Mypoints - Free Gift Cards or Reading E-mail?

About a year ago, a friend told me about a place called mypoints.com and explained how it works. I am always skeptic of any type of online rewards or money earning websites but I trust him, he had an account with them for a couple of years and had actually received the gift cards in the mail.

I signed up, and started to recieve about 2-3 e-mails a day from there site. Within every e-mail there is a "Get Points" link in it that is like the one pictured below.



Once you click this link it will open in a new window, close it and you are done, that just got you 5 Points. Most rewards will cost you between 1,200 and 10,000 points and are mostly all gift cards to pretty much every type of retailer thats out there.

I got fancy with my Gmail account and have a filter set so those messages do not show up in my inbox but in a sub folder, which is nice because that allows me to just read them once a week. You will get surveys mailed to you from time to time that can be worth 10 points (if you do not qualify) all the way up to 250 points for longer surveys.

Using this method I have rack up quite a bit of points. Below is a screen shot of my current point balance and I am going to redeem them soon, but just cant choose what I want to go with.



I forgot to mention, If you shop on Amazon or other online retailers, you can earn 2-10 points per dollar with a mypoints account.

How to Save Money On Christmas, Without Leaving Home And Getting Those Hard to Find Gifts

Well, I have a job, gulp, in retail, so during this time one of the year, I just do not have much time to spare. For his reason I turn to online retailers to get the best deal every year, and to also get hard to find items such As The Nintendo Wii or new DVD's like The Dark Knight

This saves me time with shipping items, shopping for them and hoping that stores have them in stock. So this holiday season do yourself a favor and just shop online

How Am I Did This Week

Well first off, I am disappointed in the lack of effort I put forth this week, but still managed to do ok.

Amazon - $10.40
Ehow - $32.52
Stubhub - $0.00
Adsense - $0.54

I have also been participating in mypoint.com's point program for about a year now, and have enough points to get a free $25 gift card to any of the places they have.

Saving a Buck Online - Slick Deals

Slick deals is a website that I monitor daily if I need to purchase something that is not a necessity. This could be anything from an extra hard drive for storage, to a new tool for the garage or a gift for a friend of uncle Fred's birthday thats coming up in 8 months. Go check it out, for maximum online savings.

Debt Reduction Stratagies

It is nearly impossible to become rich while hauling around credit card, car or student debt. The first to steps (which need to happen simultaneously) are getting rid of debt and increasing income. To get a basic understanding of the first step of that I have two resources for you. Dave Ramsey has written a book, Dave Ramsey has outlined the steps in his book: The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness. This plan has worked for thousands, and for me. I am not going to try and re-write what he said, because he says it best. I did, however, take his debt reduction strategy "The Debt Snowball" and wrote an article simplifying it . It will not replace what you will learn in his book, but it can give you a jump start.

Ehow Series #1 - How Does It Work?

Well like I said in my introduction I have made a good deal of money online already. I am going to document how I grow this, and share how I do this with my readers. One of the Major resources I use is a site called ehow.com ( Link to my articles).

With ehow, you write "how to" articles and get paid based on the amount of traffic that clicks on adds in your articles. The way I was successful was writing articles on things I am knowledgeable on and writing more in the fields that were yielding me more money. In more recent times, I have figured out how to use Affiliate accounts to boos my earnings through the roof from these articles.

Want proof? Here is a screen shot of my earnings to date.



They pay directly to you Paypal account, usually within the first few days of the month. I use this money to be transfered from my paypal into a high yield online savings account. Once an article is written, I get money from it for hypothetically forever, and then earn interest on it. This effect compounding is one of my basic early retirement strategies.

Its Cyber Monday, What Are You Buying?

"Cyber Monday" is the internet's highest sales day in terms of volume. It is online's "Black Friday". This is where I will be shopping.


Be sure to drop a comment on what deals you have found online!