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Are You Earning Your Bargaineering Bucks?
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Are you taking advantage of the only loyalty rewards program in the personal finance blogging world?
The Bargaineering Bucks system rewards you for doing things on the site such as visiting daily and commenting on posts. Over seven hundred readers have signed up and earned over 26,733 “Bargaineering Bucks” that you’ve spent in the Bargaineering Store for wonderful prizes such as ING Direct promotional referrals, popular personal finance books, USB thumb drives, copies of Quicken, and so many more wonderfully awesome prizes.
Earning a buck for logging in is a new way to earn points, made live earlier today. If you thought you were missing out before, don’t worry! We’ve been testing the feature and wanted to make sure we got it right before rolling out.
You can earn bucks just by registering for the site and doing what you do already. Right now the two easiest ways to earn points require no extra effort. For every day you visit, you earn a buck. For every comment you leave, you earn a buck. You just have to make sure you’re logged in or the systems won’t know who to award the buck to.
Is this worth the extra hassle? Yes!
Reader daemondust only recently discovered the site and has been commenting furiously, racking up 157 ββ that he’s put towards about ten ING Direct referrals in the Bargaineering Store. If you have an ING Direct account with some referrals left, then you know each referral is worth $10 to you. Daemondust has already made $100 by participating in the site and doing nothing extra, he just makes sure he’s logged in before he comments!
So the question I ask you is … are you earning your Bargaineering Bucks?
(Photo: sokwanele)
{ 56 comments, please add your thoughts now! }
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This is a terrific idea. Can’t wait to build up the bucks.
Good reminder – I believe I’ve been commenting now and then, but forgetting to be logged in when doing so – oops! Jim, please put some more books up there for auction, my ING referrals are already all used up!
The auction is great, Jim. Already in the past month I have won three books and made $30.00 with ING referrals.
Another satisfied customer!
i have been reading blog for a month and did not know about the BB bucks. How did i miss this great benefit? Glad you mentioned. hope to win some ING referrals.
I saw you left a comment last month so I added a BB to your account.
i never knew about this either. Great idea Jim.
I’m earning mine!
I’ve also earned $70 bucks from ING referrals. But geez Jim, why’d you have to go make another announcement! Now everyone will be bidding on the ING referrals :p
Sweet! Just signed up. Don’t really care for ING referrals. I need my books!
Signed up and put in my bid!
Just signed up!
Wow, didn’t know so many people were out of the loop! Good idea to post an announcement post.
Now to find those USB thumb drives….! I want them!
Found one!
A thumb drive from F-Secure, just for you!
haha thanks. i’m on it!
Jim! Why did you have to go and announce it again?!
Now I will have to fight even more people in the auctions.
This is a great idea imo. I typically read the posts via RSS. I suppose I will have to visit the actual site a bit more often now.
Long time reader, infrequent commenter. Now I need to remember to login to the site.
“Is this worth the extra hassle? Yes!”
It’s not even a hassle! It’s certainly less of a hassle than that annoying popup that happens when you first visit the site.
I’d love to spend my bucks on ING referrals, but I’m in Canada so it wouldn’t count. Oh well.
How am I supposed to get the rest of my referrals in having to bid against everyone else?
This is fantastic! I’ll be getting others to sign up!
Found this blog a few months ago and registered then. I usually just read your posts but never really login or comment…now I have motivation! Great idea
The inflation rate will increase for Bargaineering Bucks with each new sign-up
I need to find more info on about ING referrals
What kind of information would you want to know?
How does it work? I can send some ING referrals for auction but don’t know how as learned about this site not long ago
If you win an auction, you simply put me as a referral for your ING Direct and I post the link on a page dedicated to referrals. Then, when someone uses it, you are compensated $10 (they get $25) if the other person satisfies the requirements. Sometimes someone will use a referral but not satisfy the requirements (and then no one gets anything), but that’s rare.
So far I’ve only had one wasted referral from here. People are generally pretty good about it.
I’ve been a LONG LONG time reader via google reader but I think this is a great idea. I will certainly be on the site more.
Jim – Ever thought about doing other referrals? For instance College Advantage (Ohio’s 529 Plan) does a referral thing exactly like ING. I know because I just signed my newborn up for an account and got a friend to do the referral which earned me $50 bucks!!!
