Shopkick

When I started this blog, the intent was to share my weight loss journey, but to also share other things about my life that might be helpful to other people. Lately, I've been too busy to share anything other than my workouts, but I'm going to make an effort to share more than just my workouts. This post is about Shopkick. I thought I had written this already, but I can't seem to find a post about it, so I guess I never did.

What it is and why I use it?

Shopkick is an app that allows you to earn kicks (points) for doing things like walking into stores, scanning barcodes of items in the grocery store, looking at "ads" and buying stuff. The points can be redeemed for gift cards to popular stores. I use it because it's super simple and you can get some decent rewards for little effort. It's one of the few rewards programs that I'm still using. I've pretty much given up on CheckPoints, Receipt Hog, Swagbucks, Checkout 51, Kiip Rewards, and mPoints. 

How to Earn Kicks

Walk Ins

You can earn points by walking into a store. On a normal day, you earn around 30 points, which doesn't sound like much, but it's 30 points for walking into a store that you would already have gone into. That's pretty cool!  You usually just have to open the app at the entrance of the store and then a blue bubble will show up. First it says Hi to you and uses your name. Then it will show the points that you earned. You can earn points for walking into the same store twice in a 7 day period I believe. On the weekends or around holidays, there are bonus walk in points. For example, there have been several times where I got 100 points or more for walking into Best Buy, and they are normally a 30 point store. If you have certain notification settings turned on, you'll get an alert letting you know that you're close to a store that has bonus walk in points available. This comes in handy when you're out and about doing your normal shopping. You might not have intended to go to American Eagle or Old Navy, but you're in the same parking lot since you're visiting a different store. You get an alert about a bonus, so you walk the extra 20 feet and get some bonus points! I love bonus points!

Scan Items

You've got to go grocery shopping anyway, so you might as well get points for it. Once you're in the store, you can see a list of items you can scan and get points. You just find the item in the store and scan the UPC barcode. Sometimes you only get 15 points, but I've gotten 250 points before for scanning stuff. One trip was extra lucrative. I was able to scan 6 or 7 items all in the same aisle and they were all 100 points each! 

Purchasing Items

You can link a Visa or MasterCard to your account and earn points for buying stuff. It only works on stores that are set up to have it. I haven't used the credit card link because I don't shop at the stores that use it, but if you shop at Macy's, American Eagle, Old Navy, and Carter's, you might want to check it out. You earn 1 kick per $1.00 spent. Imagine the possibilities of combining ShopKick with a rewards credit card that gives at least 1% back for purchases and you could be rolling in the dough for buying stuff that you already were going to buy. You also get bonus kicks the more you spend. For example, at Macy's you get 200 extra kicks if you spend $50, 375 extra kicks if you spend $75, and 650 extra kicks if you spend $125.

Best Buy also has a way to earn kicks for buying stuff, but you don't have to link a credit care. All you do is show the checker your phone and they scan a code in the app. Best Buy also has bonus kicks for spending more money. You get 350 extra kicks for $75, 800 extra kicks for $150 and 1250 extra kicks for $200. 

Looking at "Ads"

At the bottom right of the app, there's a picture of a shirt and it says Products under it. If you click that, you'll get to the ads. It's not described that way in the app. I forget what they call them, but they are ads. It's not like a commercial ad or even a newspaper ad type thing, but you click on different types of categories such as Red and Gold, Every Little Thing, Best Buy Deals, etc. After you click on it, a bunch of items come up. The Best Buy deals items today are an LG TV on sales for $150 off, a phone for $50 off, some tax software that's on sales and a few other things. There's usually an envelope that says Tap for a Surprise. If you tap it, you'll get at least one Kick. You can get 100 of these per day the last time I checked. It's a bit time consuming, but if you're watching TV or waiting in line at the grocery store, you might as well do some clicking and earn some extra points. I don't do this very often though because I've got too much going on in life I always forget about this option. 

Invite Friends 

If your friends join ShopKick using your link, you earn 500 kicks. Your friend will also earn 500 Kicks. That changed at some point. When my first friend joined ShopKick off my link, I earned 50% of her kicks for the first 14 days. I earned enough to get a $5 Best Buy gift card. She really got into ShopKick. I totally got her hooked on all of these rewards programs. You can join ShopKick using my referral link and help me earn gift cards and you'll be 500 kicks closer to getting one as well. I'll be forever if your debt. 

