News, tips, and reviews of cashback rewards programs, survey sites, and loyalty programs

Here’s a quick, easy, and FREE way to get free shipping on ALL orders from Sears and Kmart for the next three months — and this will not interfere with your receiving cash back from your favorite rewards program!  It’s a promotion for what used to be called ShipVantage, but they’ve renamed ShopYourWay Max.  Here’s how to get the free three month trial:

1. Go to Sears through your rewards program of choice
2. Page down to the banner talking about the ShopYourWay Max free three months offer. Add the offer to your cart, and apply promo code MAXFREE4
3. Continue shopping and add something, ANYTHING, to your cart. Get a cheap screwdriver, a roll of tape, etc.
4. Check out and your “filler” item will ship for free

…and voila! You’ll get free standard shipping on all orders for 3 months!  You can update to expedited shipping (like with Amazon Prime) for a small per-item fee.

Best thing:  it does NOT auto-renew, so you won’t get slapped with a $79 charge three months from now that you don’t remember signing up for!

You do not have to be a ShopYourWay Rewards member to be a part of ShopYourWay Max.  This is a completely separate program.  (Yes, it’s confusing.  No idea why they needed to change the name.)

The free three months is supposed to be a limited-time promotion, so grab it now if you’re interested.

Share this:

{ 0 comments }

It seems that people did not like Superpoints’ announcement that they’re charging more points for prizes and that they’re limiting “earning with your friends,” one of the site’s big selling points.  The Superpoints Facebook page is filled with angry members saying they are canceling their accounts.  I noticed that my member rank, based on the number of friends I’ve referred, and the friends THEY have referred, 5 levels deep, fell from a steady 96 to 104 within two days.  People are definitely bailing.

So if you’re looking for alternatives to Superpoints, here are my suggestions:

iRazoo – Earn points randomly for using their search engine, watching videos, completing surveys, offers, and tasks, or playing games.  They also give away special points codes on their Facebook account.  Earn when your friends earn, up to a maximum of 3,000 points ($5) per friend.  Cash out your points for gift cards to Amazon, Home Depot, CVS, Groupon, and more.

Swagbucks – Earn Swagbucks randomly while searching, or by watching videos, completing surveys and other offers, answering polls, or by special codes they give out.  450 points = a $5 Amazon GC, but other redemptions are available.  Even if surveys aren’t your thing, you can probably cash out once a week for a $5 redemption.  Earn when your friends earn, up to a cap.

QuickRewards.net – Earn cash for searching, attempting surveys, completing surveys (MANY available), completing tasks or offers on the same offerwalls as Superpoints, visiting websites, playing trivia, printing and using coupons, and cash back if you shop online.  NO minimum to cash out to PayPal, which is paid out usually nightly and you can cash out as often as you’d like.  You can choose emailed or snail-mailed gift cards instead if you’d prefer, mailed out weekly.

MyPoints – Earn points redeemable for gift cards for searching, answering questionnaires and surveys, reading emails/visiting websites, and shopping online.  Not a fly-by-night program, MyPoints has been in business for over 10 years, and their points cost for the different gift cards stays pretty constant.  Redemptions start at 1,600 points for a $10 gift card or 1,500 points for 75 Facebook credits.

4Loot – The only redemption here is for Facebook credits, but if you play a lot of FB games this may work for you.  It’s different, it’s quirky, and it’s fun:  earn coins redeemable for FB credit when you search (awarded randomly), watch videos, complete surveys, or play various daily games.  Get a random bonus when you use their site to search five days in a row.  Win when your friends win (up to 500 coins).  The minimum to cash out is 65 coins, for 2 FB credits.  You should be able to earn this within about a week.

Share this:

{ 4 comments }

I was really sad, though not terribly surprised, to see the changes to Superpoints that were implemented yesterday, but I have to give props to the owners for clearly informing members of the changes and the underlying rationale.

Change No. 1:  Being able to “win when your friends win” was one of the huge draws to bloggers and other big-time referrers to the program, but in order to make the program sustainable, they are now capping this at a limit of 1,000 points per friend.  This limit applies to all ways your friends earn points (including not just the Super Lucky Button but also surveys, etc.).  Swagbucks also caps your earnings from friends.  Prior to yesterday, 1,000 points = $10, which was a very fair incentive for referring active new members to Superpoints.

However.

Change No. 2:  They also increased redemption costs — they will now vary based on demand and availability.  Where 1,000 Superpoints used to equal a $10 redemption, now a $10 redemption is between 1,290 and 1,336 points.  That’s an increase of 29 to 34%.  Or,  you can spend 1,000 Superpoints and get a $25 Restaurant.com GC, which we all know can be bought for around $2 with one of the frequent coupons they have out, so this is a lousy choice.

My take:  Making both of these changes at the same time is a difficult pill to swallow.  Members now have no real idea what their recruitment efforts are going to be worth, even assuming that the friends they refer become active at all.  However, these changes are totally in line with the maturity phase of the typical life cycle of a rewards program:  they’ll start off with huge rewards to grow their membership base then start cutting back when they reach critical mass.

Superpoints has already cut back on the frequency of free point wins on the Super Lucky Button since the site first re-launched, which is also in line with the maturation of the program.  Any time a site offers you points that have a monetary value and you aren’t paying anything for them, the company has to earn that money from somewhere, right?  They monetize the Super Lucky Button by CPM (a small amount they earn for displaying the banner ads on the button page) and possibly by CPC (earning per click when you actually click through one of the ads) and CPL (earning per lead if you actually buy something from one of those banners).  When a site first goes live, they have to offer big rewards to get word of mouth advertising.  After a point, though, they can’t afford to lose money and have decrease the availability of “free” points.  I still earn from the Super Lucky Button, but it’s more like one win per 20 clicks instead of one per 10 or so.

What a rewards site will do next is try to find other ways to monetize their points so the members can “earn” “free” points while actually earning the company money.  You’ll notice their announcement plugged a new offer wall and the addition of printable coupons.  (They earn money off both to help finance the points.)

My prediction for the next change:  longer waits for redemptions to be sent.  This will probably be a good way away, just judging by the speed that Superpoints is advancing through the life cycle.  But this is something I will be monitoring and will report back on when I see a change.  So far they are VERY consistent with paying members in a timely way:  cash out by Sunday, get paid by Tuesday (often on Monday).

I still recommend Superpoints as an easy way to earn free gift cards online, but please just be aware of these changes.  If you’re uncomfortable with not knowing what the points you earn are going to be worth when it’s time to cash out, I can strongly suggest Swagbucks and QuickRewards.net, which both feature the same offer walls, surveys, videos, tasks, and rewards for printing coupons that Superpoints does, but they have long-term, stable point values.

Share this:

{ 3 comments }