April 2007 Archives

[Last updated, 5/2]
In a press release today, Jellyfish.com announced a strategic partnership with a company called Channel Intelligence.

CI has a product called SellCast Online, which will enable CI's current merchants to become Jellyfish advertisers -- integrating their product listings into Jellyfish's shopping engine, tracking and reporting their JF sales, and allowing these merchants to access a variety of statistics about their JF sales. (Currently CI's merchants are integrated into Shop.com's shopping engine, and perhaps others.)

Read comments posted by Mark McGwire, Jellyfish co-founder, on his blog here.

One thing is clear from the press release: CI's "impressive stable of merchant partners" (100+ of them, including eToys, Circuit City, and Target) now has access to Jellyfish and can "easily integrate their product catalog into Jellyfish.com" -- which hopefully, for JF members, will mean more products from a wider variety of merchants available for price comparison through the JF shopping engine...a good thing for JF members.

Thanks to Greg Kaldor, Jellyfish's VP of Merchant Services, for taking the time to chat with me about this.

If you're not a member of Jellyfish yet, please join here.

QuickRewards has announced that all $50 GCs (except for Walmart) will be available for cashout for just $47.50 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week. That's a 5% discount, for those of you that attended Louisiana public schools. :)

Through May 13, FatWallet is offering increased rebates on purchases made from select merchants. The increases range from 0.75 to 5%. More details can be found in this forum post.

I recently received my first rebate check from FatWallet. I bought a new laptop through FW's link to Dell on October 29th, for $1,128. I earned $33.85 cash back plus a $5 first time shopper bonus. I wasn't eligible to cash out until March (I think). I didn't request my check until 4/6; it was processed on 4/12 and I received it a few days later.

It was a nice 3% rebate on a computer I was buying anyway, and the $5 bonus was sweet...but geez, what a long time to wait on your rebate!

I received an email from the founder of the Echopinion.com word of mouth marketing site today saying that the program is closing its doors today. The program was "extremely successful" but had to be closed because of "forces beyond our control." Interesting.

Just last December, Echopinion won a Word of Mouth Marketing Association award for a research paper, "Measuring Word of Mouth, Volume 2." On March 19, a press release went out saying that Echopinion was going to run a 6 week long word of mouth marketing campaign for a product called TooBee, the amazing flying can. Katie Reilly, Communications Director for Echopinion, posted a response to a comment on the Echopinion Blog on 3/19 in response to a member's question about the program: "...we just launched two new campaigns in the past two weeks!" She went on to say that, "Echopinion is growing every month, bringing new opportunities for our members."

Why the sudden decision to shut down the program? If you have the scoop, please add a comment!

Upromise sent out a news release today mentioning that today is the program's fifth birthday.

Upromise says it has 7.5 million members and over 23,000 participating grocery and drug stores.

Please click here to join.

I read on a message forum today that some members of the OTXsx survey site have received an email from OTXsx saying that they have changed their name to SurveyExchange, and that they've switched to a different platform in order to better target surveys (to reduce the number of "sorry, you didn't qualify" responses).

Click "Continue Reading" to read the full email. I haven't personally received it yet. The note suggests adding emma@surveyexchange.com to your address book to ensure that you'll receive their email.

You may also want to bookmark their blog, to keep up with the latest.

They've put $5 rewards back, for 4500 points, or you can cash out for $10 rewards for 8000 points. Be sure to click on "My personal information" and answer all of the new profile questions in order to better qualify for surveys. And (an important one) be sure to max out the value in the very last field on the page, "How often would you like to receive surveys."

A new version of the Jellyfish Smack Shopping show will be unveiled tomorrow at 3pm Central. There are said to be changes to include multiple chat rooms, personalizable blog-type member pages, and much more.

Tune in tomorrow to see if the months of hard work by the Jellyfish "tech monkeys" have paid off!