Rewards

You can redeem rewards once you hit 75 Kicks. 

75 Kicks - You can get 1 point towards your AE Rewards for every 75 kicks. 

100 Kicks - For every 25 kicks donated, Shop Kick gives one meal to Feeding America. The Red Cross is also in the 100 Kicks section, but I'm not sure what they get when you donate your kicks. 

500 Kicks - Walmart, Target and American Eagle Gift cards start at 500 Kicks and you get $2.00. 

1250 Kicks - Starbucks, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Home Goods, JC Penny, Old Navy, GameStop, Best Buy, Macy's, Lowe's, Toys R Us, Nike, Barnes & Noble, The Cheesecake Factory, Papa Johns, Sports Authority, Foot Locker, Yankee Candle Company, Aerie, and Buca di Beppo all have gift cards that start at 1250. You get $5.00

2500 Kicks - Sephora, Restaurant.com and AMC have gift cards that start at 2500 kicks and you get $10.00. 

This could change at anytime though so check out the rewards listed in the app to decide what to strive for. I'm not responsible if you spend your time saving up for a certain card and it's not there when you go to redeem your prize.

So far, I've earned a total of 13,799 points. Most of that has probably been from Best Buy. I get all of my electronics there. 

My Overall Thoughts on the App

I think it's totally worth getting ShopKick. It's not going to make you rich, but you can earn up points all year long and make Christmas easier. The cool thing about ShopKick is that you can get your rewards immediately. Some of the other apps like mPoints make you wait a few days for your rewards. With ShopKick, I don't have to worry about planning. If I see a sale at Best Buy, I can walk into the store, decide I'm going to buy the item and then do a few clicks on my smartphone and magically I have a $5 or $10 gift card I can use right away. (No promises that it's instant for all stores or that it will remain instant in the future.) If you shop at Best Buy, Old Navy, Macy's, American Eagle or Carter's, it's silly not to join since you'll get points for doing something you would have done anyway. 

Checkout 51 Review

What it is and why I use it

Checkout 51 is a rewards program that pays you for submitting your grocery receipts for specific products each week. The products change from week to week. You can also enter to win a shopping spree once per week by submitting a receipt worth over $60.00. This isn't a get rich quick scam, but with the rising prices of food, every little bit helps. They have a website www.checkout51.com as well as an app on the Play Store and the App store. I use this app to get a little bit back on my grocery purchases. I joined in February and by the end of April, I had enough to cash out at $20.00. You do have to earn $20.00 in order to cash out. The app is super simple to use, but if you don't have a smart phone, you can still participate with the program using the website. I've included some information from the smart phone app.

The Offers

Each Thursday, the offers change, but milk has been on the list ever since I started with the program. My earnings have been a bit slow because I'm trying to eat a whole foods life, but they mainly have packaged foods on the list. However, when I started back in February, they had Triscuits and Belvita Soft Baked on the list for several weeks in a row. I said that I'm trying to live a whole foods life, but so far I haven't quite made it there. I still eat my Belvita for breakfast, and hubby and I still love our Triscuits before dinner. I need to work on both of those to up the weight loss, but for now, it's all about baby steps. The offers aren't the same for everyone. The FAQ has an explanation of why. Here is the first screen of offers on my app. You can see more of the offers on the website www.checkout51.com.

How to get your rewards

Once you've purchased something from the list, you click the Upload Receipt button at the bottom of the screen in the picture above. After you do that, the screen below pops up to let you know how to proceed. It's s lightly annoying that this will continue to pop up even after you've submitted a bunch of receipts. If the receipts are too long to fit in one picture, you can add multiple pictures of the receipt to fit the whole thing in.

After you take the picture of the receipt, you go to the offers screen again, but this time, there are check boxes over to the right. Don't forget to click all of the offers on that receipt. You can submit multiple receipts each week, but you can only submit each receipt once, so if you buy milk and onion on the same receipt, but forget to check the onions, I think you're out of luck on the onions. After you hit Claim It at the bottom of the screen below, you'll be asked if you want to share on Facebook or go to your account.

