The Frugal Baller Review of Shopkick

 

Today I want to review Shopkick and give you the nuts and bolts about it and my personal thoughts. Shopkick is one of the first apps that I downloaded to my iPhone when I began my quest to earn free cash and points. I really liked how simple is was to use and how fast I could start earning. That is one of my biggest issues when it comes to stuff like this. If I have to travel out of my way, fill-out all kinds of forms, or take 13 pictures and upload them then I get discouraged quickly and move on. The app itself had a really quick learning curve which is nice if you’re not super techie. So on to the stuff you really want to know….

What is it: It’s a free app that is focused on places you shop like Target, Best Buy, grocery stores, etc.

What do you earn: You earn “kicks”, which are basically just their name for points.

How do you earn kicks: This is the best part of it all. There are 4 ways in order to earn kicks. 1) Just by walking into a store can earn kicks. This is by far the easiest and sometimes you can get the kicks by the entrance before even going inside. 2) You can scan products bar codes. The best place for this is usually the grocery store or Target as they will have the most products available to scan. 3) Link a debit or credit card to your Shopkick account and when you purchase something from a retailer that has the “Kicks for purchase” tag you get a kick per dollar spent with many of them having bonuses after as little as $50. 4) Finally, you can earn kicks by inviting people to join (which is what I’m doing here).

What can you get with your kicks: This is the best part I feel compared to other apps and sites. You can redeem your kicks for gift cards to places like Target, American Eagle, Old Navy, Macy’s, Redbox, Nike, Lowe’s, and Starbucks to name a few. You can start redeeming for a $5 gift card with as low as 1250 kicks, which might seem like a lot but you can get close to that with one afternoon of walking around your mall and going to the grocery store.

Issues: Like within anything there is the downside. The nice thing is that there aren’t too many with this app. One thing I run into off and on is that you won’t get kicks for walk-ins. This usually happens with the same couple stores I walk by. I don’t know if the signal is bad or what but you’ll learn pretty quick which ones have that issue.
The other is that they like to change the design of the app often. Once you’re used to where to click and tap they change things around and you have to figure it out all over again. Not that cool but it could be worse.
Lastly, there have been a few times where the scanned product would recognize on the app. This is few and far between so not a big deal but wanted you to be aware.

Honestly, this is one of the easiest apps I’ve found so far in order to get free stuff. I’ve been using it for a couple years now and have earned almost 22,000 kicks and those were mostly just by walking into to places and scanning products. If you are going to your grocery store or the mall anyway you might as well get something out of it right?

If you think that this is something you would use (and I think most people would) you can sign up here.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know.