Update: Almost all of the kinks have been worked out of Smack Shopping v2 and it appears to be a success. Keeping up with simultaneous chats in multiple chat rooms can be mind-boggling, but the format in the main chat room is much more conducive to watching the price AND chatting. Kudos to the JF "tech monkeys"!

An update to my March 23 post about SixQuestions.com being down:

When I checked the site on April 11th, the site error previously mentioned had been replaced by a note saying that, "We are currently upgrading our system. Please try again later. Management, Sixquestions.com".

Today, I visited the site again and found a big obnoxious notice that the site has been "HACKED by Xx-DEPREM-xX... Kurdish Hacker." (A similar "hacked" title page is up on the sister site to SixQuestions, FiveQ.com.)

The SixQuestions forum is still intact (though inactive; no posts since February 22nd).

Will SixQuestions return? It's not looking good at this point.

If you're a member of the Borders Rewards program, you should've received a coupon good for 10% off your total purchase, expiring today. An additional 5% will be donated to the Grammy Foundation. This coupon is combinable with other in-store promotions.

If you have an account on BzzAgent, be sure to log into your account and complete the available member surveys -- they help qualify you for future campaigns. You may also find a new campaign available for you there for Hillshire Farms Entree Salads.

ClubMom announced today that it would be offering members 1,000 points (worth $5) for attending a free "Do It Herself" workshop at Home Depot stores on 5/7 from 7 to 8. The topic is, "Building Relaxation: Creating Backyard Retreats." Be sure to preregister here.

Attendees will also receive a 10% off coupon.

I got an email from a tipster who said she had logged into Milesource only to find her account balance 3,000 points lower than the previous day. Member service told her that, according to their Terms of Service, her points had expired.

She didn't realize that Milesource points expired. Neither did I, so I checked their FAQs and sure enough, it says that "AwardMiles expire two (2) years from the date that they are earned."

If you're a long-time Milesource member, you may want to check your account information to see if this has affected you or will be soon based on your earnings history.

It was announced yesterday that Sallie Mae, which bought the Upromise rewards program just last June, has itself been sold to an investor group which includes JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America for $25 billion.

If the sale goes through (regulators and stockholders have to approve), it won't be official until late 2007.

Will this affect Upromise members? It doesn't appear so (though you can never tell how new owners will want to shake things up). The press release says that Sallie Mae's current management will continue to run their operations.

That's the basic question behind today's Los Angeles Times article, "Rewarded For the Exchange."

The author comments on the long waiting times for shopping rebates (using Ebates as an example), the "not major" rewards you'll earn "if you're not on a shopping spree," and privacy concerns (using MyPoints' ambiguous privacy policy as an example).

He says that, "...even the biggest rewards programs have not caught on in a major way," citing March internet traffic statistics for Ebates and MyPoints (one and four million, respectively) and comparing that to 42 million site visits at Amazon.com in March.

An e-commerce analyst is quoted as suggesting that rewards programs aren't popular because they add an extra step to the shopping process . "Is it worth the trouble to get 2% or 3% back?"

I think the article is interesting, although it clearly is biased against rewards programs and I think the author is somewhat uninformed.

Long Waiting Times? Not Always
The length of time it takes to receive your rebate depends on the particular rewards program. Yes, Ebates pays quarterly. Any purchases you make between now and the end of June will be paid in mid-August. If you don't want to wait that long, you could shop through MyPoints and only wait about 30 days (though those of us who know rewards programs avoid MyPoints because they offer some of the lowest shopping rebates when you convert points to percentage rebates). Other websites will pay your rebate even quicker -- CreationsRewards pays within a week of reaching their payout minimum of $5 (1,000 points), and QuickRewards typically pays you within a day or two of your placing a shopping order (with NO minimum to get paid if you choose PayPal as an option).

