When I was younger my mom saved money every month in what she called her Christmas Club. It was a special savings program at the local credit union. My mom was and still is really good at earmarking money for specific things. When times are tight it can be hard to think about saving money for gifts. Luckily there is an easy way to earn some free money for the holidays, for other items you might want. Frugal moms and savvy shoppers have learned to maximize the point-earning websites which pay out in the form of gift cards.
How It Works
Some of these are easy to earn and versatile, including the Amazon.com gift card option. You don’t actually receive a physical gift card in the mail. Instead you receive a code which you can copy and paste into your Amazon account. The amount is added to your gift card balance and it does not expire. The next time you make a purchase you can apply the amount. Or you can keep adding to your balance and save it for something big.
Caveat
Keep in mind because I do a lot of research and work online, it’s convenient for me to click through my emails and to earn points towards gift cards. If you’re taking time away from work that earns you actual revenue you will not reap the benefits. If you use these sites on your downtime, while you’re playing on Facebook, watching TV or working on something that lets you multi-task you can definitely earn some extra funds.
Best Sites for Earning Free Amazon Gift Cards
Note: This list does not include every site where you can earn Amazon gift cards. It does include sites which have helped me build up a $100 gift card balance in about two months.
Swagbucks
There’s a small learning curve with Swagbucks that you can easily bridge. My favorite part of Swagbucks is that although there are points to be earned through referrals, even someone with very few referrals (less than five) can earn decent points. Here the the ways I earn my Swagbucks:
* Searching through the toolbar. Download the Swagbucks toolbar and use Firefox. If the toolbar is in the way you can close it. I do a lot of searching and usually earn eight to 10 Swagbucks when I win. I win 28 about once a week. I’ve also hit the big 50. Tip: If you don’t have a lot of time to do conduct searches, try to search three times a day: in the morning, the afternoon and in the evening. You tend to hit “trips,” or win three times a day when you spread out your searching.
* Letting videos play in the background – Turn the sound off on your computer, open a second window or tab in your browser and start playing the videos. Most will credit you after about 30 seconds, although some take longer. For every 10 you “watch” you can earn 3 Swagbucks. If you’re online anyway and don’t mind toggling between windows or tabs, you can rack up some decent Swagbucks this way.
* The Daily Four – If you log into your browser with the Swagbucks toolbar you earn one point. Take the daily poll for another point. If you follow the path through NOSO (hitting skip at the bottom of each screen) you can earn another two points.
* Snagging Codes – Swagbucks will post codes at least a few times a week, but not so much on the weekends. You can find them on their Facebook page, the blog or the Twitter feed.
* Redeeming coupons – That’s right, you can earn 10 Swagbucks for each coupon redeemed. Print them from the Swagbucks site. Use them when the product is on sale for extra savings. These take a while to post to your account, but they will show up.
* Surveys and Tasks – I reserve these for when I have free time. Some of these take a while and you may not always be eligible for the surveys if you don’t meet the profile.
SuperPoints
Superpoints is fairly new and you need an invite code to use it. I earn five times as much through Swagbucks simply because there are more ways to earn.
* Email points – Once a week I open the daily emails sent to me from SuperPoints and click through to earn points.
* SuperLucky Button – My son likes to click on this which is fine with me. When I started I earned more from this button.
* Get at least five friends – Once you have invited five friends you earn faster. You earn the same points they won through their SuperLucky Button. If you like referrals, SuperPoints is a great site for you.
Other Sites I Use
I have also used MyPoints and ZoomBucks but have not been able to redeem my points for gift cards yet. MyPoints sends a lot of emails and not all of them give you points for reading them. I like ZoomBucks because they have easy tasks that are not always found on SwagBucks.