After dutifully visiting Mypoints member sites through their semi-daily emails, I’ve racked up enough points to get my first gift card. Granted its a tiny 5$ gift card, but this took absolutely no effort on my part except reading the occasional email, that’s all I’ve done! I never shopped for points, signed up for offers, none of that.
I won’t go so far as to recommend Mypoints until I have my gift-card in hand, but I’ve heard some positive feedback from friends and others who have used their site. It does bring up an interesting point about these types of services though. I’ve tried to explain the concept to friends before, some are very receptive while others do not believe its worth their time.
Hmm…
I am always mindful and protective of sensitive personal information and I certainly don’t want my e-mail inbox cluttered with spam. To remedy any possibility of spam problems, I created a throw-away email address at Yahoo and used it specifically for my signup. Much to my surprise, I haven’t received any out of the ordinary spam since I signed up, nothing at all. I enjoy a free lunch, if someone wants to give me a free giftcard for reading an email or 2 a day, I am all for it.
Obviously there needs to be a level of trust between you and the organization you are dealing with because you must have the faith that they will fill their end of the bargain (gift card). Honestly I love hearing feedback and responses about all sorts of services that I test (the survey project has been great so far, more to come, I promise it’ll be entertaining). The bottom line is this, if it takes a tiny amount of effort per day, and results in A. Money or B. Money equivalents such as gift cards, I’m more than happy to participate. I won’t comment on any offers or shopping rewards on the site since I do not utilize them.
I have not calculated or tried to calculate the actual points/currency conversion and the hourly rate it ends up being, but I’d wager it is pretty favorable. My yahoo account sits happily in a tab on Firefox and at the end of the work day I take (and I timed this) about 15 seconds to click on any promotional e-mails. This averages out to be about 10 points per day, and 750 points is a 5$ gift card. Make of that what you will!
If you’d like an invite, drop me a line (more points for me!). If you’d rather sign yourself up, the link above is not a referral link (full disclosure for you).
-Xias