Gift Card Sale?

If you need one more reason to complete offers on InstaGC, consider this: Their gift cards sometimes go on sale, allowing you to obtain one at a discount. At the time of this posting, there are gift card sales on Amtrak Vacations, Applebees, Bass Pro Shops, IMVU, JC Penny, Microsoft Points, Omaha Steaks, Overstock, Riot Points, Under Armour, Wii Points, and Xbox Live Gold. Keep in mind, sales change though— I snagged a $25 Apple Store gift card for 2,250 points or $22.50 worth.

Dubious Sites

So while earning free gift cards on InstaGC, I found a Trialpay offer to sign up for Clickperks. I got paid about 70¢ for the signup, but it seems Clickperks is dubious at best, so while I will enjoying my InstaGC credit (as soon as Trialpay coughs it up), I will not be participating in Clickperks on a regular basis.

Almost...

Having bought all my accessories, I earned almost enough to get another $20 amazon gift card for free. Almost!

Now I Have New Accessories.

I spent my instant gift cards on a new computer only to realize too late I hadn't done so through the InstaGC offer. As it happened, the computer never shipped so I cancelled the order and bought a new one elsewhere. But new computers need new accessories, and my Amazon gift cards and that offer are still there.

So I bought a bigger monitor, new speakers, plus a solid state drive for faster booting. And then some.

$20 Loss Retraction

My ability to get an amazon gift card for free is unimpeded— the $1,000 order was never shipped so I cancelled it and it is now refunded.

So Much For $20

If you want to earn gift cards from your Amazon purchases, InstaGC is the only place you can earn them. Unfortunately, that only works if you actually remember to click the link first.

I didn't.

For a $1,000 purchase.

Costing me $20.

I hope there's some way to fix that.

More Updates

iRazoo has offered pay-to-watch videos for some time, but alas has reduced the payouts from said videos yet again. Initially 2 points per video (or approximately $0.03 per 9 videos), the payout was reduced some time ago to 1 point per video and has now been reduced again to 1 point per 2 videos. On the plus side, they don't seem to mind the use of autowatchers, though I can't officially endorse their use (and I certainly don't use them).

Swagbucks videos remain at 3 Swagbucks ($0.03) per 10 videos, but they've redesigned the video page. It's perfectly functional but I think the old one was a little more convenient. Unlike iRazoo, Swagbucks explicitly forbids the use of autowatchers and actually does ban people for using them, so don't. They also offer pay-to-play games (as in, you get paid for playing, not you have to pay to play them) and recently redesigned that page as well. The redesigned page worked for awhile but of late I'm having problems getting credited for games, at least using Chrome. Perhaps Firefox would be a better choice.

Wincash247 (no link due to bad practices) has promised my overdue payment will arrive by the end of March, but I tend to doubt as much; unless the payment is received I will consider them to be in default. On the plus side, I discovered they have an office in Delaware, so I can sue them for payment if need be.

Memolink has stopped offering games. However, it took me awhile to notice because their games paid next to nothing; it was possible to earn a mere 0.6¢ per day from games, so I rarely bothered to play them.

Instant Gift Card Explosion

If you want to complete offers to earn rewards, you'll have inevitably discovered InstaGC (if only because I keep banging on about it).

Initially offering Amazon gift cards plus several other flavours (Walmart, Starbucks, etc), InstaGC now offers gift cards from pretty much any entity that offers them— there were a few obscure ones that took me by surprise. Bed Bath & Beyond is pretty ordinary, but Bass Pro Shops and Amtrak Vacations are rarely seen on PTC sites; in fact, InstaGC is the only one I've seen thus far.

And if you can't find a gift card of your liking despite the wide selection, you can now redeem your points for cash and receive a check in the mail. Obviously that's not going to be instant (alas), but the minimum balance to receive a check is $1 which is another rarity for PTC sites.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Disclaimer disclaimer: I'd have probably made this post anyway if I wasn't paid.

Some Updates

1. Swagbucks has just celebrated another birthday with another revamp of the site. Personally, I think the old one was better.

2. Wincash247 (no link due to bad practices) has defaulted on the cashout I was due... naughty! I've emailed their support, but considering it uses a gmail address, I'm not hopeful.

3. Superpoints continues to default on everyone's cashout due to their sudden closure, and I have yet to convince a lawyer to take up a class action suit against them.

4. Free Awesome has resumed their practice of emailing free tokens to all members, and now I have $0.50 in my account again. Still a long way from cashout, but we'll see.

5. Ibid2save has returned to their former practices. It was nice while it lasted. Pity I didn't win anything. :(

6. You can still earn free gift cards with InstaGC.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Superpoints Class Action?

I've called class action firm Scott and Scott to see if it's possible to pursue a claim against Ryan Koonce and/or Superpoints LLC with respect to the vanished funds.

In the meantime, you can still get your free amazon gift card fix with InstaGC.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Another Day Another Dollar

I've gotten quite a few instant gift cards from InstaGC and now I've gotten one more.

