get gift card rewards for shopping online

How to easily earn free gift cards just for shopping online

I’ve always been sort of old school, at least when it comes to my coffee preferences. While the ladies at work love to rave about spiced this and spiced that, I’ve always preferred just plain old no-frill lattes. Why mess with something so good? This was true, at least, until I discovered the flat white. It was L-O-V-E love at first sight!

get gift card rewards for shopping onlineA flat white is kind of like a fancy latte, just a little smaller and much, MUCH foamier. It’s amazing, and I thought it was going to be my new favorite coffee drink—until a third surprise contender entered the race at the last minute that is. Winning out for best coffee ever is (drumroll, please): coffee that I pay for with free gift cards for online shopping!

Okay, I know this last one isn’t really a type of coffee drink, per se, but I think you get my meaning. The absolute best coffee is the one you get as a reward, rather than having to pay for it out of your monthly budget, especially when—let’s face it—there are some months when we all have to skip the fancy stuff to save a few bucks by drinking the breakroom coffee at work (read: the holidays).   

It’s not just coffee, though. In my personal experience, everything tastes, looks, or wears better when you pay for it with gift cards earned through shopping rewards. Movie theater popcorn? Smells so much better. Lotion from Sephora? Feels aaaa-mazing. Even paper towels ordered from Amazon seem a little more absorbent when you pay for them with a free gift card.

And, once you get the hang of how to earn free gift cards for online shopping, you’ll start having a whole new set of favorite things, too… things you pay for with those gift cards.

Free Gift Cards for Online Shopping: How Rewards Apps Work

Discovering that you can get free gift cards just for shopping online was kind of like discovering the flat white. I’ve always shopped online, but I’ve kept my savings techniques to the basics. I like that what I buy gets delivered right to my house, and I like that I can sometimes save with lower prices. I was content there. I’d known about (and loved) apps that pay you to grocery shop for a while—and these apps are easy to use—but I didn’t know about online rewards options.

Much like how a flat white is just a foamier variation of a latte (a gloriously foamier variation), apps that give you free gift cards for shopping online are basically just a variation of apps that you can use in brick and mortar stores. To take this idea back even further, you can even think of them as a replacement for multiple rewards program cards, if that helps.

There’s really nothing complicated at all about how they work. The best shopping rewards apps give you points for a activities that you probably already do when you’re online shopping anyway, like:

  • Visiting online stores: This one’s easy, just browse an online store and earn some rewards points. That’s all there is to it.
  • Viewing select products: Hey, what do you know? This one is also easy! You just look at the listings for select products, and you rack up some points.
  • Making mobile purchases: Super weird, this one’s easy, too! (Sensing a pattern here?) Buy the things you were going to anyway and easily earn rewards points.
  • Watching videos: Last but not least, you can also find shopping rewards apps that give you points for watching videos about products online. Easy, easy, easy.

The Best Apps for Earning Free Gift Cards for Online Shopping

Okay, so, at this point, I think I know what you’re thinking: where is the best place for me to go to get one of these bad boys? Well, Starbucks, of course… Oh, wait! You meant where can you get a shopping rewards app that works well for shopping online, didn’t you!

Here are my favorite picks for online shopping rewards apps:

  • Swagbucks: Swagbucks is a cool program that gives you points for things like using their search engine for web searches, filling out surveys, and—ding, ding, ding—shopping at certain online stores. Once you have 450 points, you can cash them in for a free $5 Amazon gift card or for many other online hotspots, as well.
  • Ebates: Ebates lets you earn cash back from online stores, too. You get a $5 welcome bonus for signing on, then, with Ebates, you can also easily browse plenty of promo codes and coupons to push your savings even further.
  • Shopkick: Shopkick is my personal favorite. I just have the most fun with Shopkick. This free app gives me points, called kicks, for all the activities I do online anyway, including visiting online stores, learning about products, buying household items, and even watching videos from various brands—as well as in store. I also love that Shopkick boasts a great sense of community on all of its social media channels; I often find myself on there sharing tips about shopping, enjoying the jokes Shopkick makes, and the funny gifs other Shopkickers post in response—or even just chatting away about my family and how I tackle our budget.

Anything you buy is sure to seem a little bit better when you purchase it with a giftcard you earned for shopping activities you would have been doing anyway, right? I even have more fun doing the actual online shopping—and I can’t recommend apps like Shopkick highly enough. I mean, everyone shops online these days, so why not earn yourself some rewards points while you’re at it?

Start earning free gift cards (and flat whites!) today—just for shopping online. Download Shopkick’s free app and join a community of creative Shopkickers who’ve already discovered how much they can earn just for shopping online.

If you love social media as much as you love coffee, join us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for daily shopping inspiration.

Image courtesy Pixabay user HutchRock

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shopkick

Shopkick is the fun and easy way to earn free gift cards for the shopping you already do. Download the app now!

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Dima Volovik

EVP of Product and Engineering

Dima Volovik is the EVP of Product and Engineering at Trax Retail — Shopkick.

Dima Volovik is the accomplished product and engineering leader who led teams to deliver innovative and commercially successful e-commerce products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions for Amazon, Comcast, Fandango, and Universal Music. Before joining Trax, Dima was the Director at Amazon, where he led product development and Engineering for Amazon Appstore and Amazon Prime Video, CTO at Fandango, and Paciolan, head of technology at Golf Channel/Golf Now, and Global VP of Direct to Consumer Technology at Universal Music Group. Dima’s expertise includes developing consumer products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions.

Dima grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he received his MS in Electrical Engineering from Azerbaijan Oil Academy, and he currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with his family.