MyPoints Review: Earn Extra Cash with Paid Surveys

MyPoints is a rewards program or website just like the ‘get paid to’ site that pays you to do certain activities. The site will task you with doing research, surveys, reading emails for points that you can redeem for rewards once you get to a certain threshold.

So in this article, I will give you an overview of everything you need to know about MyPoints. How to get started, how can you earn the points and how can you redeem them, what benefits you will get from the site. All the critics, doubts and questions shall be explained in this article, so read on and let me enlighten you!

Go to MyPoints and get a $10 sign-up bonus

All about Mypoints

MyPoints is a paid online site that was established in 1996 by Dan Kihanya and Noah Doyle. Ownership at that time belonged to the United Online, Inc. and Proledge, LLC, whose primary focus was consumer influence. Three years into existence, it went to a NASDAQ stock exchange and became public in 1999.

In 2016, United Online, Inc. sold ownership to Proledge, LLC and now the company chairs both – MyPoints and the Swagbucks online survey sites. It is now 23 years into existence and has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, with over 300 employees working there currently.

They have a web page URL, http://www.mypoints.com and are also available on the mobile platform for both Android and iOS via ‘the daily scoop.’

Signing Up and Getting Started

Just as its competitors, this is the easiest step. You have to head up to their webpage and click on the sign-up tab and fill up a few details to get started. It requires you to give up a username, a password, and an email address so they can confirm the registration of the account. More like verification. Before signing up, there are a few details you will have to consider:

• You must be a resident of either the USA or Canada.
• You have to be above the age of 18 years although I have seen a review that states from 13 years.
• The email address has to be valid.
• They allow only one account per household. If My Points finds out that there are two accounts with the same IP address, they see it as a duplication of accounts, and they could both be deactivated or terminated.

After you have signed up, you will receive bonus points to get you started. But before the real fun begins, you will also have to fill up your profile with personal details. It is not mandatory, but you can earn up to 60 good points for that.

Under the profile section, you will be required to give the name, gender, date of birth, zip code among other personal data. For four questions on the survey profile, you could earn five bonus points.

Activities

As I have mentioned above, these type of sites usually has plenty of activities just waiting for you to indulge yourself. I will go through all these activities and highlight for you how exactly can you earn the points.

Taking Surveys and Daily Polls

It is one of the most common activities on the site. Once you have signed up, you immediately have to take up the first survey where you will fill it up with personal data as I have explained above. This survey has no limits like a disqualification factor. You will earn points for every 4 to 10 questions you answer.

After you are acquitted, you will have the chance to take up surveys from the research companies over at the survey board. You can attempt to do the surveys, but there is a disclaimer, you will not know if you have qualified or not until you have completed the survey.

That can be a waste of time and pretty frustrating, but luckily enough you could also find yourself being a match. The surveys may also appear to have a red or orange star on them, which means the number of applicants needed for that particular survey is minimal.

Qualification for the surveys depends on various factors like your background, age, the race among other demographic factors. According to the reviews, the disqualification rates are pretty high for this site, but that should not discourage you from trying out.

On the earning basis, you could earn up to 500 points by filling up the surveys — an average of 50 points for those who qualify and 10 points for those who don’t. At least you will not be left empty-handed like many other survey sites.

Over some time, you should start receiving survey notification emails which are making it easier for you to participate in the surveys without having to go searching.

Reading E-mails

It is also a widespread activity. The mail on the site is known as BonusMail. You will be receiving about 5 points for every letter you read. The emails often have links where you are also required to click to earn an extra 5 points. In a day you can read about four emails picking up 20 points in total.

Shopping

MyPoints has partnered up with over 2000 retailers to provide you with a great shopping experience. All you need to do is to do your everyday shopping through MyPoints, and you can earn points and cashback for your purchases. Some of the familiar retailers include:

• Amazon
• Best Buy
• Home Depot
• Kohl’s
• eBay
• Target
• Starbucks
• Old Navy
• CVS
• Burger King

That is just the tip of the iceberg of the shops available for shopping. If you spent only a dollar, you could earn up to 8 points. So the more you shop, the more you make.

