MyPoints is a program that gives you points for doing various stuff online and allows you to redeem those points for gift certificates. I signed up about a month ago, and so far my experience has been good.

The point-earning opportunities are pretty simple. I get emails in my Inbox each day inviting me to look at advertising; I do it, and get 5 points for each click. Attempting to generate profit in this way is kind of like going to a fast food restaurant and grabbing all the ketchup packets so you don’t have to buy ketchup for yourself. This is perhaps a little embarrassing, but it gets the job done.

MyPoints will give you 500 points to sign up for an eBay account and place a bid (you don’t have to win the auction), 750 points to buy an Entertainment book (I just posted about why this is a good deal anyway), 1000 points to sign up for Netflix, etc. You can also earn points by clicking through one-question polls on their site - they’ll give you five points a pop - and by answering surveys, but I usually don’t bother with that because it takes up too much time. MyPoints also runs a cash back service similar to FatWallet and Ebates.

The big question: what is a point worth? I’ve run the numbers, and in general, a point seems to be worth about .7 cents, or a little less than a penny. The exact value depends on the gift card you choose. MyPoints offers gift cards from Barnes and Noble, Circuit City, Shell gas stations, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and a number of other large retail and restaurant chains. You can see the complete list here.

Nobody’s going to get rich using MyPoints, but if you’re online and bored, you might as well head over and earn some points. So far, I haven’t had any problems with getting points credited. The company seems to be honest, which is always good. Nothing is worse than wasting your time on some miserable survey about cat food and not even getting a gift card out of it.

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