To wrap up our Online Edition of Thrift Week, I'd want to introduce you to a site that could be a toddler of a type from all of the others. Most of the Web internet sites I've covered within the beyond week had been websites that might save you cash. MyPoints.Com, by comparison, is a internet site that can help you earn extra money. Not very loads, and no longer very speedy, but it doesn't take a bargain time, each, and it may now and again help you find savings inside the manner.
MyPoints.Com is what is known as an associate marketer. The way it clearly works is, at the same time as you need to buy a few aspect, in preference to going at once to the provider issuer's Web internet web page, you link there through MyPoints. It has a community of investors in a massive variety of classes?Which includes garb, restaurants, and electronics?As a manner to deliver the net web page a kickback for each purchaser it steers their way. MyPoints, in flip, will kick part of that kickback again to you, inside the form of
A down side is that the site usually does send you gift cards through the mail rather than electronic codes—so after you cash in points, you have to sit around for a few weeks waiting for your card to arrive before you can use it. (And if you're an eco-friendly type like me, you then have to fret over what to do with the plastic card, which isn't coded for recycling. I've got a whole stack of these things tucked away while I try to figure out some way to reuse or recycle them.) Even if you do opt for an e-certificate, you may have to wait up to a week for the payment to show up in your inbox. So unfortunately, you can't wait for a great sale to pop up on one of your favorite sites and then cash in points for that specific site; by the time you get your reward, the sale might be over.
Now, it might seem that, for us ecofrugal types, who don't do a lot of shopping, the benefits of a site like MyPoints are limited. After all, if you only get points for buying things, then someone who doesn't buy a lot will take a long time to accumulate enough points for a reward. However, although shopping is the quickest way to earn money through MyPoints, it isn't the only way. There are several others, including:
- Sign up to receive e-mails from MyPoints partners. Yes, this is basically volunteering to receive spam—but since you have to deal with a certain amount of spam anyway, why not get paid for it? I get about three of four of these e-mails in my box every day, and one or two of them will be "gimme" e-mails, which will give me five points just for clicking on a link to the company's website. I'll also occasionally get an offer that's worth more points, maybe 10 or 15, just for printing out a coupon or filling out a quick survey. The rest of the e-mails require you to actually buy something in order to get points, so those I just delete.
- Fill out surveys at the MyPoints SurveyZone. I also receive e-mails from MyPoints with survey offers, but even if you're not keen to have your inbox invaded, you can just visit this area of the site any time you have a little time to kill. Typically, you can get about 50 points for completing a survey, although some longer surveys offer more. However, you won't be able to complete every survey you start; the majority of the ones I attempt screen me out within a minute or two because I don't fit into the target group. (Often this is because of my ecofrugal habits, like not going to the movies.) However, I still get a consolation prize of 10 points for attempting a survey that I can't complete, so this is a good way to rack up 50 points or so during a 15-minute break.
- Do searches with the MyPoints toolbar. This is a little app that you can download and use in place of Google or your preferred search engine. The difference is that hits from MyPoints partners will show up at the top of your search results. This can actually be handy when you're shopping online, since it makes it easy to find the sites where you can earn additional points for buying. But you can still get points for searches even if you never click on any of the results. You get 100 points for downloading the toolbar, 10 points for doing more than 10 searches in a given month, 50 for doing more than 25, and 100 for doing more than 40. (The toolbar doesn't work with all browsers; I had to quit using it when I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome.)
- Download and print coupons. These are the same coupons found at Coupons.com, but if you print them out from the MyPoints site, you'll get 10 points every time you cash one in.
- Invite other users to join the site. They'll give you 25 points for each person who joins. Both you and your friend get a 750-point bonus the first time your friend makes a purchase (of at least $20) through the site, and you continue to earn a bonus of 1 point for every 10 points your friend earns. I have never taken advantage of this feature myself, as I have a strict policy of never spamming my friends, but I can see how it would be a good way to rack up some quick points. If you sign up 10 friends and each one makes a purchase right away, that's $7,750 points—enough for a $50 gift card—right off the bat.
Now if only I could cash in MyPoints for a Costco membership, I could really kill two birds with one stone....