Your Account Tab

This is where you go when you want to see how much money you've got pending, earned and claimed. I just cashed out recently, so I have no money earned. When you submit a receipt, it goes to pending until they verify all of the information. Then it goes to Account Balance. You need to earn $20.00 in order to cash out. They mail you a check. My check came pretty quickly. I then deposited it into my bank through my mobile app. It took two or thee days to clear my bank, but it definitely did clear it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this app. 

Notifications

You'll get a notification when things happen with your account or when you get a special offer. In the first picture at the top of the page, you can see a small bell in the upper right of the screen right below the time on my phone. That bell will get a red blotch over it with a number if you have a notification. If you press the number, you'll be brought to the notification screen. You can see that I recently had a special offer to buy a Mother's Day card. 

Overall Thoughts

I like the app. It's simple to use and it's fairly quick to accumulate enough money to cash out. I say fairly quick because I'm comparing it to things like Receipt Hog, which is considerably slower. I love Receipt Hog, because it's fun and you aren't limited with the products that you purchase, but I've been a member of the program since November and I'm only up to $10. I don't take full advantage of the app though. I just don't shop often enough to take full advantage of that app. Checkout 51 is more like couponing than Receipt Hog anyway. They have the same concept where you buy stuff and submit receipts for rewards, but they really are different programs. You should use both of them instead of deciding between the two.   

Receipt Hog

What is it?

Receipt Hog is an app for smart phones that gives you points for scanning you grocery, liquor store and convenience store receipts. Once you get enough points, you can cash in to get Amazon gift cards or PayPal money. 

How do you earn points?

After visiting the grocery store, convenience store, or liquor store, you take pictures of your receipts through the app. The receipts get processed, and you get points. The more you spend on a trip, the more points you get. You can also get points by spinning the slot machine wheel. After you've submitted at least one receipt per week for five weeks, you go into Hog Wild status. Once you're there, you get one slot machine spin for each receipt that you submit. Below is a screen shot of my phone from when I won 400 coins on a spin. If you hit a single stack of coins, you win coins. If you hit two stacks, you win more coins. I haven't hit three stacks yet. There doesn't seem to be a set number per stack though. I will get 5 to 15 coins for hitting 1 stack and I've gotten 10 to 400 for hitting two stacks. You can also get coins by answering short surveys on products that you purchased. I had a survey about some bread that my husband got as an impulse buy and the beer that he got the other day. There was also a general survey about my demographics. You also get coins for referring people. Click here for my referral link. I get 10 coins, but I'm not sure if you get anything.

What's the Point?

After you get to 1000 coins, you can cash out for an Amazon gift card or PayPal. The rewards take less coins as you save up for higher rewards.I haven't cashed out yet because I wanted to save up for the highest reward. I hoard Amazon gift cards for Christmas time. I've gotten some from SwagBucks, mPoints, and even Kiip Rewards. Finding the rewards option on the app can be a bit tricky. At the bottom of the screen, the second box from the right says Rewards. Once you click on that, you'll see the screen below. Once you're there, you'll need to click on the green bar towards the top that says Redeem Prizes. The Rewards Tab is also where the bonus surveys will pop up. Be sure to check there periodically. I don't think you get notifications when they are available. 

Receipts Tab

The second button from the left is the Receipts tab. This is where you go to see the receipts that you've submitted. When you first submit a receipt, it will say Processing instead of a store name. Usually the name will pop up in a few hours, and then in a day or two the receipt gets processed and your points and spins get added. If for some reason, you get a stuck receipt, contact Receipt Hog on Facebook. They are quite responsive and fix things quickly. If you send them a private message with your email address they'll fix it.  

Notifications

In the upper right hand section, you'll see a small white message box. If you have a notification, a number will pop up in the message box. You get them when you get coins and spins added by submitting a receipt, when you win coins on the wheel and if there are problems with your receipt. Click the box to see your Notifications. You can scroll through the list to see older messages.  

Where can I shop?

