Being Paid to Shop?

If you’re like me, the money in your wallet needs to stretch further than a five-year-old’s imagination. Money’s tight so when a new website springs up guaranteeing untold riches for clicks I’m one of the first to sign up. There are several search sites/engines that offer incentives for you to search through them, yet not all of them are the grand source of splendor and riches they claim to be. Others… well they’re pretty darn close to greatness but do have a few catches. Here is a list of some of my favorites… and a few of those who fall short of spectacular:
  Swagbucks.com Swagbucks is a great site, if not one of the best, for collecting gift card points. They award points with daily web searches, watching videos and filling out surveys. They also offer additional “swag codes” that give you extra bonus points, but you do have to check their postings often (Facebook, SB’s blogs, Twitter and Swagbucks search bar.) Swagbucks makes it fun to collect points but it can be time consuming at times. Upside of Swagbucks, you can easily make enough points for a 450 point $5.00 Amazon gift card at least once a month allowing you to shop for free. Sites such as sbcodez.com help keep you in the loop if Swagbucks offers any bonus codes and keep you from consistently checking all the locations they hide their codes. They also have an hourly 1000 point give-a-way given to a random site member who happens to be on the site at the exact time they post it… which I’ve personally seen claimed three times in the past year.     Bing.com Bing is another great search engine that offers points for searches. Unlike Swagbucks, Bing does have a cap of 15 points you can earn with searches for a day (30 searches). Bing does offer a few bonus points for visiting their site everyday or completing search quests.  The great thing about Bing is you can redeem you points quickly for gift cards like Starbucks and Amazon which cost 475 points for a $5.00 card, again roughly about a month’s worth of searching.  MyPoints.com This website emails you surveys and click-through ads that allow you to accumulate points for gift cards. This is a great site if you do a lot of online shopping and don’t mind clicking through their offers to other sites. Clicking their emails and filling out their surveys alone, it’s possible to earn a $25 gift card. It’s a very slow process so don’t expect instant riches. The advantage of Mypoints is other sites, such as Buzzagent.com, which I will talk about next, will give you bonus points for Mypoints for completing Buzz campaigns.   BuzzAgent.com  This site is just buzzing with great product campaigns for companies utilizing you to get the word out about their products. This site is my #1 recommendation! All you need to do is fill out a few surveys about your shopping habits and they will send offers to join their great campaigns. I’m currently involved in MorningStar, Hindrick’s Gin (yes the good stuff), and Redbox. Here is a list of just a few of the campaigns (and free stuff) they sent me and what was included in Buzzagents campaigns in the past 4 months:

•  Green Mountain: 16 free K-cups and great coupons.
• Perdue Oven Roasters: Free products and coupons
• Alexia Foods: 2 free bags of fries, free bread and $1.00 coupons
• Burt’s Bees: Kit with 3 different creams + coupons
• Glade: Coupons for both a free air freshener & oil diffuser + high value coupons
• Unreal Candy: Coupons for free candy + $1.00 coupons
• Lawry’s: 2 free bottles of marinade, a bottle of seasoning, an apron + $1.00 coupons
• Be. Wines: Rebate coupon making the wine only $2.00 + coupons.
• Private Selection: Free coupons for frozen deserts, ice cream and pie + more coupons.

  These are only a few campaigns offered to me since May. I’ve also received a number of full-sized makeup products, hair care products, food items, table ware, Dr. Scholls shoe liners, even a nice Cross pen (which I still regret giving away). Typically all campaigns come with really great coupons.   I can’t state how wonderful Buzzagent is without some negatives. On occasion they ask you to purchase items, typically at a substantially discounted rate. That’s good… if you want the product but defeats the purpose of getting free stuff. If you’re really watching your pennies and nickels you might want to avoid or opt-out of those particular campaigns. They also do require that you go out into the world, be it internet or the great blue yonder, and spread the word about their products. Makes sense, really… why else would they be giving you stuff for free? Fear not, it’s easy to Buzz about your products. They have wonderful in-site apps that allow you to connect to Facebook and Twitter. Bonus, every time you post to your blog, tweet or post on Facebook they send you points to use towards Mypoints. As a bigger bonus, at the end of each campaign you can do a post-campaign survey which typically gives you an additional 50 Mypoints points, which comes in handy when you want to shop for free using gift cards.   Freeride.com On a scale of 1-10, 10 being best I’d have to rate this site a 2. Sadly, I have used Freeride for years and I’m still not even close to getting a free – anything. Similar to Mypoints, Freeride lets the visitor earn points by clicking their “Show By Department” links. If you happen to find the right link you might get up to 5 points. Mind you a $10 Amazon card 12,500 points, so you’ll be clicking quite a lot. There is also a limit on how many points you can earn in a day. Though, if you’re an avid shopper, who doesn't mind clicking through points sites to get bonus, you can rack up the points a lot quicker. It does come in handy to click through this site if you use other free gift cards to make purchases. Freeride does offer great points back so it's like doubling your freebie card money.   E-rewards.com This is another survey site but instead of you having to visit their page 20+ times a day, they send you surveys that you might qualify for… yes might. Sometimes even if they send you a survey you might not qualify… but they still give you a little something in the points department just for taking the time to stop by. Their points to add up quickly and you can redeem them for Starbucks cards, magazines, even airline miles. This site is great, if you have a few hours to spare here and there, but their surveys can be a bit lengthy.   There are many other great sites out there that offer you rewards for internet searches, surveys and clicks. If you know of any great sites similar to these, please let me know in the comments below. Happy saving! Help me keep this site updated. Click on a few ads. Thanks!!