able.
- Want to open an online bank account to help keep things separated? I personally use Capital One 360 and have for years. It takes a few days for transfers to complete if you’re using a local bank
Before we wrap up this week, I want to hear from you! 1) What are you most excited about in participating in this challenge? 2) What are your concerns or frustrations about setting money aside?
Ready for the year?
I do the email clicks through MYPOINTS but I mostly use Swagbucks. I occasionally do surveys- particularly the Gold ones. The easiest way to earn is to make “fake emails” and do some of the offers on Peanut Labs. Radium One wall also has a lot of 1 point offers that make earning go faster. Sometimes, if I have a few extra minutes, I’ll do Instagc (instant gift cards) on my phone or laptop. They work very similar to Swagbucks but the gift cards are instant. I like that they have Paypal too and you don’t have to earn very many points to cash out.
One of my 2020 resolutions is to save a lot of money so finding all these tips has been very useful for me! Right now I am benefiting a lot from reward referral schemes especially from the likes of Deliveroo and Uber for example. Referral Codes is where I suggest rewards sites as you can find many referral schemes from one place.