I've gotten points and pins for shopping at Costco, Walmart, Bi-Mart, Rays Food Place, Safeway, Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer, Natural Grocery, Cash & Carry, Dollar Tree and Thriftway. During Christmas, they ran a special promotion where you could earn points for places like GameStop, Staples and Home Depot. I got points there as well, but that was just a special promotion. I hope that they run that again this coming Christmas. The app says that you can earn points at convenience stores, but you have to buy more than just gas. I've only submitted one receipt for a convenience store, but they didn't accept it. It was for a non-chain store that's attached to the Chevron gas station in our tiny little town. I don't go to convenience stores very often, so I haven't tried another one. They also say that you can submit them for liquor stores, but I haven't been to one since I found out that you can use them. You can also get points for pharmacy type stores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS. You don't have to buy groceries at grocery stores to get the points. If you go to Walmart and buy a TV, you can get points because they sell groceries there. 

My Overall Opinion and a Tip

I like this app. It's simple to use, and I love the slot machine aspect of it. It takes a long time to earn rewards unless you're shopping like crazy. You can't earn much until you get into Hog Wild Status. It takes five weeks to get you there. Once you're in Hog Wild, it does go quicker. I don't shop often enough to earn anything very quickly even in Hog Wild Status. I submit two to three receipts per week. My tip is to save up your spins until you get at least 10. I would say more, but I can't control myself and have to spin at 10. If I spin a couple at a time, I never win, but if I save up until I get 10 spins, I usually get at least a couple hits with one stack of coins. 

Where to get it

You can use my referral link, which will get me 10 coins. I'm not sure if you get a bonus or not.

You can go to the Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infoscout.receipthog

You can go to the App Store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/receipt-hog-snap-receipts./id525373618?mt=8

You can find out more on the Receipt Hog website. 

Kiip Rewards App

Kiip Rewards is an interesting way that you can earn things like Amazon MP3 gift codes, free products like Secret Deodorant, recipes and coupons. You get Kiip Rewards by using apps that give out the rewards when you reach certain achievements. I have gotten over $10 in Amazon MP3 gift codes since December and I really don't use many apps that have Kiip Rewards, so if you really worked at it, you could earn some pretty decent stuff. 

The rewards are simple to redeem. If you reach achievement while using the app, a pop up will come up. They usually ask for your email address and then you click redeem. The reward is sent quickly to your email. There is at least one of them that will ask for your birthday first since it's a couple for wine. If you don't want the reward, you can click the upper left hand corner and decline it. 

Apps that I use that have Kiip Rewards

• Nexercise
• Punchcard
• 7x7

You can learn more about Kiip rewards by visiting their website www.kiip.com. I wasn't able to find a link with all of their apps. I've actually found them by accident. I got Nexercise because it had mPOINTS. The Kiip Rewards were just a bonus. I earned a bunch of Amazon MP3 gift codes pretty quickly, but then they kinda dried up until recently. I got Punchcard to try to earn Amazon gift cards, but so far the app hasn't paid off. However, I discovered that they had Kiip Rewards so I might just keep the app. I found 7x7 while specifically looking for an app that had games with Kiip Rewards. It's an interesting enough game, but I rarely get the Kiip Rewards using it so I rarely play it now. 

mPOINTS

I have a slight addiction to Amazon gift cards and mPOINTS is helping to feed that addiction. Just today, I redeemed another $1.00 gift card. I found this program back in November I think. I wanted some games to play on my phone while I was on breaks at work. mPOINTS games give you points that you can use to get gift cards to places like Amazon, iTunes, Home Depot, CVS, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, JC Penney, Sephora and GameStop. You can also use your points to get things like Apple TV, T-shirts, an iPhone armband, a tote bag, Fitbit and Google Chromecast.

mPOINTS is different than a lot of other rewards programs since you can earn points from a bunch of different apps and the points accumulate into one big pot for your to use towards the rewards. Some of the apps are games, but others are practical things like Dictionary.com, the Weather Channel app and the New England Patriots app. Most of the apps offer points for checking in each day. You can earn additional points by doing things within the app. For example, the Dictionary.com app gives points for checking the word of the day. You can earn additional points by listening to the recording of how the word of the day is pronounced.

