How to Make Money Online with FREE Gift Cards
Saving Money by Shopping with Free Gift Cards
For my second article about creative ways to make money online we are going to be talking about how to make / save money by shopping with FREE gift cards. Now I know what you are all thinking, oh great, some scam article about gift cards.
Not at all. This is a method my fiancée has perfected to the point where in the past month she has got us about $300 in free stuff using gift cards.
As I mentioned in my first guide I am writing these articles to be straight to the point so that they do not require any technical savvy, so that way everyone can benefit from them.
The free gift card method is VERY easy to use and just requires you to keep your eyes open, get yourself in the right places at the right times (for some of them) and be creative with the ways you purchase things.
How Do I Get Free Gift Cards?
That’s a great question. As a matter of fact when my fiancée started doing this I asked her the exact same thing. One day I started noticing all this new stuff sitting around the house. The family room had been re-decorated, there was a digital picture frame on an end table, she had 3 new kitchen appliances, a bunch of stuff from Home Depot, etc.
I asked her where she had got all this extra money and she told me she bought it all with free gift cards. I responded to her “woot?”.
She went on to tell me about 3 methods she had been using in the past 2 weeks to get free gift cards.
I am going to outline each of her methods below so that anyone can benefit from her techniques because I was so amazed she had come up with something so crafty.
Method #1 – Shopping Receipts & Surveys
She told me that her first method was getting gift cards by filling out surveys mentioned on receipts she had received when she went out shopping. One great example of this is Target.
She had been shopping at Target and when she came home she was looking over her receipt. She is in marketing, so she tends to pay more attention to the small print than most people and she said after she finished checking the receipt she noticed a blurb on the back (in small print) about taking an online survey.
For completing the survey she would receive a $25 dollar gift certificate to Target. She went online expecting to waste half an hour and end up with nothing, or to get spammed from hundreds of mailing lists.
To her surprise she was not even required to enter an email address and was done with the survey 5 minutes later. I was standing there watching and laughed when I noticed it said “please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping”. I told her that was the catch right there.
Well 3 days later she came into the kitchen laughing at me and waving around her $25 dollar gift card that had arrived in the mail that day.
After this she started checking her receipts much closer, because she started seeing all sorts of promotional opportunities on them. Whether it was for gift cards or online discounts she noticed a lot of the major label stores out there were always running some sort of promotion or competition if you just knew where to look.
With this in thought in mind she pointed out she could even use receipts from friends because you were usually just required to enter a code from the receipt itself.
She pointed out that major label stores do this because it is cheaper than hiring a marketing firm to do these surveys for them and providing a gift card to their store ensures return business from that customer.
Well I could really care less about why they did it. We had just bought a house in the last few months, and we would need to go to Target anyway, so having free money to spend there was a huge bonus!
She continued to check receipts for a few weeks and managed to accumulate about $150 in free gift cards or promotions that we were able to use at stores we needed to shop at anyway. She told me the key was always reading the fine print and knowing where to look after having come across a couple of promotions.
Her advice was to always check the small print on the bottom and backs of receipts to find great promotional offers or contests. Because they are all through well known stores there was less worry about getting spammed, after signing up for these promotions.
The second method is more hit or miss but also provided free gift certificates that saved us some money.
Method #2 – In-Store Surveys and Promotions
The next time she came across free gift card opportunities she was out shopping with her mother. They were at another big label store and were stopped by a person asking if they would be willing to take a customer satisfaction survey. They offered her and her mother a $10 gift card each for taking a 5 minute in store survey.
Now this method may be harder to come across but she let me know that she has had pretty good luck with it by going to the mall to do her shopping. Especially on the weekends. In some cases there was nothing offered to her for taking the survey so she simply asked “What do I get for taking the survey” and all of a sudden gift cards were being offered. It’s funny how simply asking “what do I get” turns a marketing group from offering nothing, to giving you free stuff.
Once again she completed the surveys and was handed free gift cards on the spot. In the past month she has completed 3 different surveys like this, totaling about $35 in free gift cards.
The last method and probably the best to use has netted her around $300 in free gift cards and items. I wanted to save this one for last as it was the most creative and also the best method that she has come up with.
Method #4 – Credit Card Reward Points & Gift Cards
Now I know right off the bat here people are thinking “oh great credit cards and APR catches”. Let me stop you right there. This technique is probably the best I have seen and at most will cost you about a dollar or two in interest a month, while getting you hundreds of dollars worth of free gift cards.
In fact, let me mention that using this method has worked SO well for the both of us, that we have never paid more than a couple dollars in interest a month, and each have a credit rating of 800+ (The max is 850 if you are not familiar with credit ratings)
The key to getting free gift cards for credit card purchases is having a credit card with a great rewards program and always paying for stuff from your “savings”.
Now let me clarify what I mean by that. You will purchase almost everything you buy with your credit card, but when purchasing items you can only spend what you have money in your savings account to cover. You NEVER borrow!
Doing this will ensure that you are paying hardly anything in interest rates because you are constantly paying off your credit card. When I was initially building credit I used to only pay my credit card off once a month. Now I pay my credit card off whenever I have a balance on it.
The key here is having the discipline not to borrow money. Because that will defeat the whole purpose of this.
A great example of how this works is we were planning a vacation to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We had been saving for two years and knew how much the trip was going to cost. We had saved up a few thousand dollars, but took our credit cards on the trip instead of debit / check cards.
The credit cards we had, gave you rewards points for almost every type of purchase you made and even more for things like gas, food, hotels, etc. (Depending on the company and the card). We spent quiet a bit of money on the trip, but as soon as we got home a week later we completely payed off the balance on these cards with the money we had saved up for the vacation.
Even so, we had still made all the purchases on these cards, most of which provided us with rewards points. When we got back and paid off the cards my fiancée went to the credit card website and started filling out the gift card forms to turn our points into free money.
Once again it said “please allow 4 to 6 weeks for shipping”. In less than a week we received about $250 in Gift Cards, along with another $150 dollars worth of free merchandise from remaining points. (ones that could not be redeemed for Gift Cards). Needless to say the gift cards helped out a lot with things around the new house, and all the free stuff was great too! My favorite is the 7″ digital picture frame we received.
Overview
That sums up the three main methods my fiancée uses to get us free gift cards. She has a knack for saving us money and this is one of her many ways.
I will try to list anything else she shows me in a follow-up guide. As I have said before I am trying to write some practical “how to make money” guides for people. These are not “get rich quick” schemes or “how to make millions”. They are habits that if practiced regularly, can not only save you a fortune, they can provide a lot of free spending money that can help out around the house.
Please check back for my future guides on practical ways to make money. If you liked this article please leave me a comment with a suggestions with feedback for future articles.
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