Is the MyPoints gift card reward program any good? Should you bother with it?
In this post, we’re going in-depth on whether MyPoints, a popular survey and rewards tool, is worth your time.
MyPoints was founded in 1996 and was first a website you had to access on a computer before it became an app in more recent times.
Learn more in our MyPoints review below.
Quick Summary
- Earn points and rewards for shopping and surveys
- Also earn points via games and watching videos
- Travel and lodging focus makes for bigger rewards
How You Earn Money/Rewards on MyPoints
- You can earn points for shopping at your favorite online stores like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, or even travel sites like Expedia.
- You can also earn points by participating in surveys. These surveys are usually market research tools that bigger companies may use for their own purposes. You may or may not fit the demographic for a particular survey, but there are several of them to participate in.
- Once your earned points cross a particular threshold, you can redeem them for gift cards to your favorite shops.
- MyPoints also partners with third-party brands that regularly have offers associated with bonus points. You can rack up points quickly this way.
- Watching various types of videos will earn you points as well.
- You can also earn points by playing games on MyPoints.
- If you refer your friends to MyPoints and they sign up for it, you can earn points there as well.
Apart from earning points and taking surveys, you can also access coupons to your favorite department stores and grocery stores.
Need to book travel and earn points at the same time? You can do that from the MyPoints app or their website.
Signing Up for MyPoints
Signing up for MyPoints is as simple as entering your email address, creating a password, and then taking advantage of everything MyPoints has to offer.
Advantages of Using MyPoints
Earning points via MyPoints is free. On at least a weekly basis, the average American will buy something from popular websites like Amazon or Walmart.
In a survey, Expedia found that 60% of Americans travel by air at least once a year.
If you tend to travel quite a bit or will be traveling anyway, it doesn’t hurt to rack up points by booking your flight or hotel through MyPoints.
Currently on the MyPoints website, you can earn three points for every dollar you spend on booking a Holiday Inn hotel, four points for each dollar you spend on Expedia, and nine points for every dollar you spend on Hotels.com.
If you’re already planning a big family trip this summer, you could use that to build up points you can redeem quickly.
A $250 round-trip ticket you book on Expedia easily becomes 1,000 points. And currently on MyPoints, that’s enough to earn a $5 Amazon gift card.
So you can see from here how easily all this can build up if you plan on spending money while getting rewarded for it — even if it’s in a small way.
If you’re going to spend the money anyway, why not?
The Downside
If you’re using MyPoints for large purchases like vacations, this could be very worthwhile. However, if you’re currently in a frugal part of your financial journey, you may find earning points via MyPoints tedious.
For instance, I mentioned above that you can earn points by watching videos. This is absolutely true. However, you may have to watch two hours worth of videos in order to earn just four points. Given that you need 250 to earn a $1 Amazon gift card and that the minimum wage in the United States is way more than 50 cents an hour, this route of earning points may not be worth your time.
The same thing with surveys. You can take surveys on MyPoints to earn redeemable points. However, the time commitment may be a bit more than you want.
So yes, if you have the time, you could spend it earning points via surveys and watching videos. But in my opinion, this is not the best use of MyPoints.
MyPoints Alternatives
MyPoints is not the only app that allows you to earn points for purchases or doing tasks - which then you can redeem later for giftcards and rewards.
In fact, Swagbucks and Survey Junkie have consistently been the most popular apps in this space for several years.
All of the apps are very similar - we recommend trying them all!
What MyPoints Users Say
In writing this post, we checked out what the reviews on the MyPoints mobile app looked like.
In the Google Play store, there were 120 total reviews (as of this writing) and the average rating was 2.6 out of 5.0.
In reading the reviews however, in most instances, it wasn’t the program itself that people were criticizing. It appeared, for some reason, the app wasn’t user-friendly — it regularly kicked people off or people were having trouble with redeeming points via the app.
We also noticed that Prodege, the creators of MyPoints, were answering a lot of the complaints trying to help these individuals find solutions — which is something you don’t see a lot of app creators do in the Google Play store.
Overall Thoughts on MyPoints
If you’re someone who spends a lot of money on travel and lodging, and who shops regularly on any popular e-commerce websites, MyPoints may be a great way to get rewarded for spending your own money.
However, if you intend on making significant money with it, you may become unhappy with the MyPoints program because it takes a long time to earn all the points you need to get your gift cards/rewards.
If you’re patient and don’t mind accruing the points over the long haul, go for it! Why not get rewarded for money you’re spending anyway?
Have you used MyPoints? How did you like it? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
MyPoints Review
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Summary
MyPoints is a survey and rewards site with a focus on travel and lodging.
Robert Farrington is America’s Millennial Money Expert® and America’s Student Loan Debt Expert™, and the founder of The College Investor, a personal finance site dedicated to helping millennials escape student loan debt to start investing and building wealth for the future. You can learn more about him on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.
He regularly writes about investing, student loan debt, and general personal finance topics geared toward anyone wanting to earn more, get out of debt, and start building wealth for the future.
He has been quoted in major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, Today, and more. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes.
Editor: Clint Proctor Reviewed by: Claire Tak