Shopkicks and Checkpoints

If you love to go on scavenger hunts, you are going to love Shopkick and Checkpoints.

I’m an avid shopkicker and checkpoint enthusiast. If you are looking to save money, these apps are just a couple of options that may help you during this time in our lives. I get asked all the time how I manage to get so many gift certificates through these two apps. Frankly, I work at it. Shopkicks and Checkpoints both reward people for walking into stores. The biggest difference is that shopkicks doesn’t offer as many walk in points regularly as checkpoints does. Checkpoints offers 20 walk in points routinely. Personally, I like to wait for shopkicks to offer big walk in points like 100 or more so that I can plan my day accordingly.

So what is Shopkicks? Shopkicks is an app that lets you get points for walking in certain stores, scanning the products they indicate and if you purchase the items you can get rewarded by uploading your receipt for additional points. They have even added an online option where if you go through their link to order items, that you will be rewarded in points as well. What can you do with those points? You can cash them in for a ton of different places. Outback, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Game Stop, these are all included as options plus so many more. Checkpoints does a lot of the same thing. The biggest difference for them is that they don’t have as many places to choose from to redeem your points for and it takes more points for a $100 gift card than it does for Shopkick. I use both of these apps and everytime I go to the stores, I make sure to scan what I can. Those points add up and when they add up, so do your options for various stores.

Shopkick (@Shopkick) | Twitter
Shopkicks was the first app that I discovered that wasn’t a scam for making some extra money. They have been a huge blessing over the years.

Just like everything else, there’s a strategy to these apps. It can get really frustrating when you are trying to scan for the items that they want you to scan for and a store is out of stock. If the stores that are offering points, don’t carry what you need to scan, make a note of it. Shopkicks has an option where it asks if the item is available. Make sure you let them know. It helps with their demographic.

Unlike Shopkicks instantly sending you your gift card in the app, Checkpoints can make you wait a little while so they can verify that your points are legit. But if you are willing to do the work, scanning the products and submitting your receipts, you can earn quite a bit. So far with Shopkick I’ve earned over $1000 in gift cards since I started doing the program. That didn’t happen overnight. It has taken me a long time to get to that point but those gift cards have come in very handy.

There’s a ton of other apps out there that can help you make some extra cash. Ibotta is one of them I use along with InboxDollars. InboxDollars, interestingly enough has started utilizing scans in their apps and if you are doing Checkpoints, it’s almost always the same items that Checkpoints has to scan too. If you scan with both of those apps around the same time, you can build up both of your accounts.

For the record, I don’t get paid by either company to represent them. I know these programs work and aren’t a scam but don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. You can earn a $25 gift card pretty quickly when you first get started and when you refer your friends, you can get rewarded with points. Checkpoints has a wonderful referral program. When you refer your friends through them and they sign up, not only do they get their points for scanning but you also earn the points your friends do if they start in the first two weeks. Pretty awesome.

There’s a ton of apps now where you can make extra money. Find the ones that are right for you. You never know. You may just enjoy trying something new and different! 🙂

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