Not Major Rewards? Define "Major."
First of all, earning a free toaster (the author's example) really isn't hard. For example: Mother's Day is coming up. I'm ordering two $50 arrangements (for his mom and mine), and that $100 at FTD will earn me 12%, or $12 cash back. I have to order a new inkjet cartridge for my printer. At 1-Inkjet, I'll earn 25% on my $36 order...$9 cash back. My son's subscription to Nick Jr. Magazine just ran out. It's $20 at ValueMags, and my 25% back is another $5 into my account. And my cats just ran out of Advantage flea treatment, and I'll earn 6% cash back at Petco on my $40 purchase, another $2+.

Maybe to folks from Los Angeles, where they have an astronomical cost of living, earning $28 cash back from four routine purchases you were going to make anyway isn't much money. But to me, a typical middle-income housewife, that's a decent chunk of change...VERY much worth the extra clicks to go through a rewards program first.

And to most regular folks, $28 is plenty of money to get a perfectly nice toaster. The Black & Decker Toast-It-All Plus (with electronic controls, defrost function, and a removable crumb tray) is $22.99 at AceHardware.com, plus I'll earn 5% cash back there! Or, hmm, maybe I'd choose the Black & Decker Toaster Oven at Sears, on sale for $19.99 plus 2% cash back. Boscovs.com has a really cool-looking T-Fal toaster for $19.99 (3% cash back). Gee whiz. Decisions, decisions.

Privacy Concerns? Doesn't Concern Me.
Let's look at the information rewards programs may keep on you (every program has their own set of data points they keep on their members, some have more than others). Your name and address? Necessary to cut you a check. Your age, household income range, gender, number of kids, hobbies and interests? Used to attract advertisers and to target ads.

First of all, smart rewards program members know to fudge on these questions in order to receive the greatest number of paid emails. I could give a rat's behind about golf, but I have it checked off as an interest just in case MyPoints sends out a 4c email to golfers. When my friends ask why they're not getting as many paid emails as I do, I suggest they fudge on their income (people with household incomes under $20k will be less attractive, thus get fewer paid emails, than someone who makes, say, $75k).

Second of all, I always suggest that people use a spam-friendly email address for rewards programs -- one they don't mind possibly getting cluttered with spam. YahooMail does a fairly decent job of filtering out spam.

Lastly, I only give out my cellphone number when I sign up to a rewards program or complete offers there. It has caller ID and I ignore unknown numbers, and I shut it off at night.

These things all minimize any potential nuisances from spam... but they are really just precautions. Since the CAN-SPAM Act, I haven't had problems with any of the rewards programs I do spamming me. You can opt in to receive their emails (which you're usually paid to read, or at least directed to offers that you'll be paid to complete), or you can choose to receive no emails at all from the rewards program. It's entirely up to you.

As for those who worry about Big Brother or some non-governmental entity tracking all sorts of data on you and keeping it in a scary super-secret database somewhere...remember, all "they" know about you is that you "earn over $75,000 and like golf." They "know" whatever you tell them. Just make sure your mailing address is accurate. :)

Rewards Programs Haven't Caught On?
There are several flaws in the logic of comparing Ebates and MyPoints to Amazon simply on the basis of site visitors and to conclude that rewards sites are just a blip on the radar screen.

First of all, you can't subtract out members of Ebates and MyPoints from Amazon's site hits. Chances are good that their members shop at Amazon. I do. Rewards program members make up some of the 42 million site hits Amazon had in March. "Yeah, but you couldn't make up many of those because MyPoints just had 4 million hits." Wrong again. Ebates doesn't reward for Amazon (Amazon doesn't allow incentivized traffic, so NO rewards program legally offers rebates there)...so there would be no reason for me to go to Ebates and click through from there to Amazon.

The second logical flaw is that the comparative number of site hits is an indicator of popularity. According to Alexa.com, 24% of all global internet users visited Google yesterday...compared to only 1.7% that visited Amazon.com. I guess Amazon isn't catching on!

A better indicator of how popular rewards programs are would be the total online sales in the US in March (or December, or for whatever month has the most updated data) compared to the total sales made through rewards programs in that month.