SUGGESTION! We only recommend buying things/services through MyPoints that you needed anyway. Otherwise, you are spending money, to earn much less. So keep your head clear on that one.

Playing Online Games

The site also gives you a chance to play games on their platform and earn points. As you take a bus home or are bored at home, this can be ideal for you. They have free games like Candy Crush Saga and also a variety of GSN games that give you cashback on the money you spend.

But on this one, we also suggest not to spend much money. Remember, you are reading this article to earn some extra cash, so any dollar you spend should be carefully considered.

Watching Videos

There is also an option of watching videos of different profiles from news and current events to entertainment, how- to’s, cooking, food, health and wellness, home gardening, and traveling features. There have been some exciting videos about hacks that people have been using over the years. PRO TIP! You can play the video on mute and double task with other activities on the website. You will earn some decent cents from playing videos on the background.

Web Searching

If you are a fan of Google or Bing, or you find yourself in the activity of internet searching, then this could be your perfect gig. You can earn points for searching the internet through the website’s page. The tab is called “Search and earn.” For over 40 searches, you will receive100 points.

MyPoints Score

This is an upgrade on the site that gives you a web extension bar called Score that allows you to quickly access the site without having to search for it every time. Plus, the bar will keep track of your purchases and online activity ensuring you earn points for all those activities.

Refer-a-Friend

This is a program that will earn you points for referring a friend to the site. You will get an incentive once the friend has joined the site, approximately 25 points and then keep earning 10% of your friend’s earnings. This is the easiest way to make a few dollars for doing almost nothing. This is what we call passive income even though the money is quite small.

MyPoints Travel

This is a unique feature on this site. You can earn points for travel incentives. Whenever you are planning for business trips, vacations or getaways, you can use the MyPoints site and make a few points in your account.

MyPoints has partnered with Expedia to give you reasonable cashback offers and discounts for hotel stays and many travel purchases. You can book a flight, reserve a hotel, rent a car, purchase a cruise and earn points for all of them.

You will also get cheap flight offers and reduced prices on products. You can earn up to 6 points for every dollar you use.

Offers and Deals

The deals on this site are also pretty amazing. You can get up to 50, 000 points on the offers. On their website, you could see many options by retailers on the offers they are willing to give you. For example, one outstanding offer I saw was from Blue Apron. You will get 500 points and $50 off on your first two orders, or 5,500 points by Airbnb. So if you intended to use Blue Apron anyway, it is a quite good deal.

Test on Trial Products

Speaking still on offers, you could get an offer to try out a new product, service or application by a research company before they release it to the market. This activity usually has some strings attached though. You might have to give personal details that can be security and safety issues.

Downloading Coupons

This is also a deals thing. You can use your points to download printable coupons and use them for your purchases. For example a grocery coupon, it can be about 10 points, but you have counter production which is still beneficial.

Extra Earnings

On the MyPoints site, they refer to earnings as rewards that you will get once you redeem the points you have earned. From the above subheadings, I have highlighted how you can make money from the many activities found at the site, but that is not the only way you can earn points to your account.

There is something called the daily 5. This is where you have to complete at least five tasks in a day and earn a bonus 5 points on your account. It means you have to play all five days consecutively to qualify for the offer.

There is also something called the monthly goals. This is where you can earn bonus points for listing your target goals and achieving them. Pretty simple.

There is also points perk. This acts like bonus codes in other sites. You get to input a specific code and earn points for it. The point perk comes as a string of alphanumeric text with 13 characters.

You’ll need to enter this string of characters into one of the two Point Perks fields on the site. You will then redeem a predetermined amount of points to your account. The Point perk is located throughout the website, and if you follow the site through Facebook or Twitter, you will be notified once there is one. Generally, the point perk can be found all over the social media and not specifically the two mentioned above. If you find it, you can redeem it for points. This is not a very regular activity, but again one, where you can earn a few points for relatively low effort.

