November 2006 Archives

CreationsRewards.net is running a holiday shopping bonus program through 12/24. In addition to their regular rebate rates, you will earn a bonus based on the number of times you shop through their site with an order total over $25:

4 to 10 orders = 500 bonus points ($2.50), 11 to 20 orders = 1500 points ($7.50), 21 to 30 orders = 3000 points ($15), 31 to 40 orders = 5000 points ($25), and over 40 orders = 10,000 points ($50).

If you're not a member of CreationsRewards.net, click here to join.

Update, 12/3: Because the Black Friday Jellyfish promotion was so successful, they'll be doing a new 24-hour Smack again before Christmas! Details are promised this week and I'll share them with you as soon as I get the scoop!

Tomorrow, on Black Friday, Jellyfish will have a special promotion, billed as "Smack Friday," featuring products "geared for guys."

Starting at 5am Central on Black Friday, every two hours a different item will be Smacked. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the scoop on the Jellyfish Smack of the Day here.) This will continue for 24 hours. There will be at least one PS3 sold sometime during the sale.

If you haven't watched a Smack -- and the psychological warfare that goes on in chat during one -- you're in for an experience. During a Smack, an unknown quantity of some item is put up for sale and every second, the cashback percentage goes up...bringing down the price after rebate. You don't know how low to let it go because the quantity remaining is unknown. Only Jellyfish knows, and they won't tell. ;)

People will try to psyche you out by telling you to "press Alt-F4 to find out how many items are remaining" (this closes your browser, by the way). They'll insist that the item is a piece of junk (so you won't buy, and they can let the price drop some before THEY do). They'll say they're a Jellyfish employee and they know for a fact there are 500 items remaining, again, to keep the item from selling out before the price drops to their desired level. Oh, the games people play!

But these Smacks are addictive and this will be their first ever all-day Smack, with 24 hours of prices.

Make sure you understand: you will be charged the full "starting price" of the item. The cash back rebate is what increases as time passes, which brings down your cost after rebate. The rebate is deposited into your Jellyfish account in 60-90 days (after the return period for that merchant has passed), then you can withdraw it by requesting a check or a PayPal payment, if your cashback amount is over $10. (If not, it carries over until you do reach $10.)

Good luck, and see you in chat!

Today MyPoints started a new promotion for the holidays, which they promise is their biggest giveaway yet -- 22 million points in all!

MyPoints members must first register here, then every day they can play a matching game (up to 3 times a day) for a chance to instantly win points. In between plays, you'll be shown some offers, some of which are double their regular points offered.

1,000 winning times have been computer-generated; the first player at or immediately following that time will be a potential prize winner. Over the course of the game, they'll give away 10 first prizes of 100,000 points (worth around $700), 90 second prizes of 50,000 points (worth around $350), 50 third prizes of 25,000 points (worth around $150), 50 fourth prizes of 10,000 points (worth around $50), 300 fifth prizes of 5,000 points (worth around $25), and 500 sixth prizes of 1,000 points (worth around $5). (Note: these value estimates are theirs; I think they are a little low.)

In addition, each day you play you'll get an entry into a weekly giveaway for 1 million points (worth around $6,200). The contest continues for 5 weeks, so there will be five 1 million point winners.

The game runs through 12/25 and is open ONLY to U.S. residents (sorry, Canada!) age 18 and up.

I would think that since times are randomly generated, your odds would be better of winning at a lower-traffic time of day (way early in the morning on a weekday, for instance).

Good luck, and if you do win, please brag in a comment so we'll know real people are actually winning! (If you're not a member of MyPoints, please email me and I'll send you a link to join; thanks!)

We're going to hold a post-sale Black Friday chat here in the CompareRewards Chat Room on Friday evening, at 6pm EST. Sorry, West Coast folks -- I know that's an early start time for you but we tend to chat for hours so we may still be at it at 6 YOUR time! I'm thinking that those of us who have been up since 4am will be about shopped out by that time of day, anyway!