I've redeemed my points for $8.00 in Amazon gift cards. I have enough point for another $16.00, but I'm saving the points for a couple reasons. The $1.00 Amazon gift cards have the best return on your investment. You get $1.00 for 2,000 points, which actually accumulates fairly quickly. A $2.00 gift card is 5,000 points. See so you lose 1,000 points by going after the $2.00 gift card. You can only redeem one of each reward in a seven day period though, so I get one new gift card each week. After a year, I'll have $52.00 in gift cards and a bunch of extra points. Not bad for playing games! I'm also hoarding my points in hopes of a sale on gift cards. When I started the program, they would routinely have a gift card go on sale for half the points. I never had enough points to partake in those sales though! Now that I have a bunch of points, I haven't seen a sale.

There are two downsides to the app. One of them, I already talked about. The point depreciation is just obnoxious. Most programs give you better rewards the more points you get. I should be happy that I can get $1.00 Amazon gift cards at a discounted rate, but my brain just doesn't work that way.

The big downside for me might not be much of a downside to other people. While you're playing the games, you earn points, but the points don't add up automatically. You have to collect your points. In order to do this, you click collect on your screen. This brings you to the mPOINTS part of the app. From there, you have to click on the achievement that you earned in the game. Once you do that, your points get added to your total. After that, you'll usually get an advertisement or a short survey. You'll get bonus points for some of the advertisements, but not all of them. You'll earn points for all of the surveys. The surveys are usually a couple questions. You have to be careful though because they don't always have Yes as the first answer. I've clicked No in error. I've never been able to change my answer though. There are two different types of advertisements. They have stills and video. I think you always earn points if it's a video that you watch. They are usually between 15 and 45 seconds. Points range from 5 to 75 in my experience. Some of the still ads are for apps that you get points for downloading.

The apps that I use with mPOINTS:

• Dictionary.com
• Nexercise (also has KIP rewards)
• New England Patriots
• Tic Tac Toe Classic
• Word Search
• Hangman
• Mind Resolve
• Zap da Bug 
• Swap da Gem 
• Tap da Cookie 
• Flip da Coin 
• Da Daily Insult
• Da Daily Compliment

I'll write more about some of the apps later. There are a bunch more apps though. You can see some of them by checking out the mPOINTS website. 

Swagbucks Review

I have a slight addiction to collecting gift cards. I save them up and use them to buy Christmas presents. This isn't something that is a get rich quick scam. You can't get rich on these things, but sometimes I get bored at night after I'm done editing and my husband is watching something boring on TV, so I fiddle around on rewards programs sites. My recent addiction is Swagbucks. You earn points for doing web searches, answering surveys, playing games, watching videos, buying stuff online and responding to offers on the site.

I mainly watch the videos, do the surveys and answer the daily poll, which means I earn at a fairly slow rate, but I have earned enough for $10 in Amazon gift cards and have enough points to get another $10 for Amazon, but I'm going to save them up and possibly get a Barnes & Noble gift card instead since I just got a Nook and I need more books!

The $5 Amazon cards have the best return for your points since you only need 450 points for those, but the other $5 gift cards require 500 points. It's only 50 points, but it can add up over time. Once you have enough points, you redeem them through the website, and they email you when your reward is ready.

I've looked around at the different offers that they have, but most of them don't really interest me. There are a lot of things like joining the Disney Movie Club or eMusic or other things like that. The daily poll gets you 1 SwagBuck and is super simple to do. The paid surveys are pretty easy, but make sure that you look at the number of SwagBucks you'll get for the estimated time of the survey. Some of them are so low for the amount of time, that I don't even bother to see if I qualify. I usually only qualify for about one per day, but you still get 1 SwagBuck if you get disqualified or if they are over the quota. Those points add up over time though.

They have two apps too. One of them is for watching videos, and the other gives you access to the Daily Poll, the Search Engine and some offers that you can complete. I use the video app and let it run while I'm playing around on the computer. There is a maximum number of videos that you can earn credit for in a day.

Pros: It keeps me occupied while I'm bored. You really can earn gift cards. You can earn points for very little effort. There are a ton of rewards options. There are a ton of online stores to earn points.
Cons: Other than online shopping, the points are a bit slow, but not as slow as other programs.

If you join, feel free to use my referral link,  You could also just type www.swagbuks.com into your browser and join  Either way, if think it's a decent program if you're into these types of sites. They aren't for everyone.