Earning on the site can be relatively easy because of the bonus codes, promotions, and bonuses once you do something like the extra $10 you get for signing up. Or the 30 to 60 points for completing your profile. You can also get 100 points extra for downloading their mobile applications.

Another great way to get you an extra point in your account is BzzAgent. It is possible to link your BzzAgent account with MyPoints and earn extra points on the website. You must be a member of both sites and link your account together to receive the points from BzzAgent.

Your earnings in a month or per hour mostly depend on your effort. You could earn pennies or dollars. From reviews, you could make a medium range of about $40 a month if you put up the work and effort.

Payment

The exciting section where everyone wants to look at first. Rewards are available in 3 following ways:

• Gift cards
• Cash payouts
• Travel miles

Gift Cards

You can redeem your points for gift cards or online certificates from online stores, restaurants, airlines, hotels and many more. They have a vast range of partners in their redemption program, including department stores and boutiques you shop infrequently.

To redeem your Points, you will log into your account and click on the gift box icon on the upper right-hand corner of the site. That will take you to a page with all the reward options.

On the upper left, you can filter the rewards by Gift Cards or E-Certificates, and on the top right, you can sort by Points needed to be redeemed or alpha by Rewards partner. Rewards options that are open to you based on your available point balance will be shown in black while unavailable options will be grayed out.

Unavailable meaning the points are probably pending. Remember some points or credits only show they are available in your account after 90 days.

Click on the denomination of the Reward option you wish to redeem for, re-log into your MyPoints account to verify, and then click the “Get Rewarded!” button to redeem your Points. Payment in redemptions occurs in just minutes.

If you’re selecting a physical Gift card, ensure that your shipping address is correct before submitting your redemption, to avoid wrong placements. Gift cards mail out after seven days of placing the order, and you should receive them within 2 to 6 weeks.

eGift Cards will be sent directly to the email provided within three business days, but in some cases may take up to 10-14 business days.

The gift cards come in a value of between $5 to $500. To redeem them you have to get to the threshold points for the withdrawal. For 3950 points you can get a gift card worth $25 and for 7900 points $50, which means that 1 point is approximately worth $0.0063.

Cash Payouts

This method is quite simple and the most preferred. You can redeem the points for money via PayPal. A point is about 6.3 cents meaning you can redeem 3970 points for $25 cash. For PayPal payments, you will have to qualify for it. Your account has to be valid and verified accordingly by email address so they can allow any form of payment to be sent out.

Cash payments take between 5 to 10 days to arrive by which you will be notified once the transaction is completed. Besides the policy, you may receive the cash within 48 to 72 hours.

Travel Miles

As mentioned above, the site is rather distinct by this factor of travel incentives. As a reward, you can get airlines gifts, discounts, and cash incentives. The website pays in 3 following airline programs:

• American Airlines
• Delta airlines
• Southwest Airlines

You could get cheap flights in favor of working with MyPoints.

There is also another thing called the MileagePlus award for miles. As for the members, they can redeem their points by accumulating the required number of available points and selecting that option under Rewards. The miles are posted directly into your MileagePlus accounts within 48 hours. But there is also a disclaimer; the bonus miles do not count toward the elite status.

United Saver Awards are currently redeemable at 25,000 miles within the U.S and Canada and redeemable at 35,000 miles from North America to Hawaii, the Caribbean or Central America.

According to their policy, they state that miles accrued, awards, and benefits issued are subject to change and are subject to the rules of the MileagePlus Program, including without limitation the Premier program.

You are encouraged to allow 6-8 weeks after completed qualifying activity for miles to post to your account. There may be changes in the MileagePlus Program including, but not limited to, rules, regulations, travel awards and special offers or termination of the MileagePlus Program at any time and without notice.