Come by anytime after 6pm EST and share your Black Friday stories -- the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat! Brag on your best deals, or just come by to say hi. My co-host in chat will be my "Partner in Crime" ;) -- Ginger of AdLibCorner, the highly-respected rewards program trivia answer YahooGroup and message board!

The chat room here is fairly easy to use -- click on Chat Room above, enter whatever you want to be called in the Username field, leave everything else blank, then click Just Chat! If you're an AOL member, you'll need to load up IE or another browser because the chat software isn't compatible with AOL's browser. I will be monitoring my email during the chat so if you have any difficulties please just send me an email!

Hope to see some of you there! We did this last year and it was a lot of fun!

Late yesterday I got word from my source at Jellyfish.com that they too will be doing a Cyber Monday promo of some kind. They're still hashing out the details, and when I hear more I'll pass them along!

I have it from a very reliable source that Ebates.com will be having a very special Cyber Monday promotion this year, something that's "never been done by any loyalty site."

Details are sketchy, but what I do know is that on Cyber Monday (that's the Monday after Thanksgiving, typically a huge online shopping day), Ebates will be offering special rebates for "hundreds of merchants" between 11am and 3pm PST (that's 2pm to 6pm EST). It's something they've "never done before," and I'm told that many rebates will at LEAST be doubled during this time period.

So...if like me you aren't anywhere close to being done with your holiday shopping, even after Black Friday, you'll definitely want to tune in on Monday to Ebates.com to see what type of rebates they're going to throw at us!

Not a member of Ebates yet? Please join here!

If you're a member of QuickRewards.net, they're requesting that you verify and update some information in order to convert your account to their new system (due to be live by Thursday).

Go to QuickRewards.net, and click on "Click Here to Transfer Your Account" and it will walk you through the steps of creating an account on the new system. Some things that are new -- they ask you for a username that you'll use on their new forum, they ask you for a primary and secondary email address, and those are the two email addy's they want you to use for completing offers (hint: for your secondary email, use an address that you only use for signup offers that may generate spam), etc.

I think there are also a few minor changes to the terms and conditions, like, they request that you have a VERIFIED PayPal account if you're requesting $10 or more in PP. It's not a requirement but they reserve the right to not pay you if you don't have one (I think they've been having some problems with fraud). All Canadians have to have a verified PP account for any amount of PayPal payments unless they've been a QR member for over 6 months.

Also, you have to log in to your account and earn at least one point per month, or else they may delete your account for inactivity.

The conversion procedure takes only a minute. They hope to have everyone converted to the new system, and have it live, by Thursday. I've heard some of the inside scoop on the new features and they're going to be AWESOME -- including lots of new ways to earn without spending!

Not a member of QuickRewards.net yet? Join here!

Launched on 11/1, E-Miles.com is owned by the same company as E-Rewards.com. The idea is that you can earn frequent flier miles for providing demographic info and then watching ads keyed to your profile. (You'll have to answer questions about the ads, no doubt to be sure you were paying attention.)

In their press release, the company promises, "At no cost and in just four to five minutes spent each day engaging with e-Miles, a member can earn enough miles for a domestic roundtrip award ticket each year."

The program is open to residents of the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam or U.S. Virgin Islands, age 18+, with their own email address.

Currently, the participating frequent flier programs are those for Continental, Delta, Northwest, and US Airways. Those programs will be sending out invitations to members in January to join E-Miles, but you can go ahead and sign up now if you'd like -- they have about 300 miles available right now when you enroll and complete their questionaires.

Earned points will be transferred to your FF account quarterly.

Beginning November 15, members of the E-Rewards program can choose to cash out their earnings for credit to their Borders Rewards Holiday Savings Accounts. This redemption is available at the $15 level only.

