Here’s another way you can make a few extra dollars – have you tried MyPoints?
I’ve done MyPoints for a few years now, and earned quite a few gift cards, mostly just by clicking on emails! There are two basic ways to earn points once you sign up – you can click on the daily emails they send (usually worth 5 points) and you also earn points by shopping through their portal, which basically means that when you want to order online from, say, Office Depot, you go to MyPoints.com first, click on Office Depot, and then proceed to place your order as usual. You’ll earn a certain number of points for placing the order, or for each dollar you spend.
If you do a lot of online shopping, you can get those points to add up even faster by going to MyPoints first and seeing if the merchant you want to order from is a partner with them. Once you click on the merchant through the MyPoints site, you proceed with ordering as usual, and you can use all the normal coupon codes and discounts you could if you didn’t shop through MyPoints.
Typical MyPoints email
(By the way, another similar program that offers other retailers is eBates, and you can also earn gift cards by searching and shopping through Swagbucks. They all have their advantages, and I’ll share more about those two programs in the future!)
The vast majority of the gift cards I’ve earned have just been clicking on those daily emails. It’s really simple – they’ll send you anywhere from one to five or six emails per day advertising a different company. Almost all earn you 5 points when you click on them. It’s kind of like “opt-in” advertising, but it’s definitely not spam! And, each email clearly states if it earns points and how many you’ll get for doing what. Sometimes you’ll get ones that earn you 25 points for registering on a site or taking a survey.
As usual, I don’t recommend something like this unless I have experience with it or know several people who have tested it out, so I can assure you that you won’t get spammed, but if you’re worried about that, then I’d just set up a free email account at Gmail or Yahoo and have all your MyPoints emails sent there.
As with taking surveys, this is definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme – or even a get-rich-slowly scheme – but it’s definitely a legitimate way to earn a few gift cards to splurge on coffee or a book that you might not otherwise have room in the budget for! I like the fact that you don’t even have to spend anything to earn points – which is good, because if you need a few extra bucks it’s not generally a good idea to spend money in order to earn it.