At $1, they have the lowest cashout level of any PTC service I've seen thus far.

You may have noticed the constant shilling for this one site. You may also have noticed the disclaimers at the bottom of each post.

Yes, InstaGC actually does pay just for blog posts.

Which means you can earn $1 every month for simply doing as I do, like so.

Remember, if it takes you 2 minutes to add InstaGC's link to a post you were planning to make anyway, you've earned $7.50/hour— better than minimum wage. And if you can tap out the addition in 30 seconds (remember, you were making the post anyway), then you have earned $30/hour. Pretty good for a PTC site!

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Oh, Internet

With the sudden demise of Superpoints and the disappearance of all the points users may have had with that company, I thought it would be a given that someone would have started a class action lawsuit to force its owner Ryan Koonce to pay up.

So I googled around.

And as it happens, not one of Superpoints' many ripped off users have bothered to file suit.

One of them did, however, start an online petition requesting that Superpoints reactivate to allow users to cash out. Which is totally just as effective.

If you still have points missing, you can call/write/sue Superpoints LLC, which still exists, by clicking the first link of this post to find their phone and address. If, however, you have an urgent need for free gift cards, you can use that link to sign up for InstaGC. Because InstaGC allows you to cash out at $1 rather than requiring you to build up $5 or $25, and because they deliver the gift cards instantly rather than after 7 to 365 business days, you don't have to risk the disappearance of more than a few cents if they suddenly go bankrupt.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

InstaGC Cashout

I recently cashed out my free amazon gift cards from InstaGC, along with other PTC and survey sites.

I made a list of all the cash and gift cards that were due for later delivery.

InstaGC was not on that list.

Because, as the name promises, the gift cards I claimed from InstaGC were displayed instantly, with no wait and no delivery. Push the button, get a gift code! I think there's a new book at Amazon with my name on it.

Total cashout: $22. My choice is Amazon due to its ubiquity, but they have other options.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

InstaGC Amazon Cashback

As I've already made very clear, you can earn free gift cards easily from Insta GC; just complete offers and redeem the points.

However, InstaGC is now offering cash back shopping, just like Swagbucks and Memolink. The eligible merchants on InstaGC is comparatively limited, but one key feature sticks out: InstaGC offers 2% cash back for Amazon, making them the only shopping rewards company I've seen which does.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Swagbucks Redemption Rates

As a longtime Swagbucks user, I was pleased to discover that until the end of December, their redemption rates have changed so that 1 Swagbuck = $0.01 for all gift cards— and all monthly limits are removed!

Of course, on InstaGC, you can get instant gift cards at that redemption rate all the time.

So now there are two great sites to sign up with!

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Superpoints Is Closed

One of my regular PTC sites was Superpoints. However, visiting superpoints.com now yields only a message that the site is closed because the management company running it has been fired by the company that owns it.

The message claims that pending redemptions will be paid out, however no notice was provided of the impending closing and so all of my points (approximately $15 worth) have now vanished into the void.

The site offers a support email and claims that emails regarding redemptions will be addressed, however as of 14 November, one week after the closure, they have not replied to either of my emails.

If you have lost points when the site shut down, it seems that the owner, Superpoints LLC, is still in business. If the management team does not address your concerns by email, try contacting them here:

Superpoints, LLC
8127 Mesa Drive, B206-258
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 931-4942

Once you've successfully collected your final redemptions from Superpoints, you can continue to earn free gift cards from InstaGC.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post.

Status disclaimer: There is currently no evidence that Superpoints is closed because of AIDS and that meme is already long dead.

I Bid 2 Save Update

I did a post about Ibid2save some time back in which I noted that they differ from most penny auction sites in that they hand out free "promo bids" like candy but charge auction fees that make their prizes near-worthless.

They've recently changed their site. Promo bids are now scarce (coupon codes are much more rare, you get 1 bid for each Facebook "like" instead of 10), and most auctions no longer come with overvalued promo bid awards that make their auction fees exorbitant.

Basically, I Bid 2 Save is now much more like a typical penny auction site.

So if you signed up months ago and stockpiled free promo bids, you may well walk off with as much as $100 for your trouble. Personally, I blew all of mine earning about $3 total profit on a gift card that hasn't even arrived yet.

Honestly, I've gotten more free money from InstaGC than from any lousy penny auction site.

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post. I was not paid any money by Ibid2Save. Ibid2Save can have their server rooms flooded by Hurricane Sandy and die for all I care.

Memolink

Ordering a giant crate of mexicokes online: $28
Getting 6% cash back through Memolink for it: Priceless $1.68

What? I can do maths, OK?

A Note About Offerwalls

As you browse many PTC sites, you'll see a handful of names appear again and again— Peanut Labs, RadiumOne, Matomy, and so forth. These are called "offerwalls" by PTC sites and any site that deals with them. But what exactly are they and how do they work?