If you're not a member of Borders Rewards, sign up in any Borders store for a free membership. You'll receive coupons throughout the year, you'll get a Personal Shopping Day (10% off all purchases) every month in which your qualifying purchases exceed $50, plus every year your purchases exceed $200, you'll get 5% of your total purchases deposited into your Holiday Savings Account (redeemable between 11/15 and 1/31). More info on Borders Rewards is here.

Thanks to Vivian for the tip!

There are a couple of rewards programs set up to help parents save for their children's college education. You've heard of Upromise and BabyMint, but have you heard about LittleGrad? Click Continue Reading for the full review!

Most rewards programs won't allow you to receive rebates on the purchase of gift cards. ClubMom, however, does allow you to earn when buying GCs from a selection of merchants.

The rewards range from 3 points per dollar (1.5%) to 15 points per dollar (7.5%). Merchants include Toys R Us (1.5%), Home Depot (5%), Barnes and Noble (3.5%), Bath and Body Works (5%), United Artists Theaters (5%), and many others.

ClubMom charges $1.95 for shipping for gift cards under $200, but they're doing a special through 12/31: If you buy at least one Home Depot GC, your entire GC order will ship free.

Please click here if you're interested in joining ClubMom Rewards.

Lightspeed Panel Review

I just realized that I haven't mentioned Lightspeed Panel on either of my primary websites and I have to apologize. That is doing you a major disservice.

I LOVE Lightspeed Panel. They send you surveys by email (or you can log into their website to see if any are available), and these surveys are worth varying amounts of points -- 75, 150, or 300 are the most common amounts -- and then you can turn around and cash those points in for various redemptions including Amazon GCs, PayPal, Applebee's GCs, Old Navy/Gap GCs, and merchandise.

In looking at my payment history for this year, I see that I've earned $20 in PayPal and $40 in Amazon credit just from doing these little surveys...and I could've earned a lot more if I was better at catching the surveys soon after they're sent out (before they've reached their quota of respondents).

This is my link to join if you'd like to try it out. They send out Amazon GCs "instantly" when you cash out (I dunno about "instantly," but it's usually the same day) -- it would be an easy way to build up your holiday shopping funds!

As you know if you're a regular reader here, every year I put together a shopping rebates comparison chart, where I analyze rebate rates of 17 online rewards programs -- both those that pay in cashback percentages and those that pay in "points per dollar" (after converting those points to percentages, of course). I just released this year's comparison, and the standout winner was a program called BondRewards. I received this response from the company regarding their performance in the analysis:

"We were very excited to be awarded shopping rebate site of 2006, we intend to pursue being strong consumer advocates with many new features added soon to our already very successful program.

These benefits will allow consumers to always get more!

Thank you so much for this honor, our entire company from investors to employees are deserving of this attention. They all work tirelessly on behalf of consumers everywhere.

Miriam McDermott
Senior Vice President"

My review of BondRewards is here.

I've mentioned the Jellyfish.com program here before -- they're an online shopping rebate site with fantastic rates, and they also have a built-in comparison shopping search engine that is really cool and could be the topic of an entirely different post (sometime in the near future). But today I wanted to share the scoop with you on the Jellyfish Smack Shopping Deal of the Day.

If you're a diehard deal hound like me, you're looking for cool stuff cheap. Really cheap. And the Jellyfish Smack Deal is where to get it.

(Click Continue Reading to get the full scoop!)

QuickRewards is having a promotion through midnight on 11/15: Place an order at DisneyShopping.com through their link and in addition to their very competitive 3.8% shopping rebate, they'll give you a free Disney Dollar (these can be spent as cash in stores or at their parks). They recommend that you clear cookies before making your purchase, and they ask that you mention the promo when forwarding your order confirmation email. If you'd prefer you can just have an additional dollar added to your account. Limit one Disney Dollar or $1 bonus per household.

Remember, at QuickRewards, you can cash out your earnings to PayPal at any time and payments are generally made the same day you request them. (Or, you can save up your earnings for other emailable or snail-mailable GCs.) QR also has a much shorter waiting period for your rebate funds to become available for redemption than most other programs.

