Here’s a personal finance article that I think will interest my readers who are obsessive budgeters and savvy savers. Finding any additional means of producing income can go along way to achieving your savings goals each month.
I’m about to explain how to get free gift cards or extra cash online by completing a few additional tasks. A fair trade you might say.
Gift cards are a great way to pay for your favourite items, but they also make the perfect gift for friends and acquaintances. Since gift cards require money upfront, you may be looking for ways to earn gift cards online. Luckily, the web offers several options for earning gift cards online today, though they aren’t all equal.
Let’s take a look about the best way to earn gift cards online.
Why Earn Gift Cards Online?
Hourly or salaried jobs are paid in cash, allowing you to immediately pay bills or spend money at any shop. Because of this fact, many people don’t see the benefit of earning money via gift cards. Although gift cards can’t be used at all stores, earning gift cards online is a great way to earn extra spending cash in your spare time. I’ll explain further below how you can ensure that a gift card is just as useful as cash itself.
The best part about gift cards is that you can spend them yourself. They are an especially great option if you want to monitor how much you spend at individual stores. Similarly, you can save them up and splurge without wasting your hard-earned cash.
At the same time, gift cards are a great gift for family members, friends, or coworkers. They are a bit more personalized than simple cash, but they still allow the recipient to spend their money on items they want and need.
All around, gift cards are a great option for earning money. You can spend the money on yourself, or you can gift it to someone else.
How can gift cards be as useful as cash?
Particularly when using gift cards & rewards as an income booster, you will want to avoid being tempted to spend a gift card on something frivolous.
A gift card can feel unreal, like Monopoly money. This leads people to feel like they’re not spending their own money, and therefore they can use it to buy a treat or an item that under normal circumstances they wouldn’t spend their hard-earned cash on.
I’m not a mindless supporter of frugality, and there’s nothing wrong with an occasional treat. But if you set down this road to save more money each month, then it would be a waste of time to spend the hard-earned gift card on something incremental to your budget.
Read more: The best budgeting & money management books
So how can you utilise gift cards in an efficient way, and convert them to cash?
Here’s the secret:
When given a choice of gift card – pick a gift card that covers a shop you use regularly for groceries or essentials, such as a supermarket or online retailer. Examples include gift vouchers for Amazon, Tesco or Sainsburys.
This way, you can simply use the card instead of your own cash the next time you shop there. Using your card in this way, will give you a direct boost to your bank balance. Just as if you were paid in cash directly!
How Can I Earn Gift Cards Online?
With that being said, is there any way to earn gift cards online? Surprisingly, yes! You can take online surveys for rewards, allowing you to cash out with gift cards. In other words, you can earn gift cards online simply by taking easy surveys, which pay to hear your opinions.
Is It Legit?
I’ve covered countless investment scams on the internet, so this is a fair question. Especially in the world of ‘side hustles’, i.e. additional income streams. There are some powerful laws of economics that make it different for great, honest opportunities to prevail online.
First of all, scamming is a naturally lucrative business. This is because the scammer will usually not provide the product or service promised, and therefore their costs are limited to the marketing and sales effort they put into attracting signups.
This means that scammers can afford a big marketing budget, and can out-bid competing services on search engines such as Google. This simple law of economics explains why scams seem to be constantly vying for your attention online.
You never want to waste your time or money on scams. A scam survey website will typically promise the world:
- Unrealistic volumes of surveys, e.g. tens or hundreds of surveys per month
- Unrealistic remuneration per survey, e.g. £100 for a 30 minute survey
They push their survey website as a way to retire early & achieve financial independence, and charge an upfront membership fee of between £50 – £200 for a sign-up.
Although some survey sites are scams, there are plenty of trustworthy and dependable sites that let you earn gift cards online legitimately.
There are some simple ways to differentiate between scam sites and legit sites. For example, they may require payment upfront, ask for personal information like your banking information or social security number. They may also promise free, big-ticket items like a vacation or they could promise nearly full-time earnings. These are all signs of a scam. Any site with these red flags should be avoided.
As you’ll read in the best business books – large profits can only come with large risks. So if any website is offering what sounds like an amazing return without any risk, then something doesn’t stack up.
Aside from scam sites, trustworthy survey sites are a completely legit way to earn gift cards online. How it works is that marketing agencies and companies pay the survey sites to find out what real customers want from their products and services. By taking the surveys, you provide invaluable information about what real customers want, which is why they pay you for your insight.
Get Started Today
To start earning gift cards online today, sign up for a survey-taking site online. These sites will provide you with the opportunity to earn gift cards simply by giving your opinion. Just remember to look out for warning signs of a scam site!