Well, you know how Google Ads works. An advertiser has a product to sell and wants to drive traffic to their site. They pay an ad network to drive the traffic, and the ad network pays a host to rent ad space for their ad. The advertiser usually pays by the impression, where they pay for each time the ad is viewed, or by the click-through, where they pay every time a user clicks on the ad to visit their site.

Offerwalls work the same way, but with two key differences.

First, rather than pay by the impression or by the click-through, advertisers pay by the conversion, where they pay for each user who clicks the ad and buys the product, signs up for the mailing list, or does whatever other action the advertiser specifies as the purpose of the ad.

Second, offerwalls introduce an additional step to the payment process. As with Google Ads, the ad network pays the host to rent ad space (with the pay being per conversion), but then the host then pays the consumer a percentage of the revenue earned. While Google Ads typically piggy-back on existing traffic to a site, offerwall traffic is driven almost entirely by these payouts.

Because the offerwalls are the ad networks, they, like Google Ads, rent space from many hosts for the same ads.

Additionally, because the fees they pay to their hosts are per conversion, low-traffic and high-traffic hosts receive the same fee for any one conversion. You will likely see the same ad appear on the same offerwall on many different PTC sites. Each and every one of those sites is being paid the same amount by the offerwall if you complete the offer; if one PTC site seems to be offering a higher payout for the offer, that's because that PTC site has elected to pay out a larger percentage to its users.

I haven't done exhaustive research on the matter, but in my general experience, I believe InstaGC offers the highest payout to users and keeps the smallest percentage for itself. Here's hoping they'll be able to continue offering free gift cards for many years to come!

Advertising disclaimer: I was paid 25 Points (25¢) by InstaGC for this post. This payment was made exclusively for the link in the previous paragraph and did not influence its contents.

I Bid 2 Save

Yes, the number is actually in their name and URL.

Ibid2save (yes, it's all one word) is a penny auction site, an entity very different from, yet I feel related to, a PTC site.

So, what's a penny auction site? Simple. At its core, it's an online auction site, but all products are being sold by the site owner and are typically new-in-box merchandise. Participants can't enter the amount to bid; each new bid raises the auction price by one penny and only one penny. Bidding in the last few seconds of an auction adds a few seconds to the clock, so it's impossible to snipe. And while each bid raises the auction price by one penny, it costs between $0.60 and $1 to place each bid. Bids are typically bought in advance, in multi-packs, and must have already been purchased before they can be placed.

Fundamentally, penny auctions are a form of online gambling, though many of them have a "buy it now" option where non-winning bidders can buy the item at retail price minus the cost of all bids wasted; this is because many penny auction sites are based in the United States where online gambling is illegal, and coupled with an admonition to only bid on the items you're intending to buy anyway, giving losing bidders the right to apply their losses to the purchase price circumvents that prohibition.

Ibid2save is fundamentally different from many other penny auctions. On IB2S, there are two classes of bids; "cash bids" that are purchased as normal and count against "buy it now" prices, and "promo bids" which are handed out like candy and don't count towards "buy it now" prices.

Given the frequency with which they hand out promo bids (300 for joining, 10 for liking each individual Facebook post, 100-500 for entering near-weekly coupon codes, etc), it is highly unlikely that you will win any good auction without a substantial bid expenditure, making it a very bad idea to buy bids (though I've "won" auctions on promo bids alone). The vast glut of free promo bids is exacerbated by the fact that there are only 2-3 good auctions at a time at most; IB2S, unlike most penny auction sites, charges "auction fees" to the winner. The auction fee is supposed to be 10% of the auction item's retail value, but every single auction comes with an award of promo bids that are valued for auction fee purposes as if they were substantially more valuable cash bids. A careful perusal of the site (and some double-checking with Google) will reveal that for the vast majority of auctions, the promo bid award is calculated so that the auction fee will exactly equal the retail price of the item— and keep in mind that you will be expected to pay the closing auction price and an exorbitant shipping charge on top of this fee.

As such, the small handful of auctions that are potentially worthwhile given the value of the item relative to the auction fee will be so glutted with people expending cheap promo bids using the site-provided autobidder that the final closing price may well be higher than retail. (Autobidders don't stop until they run out of bids, so their owners may find they have won a $100 for $150 the next morning.)

I personally won a $200 Visa gift card for total price of $198.44 including final auction price, "auction fee" and shipping, offering me a net profit of $3.84 once credit card rewards are included. (Credit card rewards programs, however, are currently beyond the scope of this blog.)

Paying $198.44 to gain $200 in two weeks and $2.28 in a month is not something most people would consider worthwhile; I consider it a good deal since anything is better than nothing (and the $198.44 was charged to my credit card, which acts as an interest-free loan for the two-week shipping period).

And some lucky sod managed to reap a $65 profit on a similar auction; it's all based on luck of the bidders.

In any case, Ibid2save is unusual by penny auction standards but with a pile of free promo bids you might get lucky!