Go to MyPoints and get a $10 sign-up bonus

Advantages and Disadvantages

As for this section, I shall take you through some of the benefits the site has to over compare to other sites and what areas it fails to satisfy.

Pros

• It is free and easy to sign up.
• It has a wide array of activities to do on the site. You most certainly will not miss something to do.
• There are many promotional offers on bonus points at the site.
• You can choose a reward travel miles.
• Survey payments are credited immediately you have completed
• The user interface is friendly to all.
• The forms of payment are trustworthy and reliable.

Cons

• You may receive a lot of junk mail by working with advertisers. Although for this, there is an option of unsubscribing from the direct letters from 3rd party advertisers.
• It is a slow process to earn points. If you think about the fact that a point is just 6 cents, you can get discouraged pretty quick.
• Payments for other activities may take up to 90 days to show in your account.
• It is a waste of time having to do a survey, and then you end up not being a qualified candidate.
• They have low customer service. Your problems may take forever to get a solution.
• The cash threshold is a bit high. Getting to $ 25 is a long wait and great effort.
• The rate of disqualification is also relatively high.
• I read a review that they do not keep track of surveys; therefore, you could find yourself receiving the same surveys in a week or within the same day.

Additional Information

Is it Legitimate or a Scam?

Having gone through the many reviews circulating all over the internet, I have concluded the site is not a scam. People may miss their credits, but the site is undoubtedly legitimate.

It has an A+ credit rating by Better Business Bureau which is pretty good at its job. Trustpilot also gives a rating of 4.5/5, almost the top mark.

For the 23 years, the site has been in existence, they have served over 50 million people, and the members have earned a total of $500 million. That can say for the fact that this site is not a scam.

Complaints and Reviews

There have been many reviews over the 23 years MyPoints has been in existence, 2879 reviews to be exact and counting. From those, there have been common sentiments of how awful or pleasant the website has been to people.

Some people enjoy working with MyPoints, but it may be because they have spent a long time on the site and accumulated a few bags of tricks. But for the complaints, some of them stood out.

• People not receiving their hard-earned credits. For this issue, the site claims that if that is the issue, it is probably because they have not collected their credits as well because the policy states that the commission receives from a 3rd party is shared by the site and member.
• The issue on blocking of accounts and request of identification details to proof registration and residency. I read reviews that stated that when people request for payment, the site requests for certain details such as the government ID to prove that the IP address is not being duplicated.
• You may lose your points during this process.
• Extremely poor customer service and support by MyPoints. For a long while, people do not get responses and feedbacks on any raised questions.

In their defense, they claim that they have high-security measures with the deployment of anti-fraud software that may sometimes falsely interfere with ensuring people get their honest earned rewards. But besides that fact, all issues are usually forwarded to the MyPoints support web page.

Conclusion

After you have gone through the article, you can see that the site is not a fraudulent method of making money. You can earn some extra pennies on the side.

It is excellent for those who have some extra time to spare, home mums, millennials and students who want to get ahead of their student loans. You could also love the site for the new products offered on a trial basis, the cashback offers and gift card vouchers.

Plus if you are a couponer or you love online shopping discounts, then this is the deal for you. Their incredible partnerships with hundreds of recognized retailers will make it worth your while.

But there is a disclaimer, this is not a get rich quick, or rather get rich at all platform. You will earn something, but it is only considered as a side income. Let it not be something you will replace your day job with.

At the site, do remain careful of the information you submit to avoid spam calls and emails. Besides that, I could say that the site is pretty good, well established, has a beautiful page and is very organized. I guess it is thanks to the years of existence.

Would I Recommend It?

Yes, I honestly recommend it. MyPoints have been in existence for more than two decades, they must be doing something right. So take the leap, sign up and get started, it won’t hurt to get those extra dollars in your wallet.

Go to MyPoints and get a $10 sign-up bonus

See also: 9 Best Surveys For Money