I don’t know about you guys, but I use every option available to me to make money for the things I normally buy…Let me start off by saying that this post is NOT paid for by the companies, I just want to give you my own personal opinions about a couple of the apps and sites I use on a regular basis to earn cash for doing what I would have done regardless (i.e. groceries, gift shopping etc)!! Forgive me for the long post, but I PROMISE it is worth every word!
There are soooo many options out there that advertise “earn easy cash” or “make money fast” that have some funky loopholes to them…they may want you to spend $50 to earn $5, but the ones I am sharing are ones I have personally been using for some time now with great results and no funky terms. Let me just say quickly here that you also NEED to sign up for any points program your local grocery store has too!! The amount of free groceries we have earned from our weekly shops is insane…if they offer a program (i.e. PC Plus where I am) take advantage of it! We save our store points for our annual Christmas Party and on average get about $150-$200 worth of groceries from it!
The first one is CheckOut 51…pleassseee tell me you have heard of this one?! It’s a great app that allows you to upload your regular grocery receipts and earn a set amount based on the items you have purchased (for example, this week my offer list includes Fruit Loops cereal…something I buy for my hubby anyway, and it’s going to give me $0.75!). You can “cash out” once you hit the $20 mark and the app will send you a cheque you can use towards those new shoes you’ve been eyeing up but your hubby thinks are a little pricey 😉 So far on this one I am at $51.75 and this is one I have been using for about a year now. If you have kids you will more than likely earn double what I have as they always have formula, cereals and snacks on there!
Along the same lines is ZWEET, another app where you upload your receipt and you earn set cash back based on the items you are buying. I really like this one, although it is much smaller scale than CheckOut51, as it has your basics on there (at least one item a week). By this I mean your milk, or any fruit or vegetable, which means you can almost guarantee that you will earn a little cash back with every grocery shop. Sometimes with CheckOut51 I find I go a week or two without matching any offers. As I said, this one is a little smaller in scale and I have earned $5.25 so far, with only being active for 5 months. You also “cash out” with this one when you have reached the $20 mark!
Another app/site that I LOVE is Ebates!! If you do online shopping at all (even if just for your Christmas shopping like me) than you NEED to be using this site! There are hundreds of partner sites (i.e. Amazon, Walmart, JoeFresh etc) and each time you go through your Ebates account to shop at the retailer you earn a percentage of your purchase back in cash…uh hello, why would you not do this? Plus, they give you $10 just for signing up! I use this mainly for my Christmas shopping as that is when I am most active with my online purchases and I have earned OVER$50 in a season! Do you know how awesome it feels to get money for the thing I was going to buy anyway? And most of the stores have promotions on (double percentage, free shipping etc) that make it more than worth it to shop online…besides the obvious reason of wanting to stay in my pjs with a hot tea on my couch rather than deal with crowds!
This next one is a site I go on (which I just discovered recently) where I can fill out surveys and earn small amounts of cash. I have always loved filling out surveys as I like my opinion to count for something, but I hated that sometimes I could spend upwards of 15 minutes and not see anything in return (some sites offer you coupons for products etc). This one, DailyRewards, literally pays you for each survey you do on the site. They range normally from about $0.50-$2.00/survey which makes it more than worth it to click through while watching your nightly news! Only being on this one for a few days now I have earned $9.95!!
I also love VarageSale, which is a virtual garage sale site where you can list items you have to sell in your area. This one requires a bit more work but is more than worth it if you have a spring clean coming up! It is also great for finding little treasures yourself, we actually bought a beautiful light for going up our staircase for $30 which was an original retail of $350! When we recently had our walk-in closet done I realized we had so much clothing that we didn’t wear or need anymore, and from that alone I was able to sell over $65 of “stuff”!! I also used it to clean out my basement in the fall, listing things from extra bowls to small appliances and even a stainless steel garbage can we no longer used and made over $150 to put towards my hubbies 30th birthday party!
So let’s add that up…this past year I have earned $116.95 for using the above apps, not including my store points which is an additional $150 (min)!!! Also, if you add in what I sold on VarageSale I made over $330! What are you waiting for?! Do you have any favourites that I missed here, let me know below!