It’s been 3.5 years since I’ve posted on CompareRewards.com. If you’re reading this, chances are, you subscribed to my email alerts for new posts sometime prior to 2015. (Thank you for doing that, btw. It means a lot that you value my content enough to want to stay in touch.) Since then, a lot has changed in my private life, and the website just wasn’t a priority.
But something happened last week that was so exciting, I decided to come out of retirement to post about it here and help get the word out.
Here’s the back story:
Look familiar? My long-time readers will recall my numerous posts about the Jellyfish.com cashback shopping site. I was one of the first bloggers to review Jellyfish.com when they went live in July of 2006. I sang the praises of their live reverse auction called Smack Shopping. I bemoaned its sad demise when Microsoft bought Jellyfish.com, and when the rebranded Bing Cashback was closed. I also posted about Alice.com, the next project of Jellyfish’s Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire. Some call them “serial entrepreneurs.” I call them visionaries with the Midas touch.
A decade after Microsoft’s purchase of Jellyfish, Brian and Mark purchased another rather odd domain: Gravy.com. They opened their site “in stealth mode,” developing a live chat area for popular bloggers to host while selling items. It had some elements of the Smack Shopping experience that Jellyfish members were so addicted to, but it didn’t quite hit the mark.
On March 8th, Gravy debuted an iOS app called Gravy – Live Shopping Game which much more closely approximates Jellyfish Smack Shopping’s exciting and addictive reverse auction, all the way down to Guru Guessing (being able to earn a cash reward for being the closest, without going over, to guessing the best discount a shopper will receive before the item sells out). At 8:30pm ET daily except Saturdays, the app switches from a plaid background to a chat room with a live host (shout-out to the Bowtie Man himself, JOE!).
So you really have two major activities going on — the opportunity to buy a product unveiled about a minute before it goes on sale and the price starts to drop, not knowing how many are available to buy and having to decide how quickly you want to jump on the deal… and the opportunity to win a cash prize of up to $50 for guessing the amount of the discount when the item sells out. You can participate in either…or both!
Gravy even has a charity component, where a percentage of the sale price of what the items eventually sell for is donated to a charity of the buyer’s choice.
So far, the items “dropped” on Gravy included Apple AirPods, Amazon Echo Dots, PlayStation Fours, fingerprint-ID combination style locks, Keurigs, and a DJI Mavic Air drone. Gravy is allowing members to nominate an item to be featured on their Sunday show by tweeting #dropthisongravy on Twitter, including the item and why you’d like to see it featured. If your item is chosen, you’ll get that item FREE!
You never know in advance what the product will be or how many will be available to buy. Are they just selling one item tonight? Or are they selling a dozen? Once the game begins, you can see the price dropping and it’s up to you to decide if you want to buy or wait and see if you can get a better deal before someone else buys the last one.
How do I check this thing out? Here ya go:
1. Download the Gravy Live Shopping app. It is only available for iOS right now, and while there isn’t an iPad-specific app for it, iPad users can download the iPhone app and it works like a charm! (They’re working on an Android app. Patience, my ‘droid friends!)
2. Create an account, selecting your username. That’s the name that will show up on the leaderboard if you buy an item, and it’s the name you’ll use if decide to use the chat area during the game. You’ll have an option to receive a text before the game goes live. You should definitely say yes to this so you don’t miss a game!
3. Enter in your payment information. While you don’t have to do this in advance, because time is of the essence when you’re ready to buy, I highly recommend that you go ahead and put your credit card information in ahead of time! I did!
4. Wait for the show! You can start checking the app around 7:29 if you didn’t sign up for text notifications. When it’s live, you’ll see a button to click to enter the game. It takes a few minutes before they “drop” the item up for sale and the reverse auction begins! Be ready to hit the Buy button when the price is right for you!
In Conclusion…
If you love deal-hunting, the idea of participating in a live interactive game show, and the potential to win real cash prizes, you are going to love the Gravy – Live Shopping Game!
Its founders have a history of creating amazing shopping sites. The game is frenzied and addictive, and it is six. Nights. A week. Forget about whatever comes on TV at 7:30, y’all, you aren’t going to be watching it anymore.
Thanks for reading, and if you decide to give it a try, be sure to go into the chat box and type, “Hi, CompareRewards!” and I’ll give you a warm welcome for joining us!
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