I've been a member of QuickRewards.net for over three years now and I am very happy with the rates, the speed of redemption, and the customer service. If you'd like to give them a try, please join here.

PayPal announced today that they're going to do a 3% cash back promotion starting on 11/23 when you register for their special promotion here and shop through one of their qualifying merchants. (And obviously, when you pay with PayPal.) There will also be free shipping offered from some merchants for a limited time, starting on 11/23.

The rebate will go into your PayPal account 4 to 6 weeks after the promotion ends.

There are a few details that are unclear -- the press release said the promo runs through May 15, 2007 and you can earn a max of $20 per transaction, but the PayPal Holiday Promo site says it's only through 12/15/06 but you can earn a max of $90 per transaction. Will post a clarification when I get it.

Currently the merchants will include Dell, B&N, Sharper Image, Walgreens, Buy.com, Ebags, Tiger Direct, and many others. Ebay is specifically EXCLUDED from the promo.

Update: Site's back up...They really need to get this problem fixed -- two weekends in a row??

The Greenpoints.com website is down again today -- it's giving an "exceeded bandwidth" error message to site visitors. This same thing happened last Sunday as well, and the site was back up and fully functional by the end of the day. No worries -- just a temporary glitch, I'm sure.

While it's down, and while you're here, why don't you check out how Greenpoints did in my 2006 Shopping Rebates Comparison Chart? You might find other rewards programs that will reward you a lot more for shopping!

In addition to its Tuesday double rebate promo, Ebates.com is doing a daily extra cashback merchant promotion through November 5. You can also see a gift idea hand-picked by one of Ebates' staff members at that day's extra cash-back merchant. Today's merchant is CircuitCity, where purchases will earn you a 4% rebate, instead of their usual 2%. You get free shipping at CircuitCity.com on orders of $25 or more. If you've never used Ebates before, when you join they'll give you an extra $5 when you make your first purchase!

SeekingAlpha.com has released its transcript of yesterday's quarterly conference call with United Online (the new owner of MyPoints) and their stock analysts regarding their third quarter financial statements.

"We are very pleased with our MyPoints acquisition," said Mark Goldston, United Online's Chairman and CEO. He said that one of the reasons UO was interested in MyPoints was that they felt it could help increase loyalty to their other companies, like Classmates.com, Juno, and NetZero. For instance, the company will soon be unrolling a new membership level at Classmates.com called Classmates Silver, where users will earn MyPoints not only for registering at Classmates.com, but also for doing various activities on that site, including adding a photo or bio, or inviting friends. "...our goal is to have every one of the existing 40 plus million Classmates members presented with the opportunity to easily sign up and acquire points with a MyPoints membership. Ultimately the goal is to make content as currency and to give our users the opportunity to earn MyPoints rewards every time they put content up on the Classmates website."

They're already offering new Classmates registrants the opportunity to sign up with MyPoints, and they'll be offering it to new registrants of NetZero and Juno within the next 90 days.

United Online intends to increase promotion for MyPoints going into its "seasonally strong" fourth quarter, and they talked about investing in search engine marketing to do that.

Those are the high points -- the full transcript is here.

Jellyfish.com yesterday started a new promotion called the Smack Shopping Deal of the Day (it turns out that a group of jellyfish is called a "smack." Who knew?).

Every business day (no weekends or holidays) at 1pm Eastern, a new product will be featured in limited quantities, and the cashback rebate will increase every second until the item is sold out. Yesterday, for their first run, they featured an iPod Nano. They say the response was "phenomenal" and resulted in some technical problems, but that they're all ironed out for today.

Note that you're limited to purchasing only ONE of the item, and that your credit card will be charged the full purchase price; the difference is that you'll get more cashback to your Jellyfish account.

The Deal of the Day will be announced 15 minutes before 1pm Eastern every day.