What percentage of online shoppers go through a rewards program? Who knows? A person can (and often does) use more than one rewards program for shopping. You don't want to double-count them.

Suffice it to say that we know for a fact that there are MILLIONS of Americans shopping through some sort of online rebate site. For them, the extra couple of clicks is worth it to earn the "2% to 3%" cash back (which as I illustrated above is often WAY more than that). They don't lack the "mental bandwidth" it takes to remember to click through their rewards program before shopping.

I hope that the LA Times article does not scare off consumers from using rewards programs, as they are very simple to use and result in substantial rebates just from buying things you'd buy anyway. Consumers just need to be informed about which rewards programs pay the most, have the best customer service, and get the types of rewards they want shipped out to them the fastest...which is why CompareRewards is here. Please feel free to browse the site, and please check out my reviews of the rewards programs mentioned in this post. If you'd like to compare many of the programs at once, you may find my Rewards Program Snapshot helpful.

As always, I welcome your comments or questions below or send me an email here.

Or, MyPoints Devalues Points Once Again

This morning I received an email from a member who was happy to report having won over 100,000 points in the latest MyPoints point giveaway. She noticed, however, that by the time the contest had ended, her points were worth less. "...what was a 7500 points for $100.00 gift card is now a $50.00 gift card," she wrote.

I checked into it and I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but clearly the points required to cash out for some GCs have increased.

Compare this cache of MyPoints' Redeem page from May 2006 to the current Redeem page and you'll see the following changes:

- $50 BassPro, Lids, Metromedia, and Stuart Anderson's GCs that were 5,750 points are now 6,250 points
- $50 Gap, Omaha Steaks, and Pier One GCs that were 6,000 points are now 6,250 points (Gap was 5,750 points in 8/05)
- $50 Home Depot GCs that were 6,750 points are now 7,250 points
- $50 Target GCs that were 7,250 points are now 7,500 points

- $25 Bloomingdales, Gap, Metromedia, and Stuart Anderson's GCs that were 3,000 points are now 3,250 points
- $25 Home Depot and Hyatt GCs that were 3,500 points are now 3,750 points

- $10 Barnes and Noble GCs that were 1,300 points are now 1,400 points (note: these were 1,250 in 8/05)
- $10 Gap GCs that were 1,300 points are now 1,350 points
- $10 Starbucks GCs that were 1,400 points are now 1,450

Strangely enough, two GCs have slightly dropped in cost (a $10 JCPenney GC was 1,500 points and is now 1,450; a $10 REI GC was 1,500 points and is now 1,400).

Note: Not all $25 and $50 redemptions were increased but obviously a good number of them were.

One can't help but wonder if perhaps these increased GC costs are related to MyPoints' recent decision to restart their affiliate program. They're paying webmasters $2 for every new member they bring in. Then consider all of the recent points giveaways MyPoints has offered. Obviously the company has to pay for these increased expenses somehow -- charging more for some of their popular GCs appears to be their strategy.

Choose your MyPoints redemption closely -- some GCs are a better value (lower point cost for the same denomination GC at a different merchant). See my recently updated post on the Best MyPoints Redemptions for a quick rundown on which redemptions are cheapest.

According to a post today on the QuickRewards.net Blog, the programmers have been given a deadline of 5pm tonight to correct the errors in the new release of the website that went live last week and has been plagued with errors since. If they can't make it work, they're going to create a backup site from scratch, which Dmitry says could be done in 2 to 3 days...then they'll have to go back to work fixing the errors in the FIRST new release.

Let this be a lesson to ya, rewards program owners: do NOT try to rush through beta-testing! (I could add something like, "...and hire REAL programmers," but that wouldn't be nice, would it? snicker)

Starting April 4, readers of the Washington Post can register for their new rewards program, PostPoints.

The program will offer three membership levels: one for non-subscribers and online readers, one for Sunday-only subscribers, and one for seven-day subscribers. Some general information about how to earn and redeem points is here.