Referring people to the site? Yeah, I’m trying to figure out the tracking piece of that. All of these features are hacks on existing plugins and Wordpress features, so it’s taking me a bit of time to figure everything out.
Referring people to CollegeAdvantage.com.
Its would actually be a pretty simple setup like your ING referrals.
You let people bid with their BBs on placing their referral code on your referral page. I know I would bid my BBs on that.
College Advantage is a little simpler because you dont even need to use the link. You just type in the 7 digit referral code (mine is 2466906) and then both of you get the bonus. I think its $25 for the person signing up and $50 for the person doing the referral.
Plus (and more importantly) its one of the top 529 plans in the country says Morning Star.
This is all fresh on my mind since I just did it a few days ago
If anyone wants the $25 sign up bonus feel free to use my code.
I don’t know if it’d be do-able but yeah, this is a great idea too. I’d love to get some CollegeAdvantage referrals up for people to use. It’s a great 529 plan.
I would bid on College Advantage referrals too.
They have a great reward program going on through 12/15/09…
Use my referral code and you get an additional $25 in your account when you start with a minimum balance of at least $25. Then you can get another free $25 if you set up 3 auto transfers of $25 each.
My referral code is 2517066
I found this blog back in May of this year and have been reading it ever since and posting occasionally when I had something to share. Must have missed the Bargaineering Bucks post, but I have signed up and look forward to contributing.
Jim,
You are leaving me little choice. To the BB Store!
The CollegeAdvantage referrals is really something you should look at.
saladdin
I bid on an won my 1st auction last night. I just had to try it out. Its a pretty slick system. Looking forward to seeing what kinds of items go up on there in the future. I vote for College Advantage Referrals.
Jim – your ING post is fairly popular. Have you ever looked at reviewing College Advantage (or other states 529 plans) for a post?
Fantastic idea to build site loyalty!
Note my comment just 2 days ago on 11/6.
Update on 11/8 – HOLY BARGAINEERING BUCKS INFLATION!!!!!!!!!!!
Auctions are going for DOUBLE what they were a few days ago. Nothing like watching your heard earned money (errr…bargaineering bucks) go up like smoke.
Yeah, it’s amazing what a little competition will do. It’s more like prices went up as demand went up, I’m not flooding the market with lots of Bargaineering Bucks.
Yeah, some people have accumulated a lot of bucks to spend. Once people have spent those, things will return to a more normal state.
I sure hope so. I can’t afford any of these auctions anymore….
As soon as I’m broke things will come back down. I’ve been on this site for a while and have earned the BB’s. Just now getting around to using them due to a semi-retirement.
saladdin
Sladdin – It must be nice knowing you are controlling a small economy of Bargaineering Bucks because you have a large supply of bucks.
I think the rest of us are just waiting for your balances to come back in line with the rest of us.
This is great!!! Just signed up.
Just signed up. I have been reading Bargaineering for quite some time now.
I just wish every site ‘paid’ me to waste time on the internet.
One at a time right? And I hope it’s not a waste of time.
It has never been a waste of time!! (although I do get off task here and there – but I would be doing that regardless).
Jim, While I have your attention (I think).
Is there an easy way to see all of the comments I have made? I am starting to get into a few conversations with people (similar to this) and want to be able to track them. I could do the ‘email me if someone replies to me’ but I think it would be easier to see all of my posts on one page so I could follow the conversations.
Try putting “mikestreb” in the Google Custom Search box at the top of any bargaineering.com page.
And if you’re looking for a particular comment or article, simply add a keyword you remember from that comment or article along with your username in the search box; “mikestreb quicken”, for example.
Excellent! I’ve stumbled across this site a few times in the past (mostly via googling), but now I’ve registered and will probably be frequenting the place more often. Thanks for sharing your informative articles.
For what it’s worth, I think the longest between winning an auction and replying with the referral code to it being redeemed was 4 days. Many of them have been used in less than a day. I’m amazed how quickly these get used. (Though this site is also near the top of Google searches for ING Direct referrals.)
Mine was used the very next day. I’m glad there are people out there who want the codes.
I’m 3 for 3 myself. Easy 30 bucks.
sladdin
I think a couple of mine lasted maybe a week on the page before they were used.
Can referrals for ING checking accounts also be posted?