Saving for Christmas – Viggle

                                                        

As you know, I’m always looking for creative ways to fund my Christmas purchases. Recently a friend of mine shared that he was using an APP called Viggle to accumulate points that he would use to buy gift certificates.

Straight from their website: Viggle is a loyalty program for television that gives people real rewards for checking into the television shows they’re watching. Currently available for Apple iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch®, Viggle automatically identifies what television shows its users are watching and awards them points when they check-in. Viggle users can redeem their points in the app’s rewards catalogue for items such as movie tickets, music, gift cards and much more.

As you can see, one of the downsides of Viggle is its limited availability. I would hope that as they get more market awareness they would look to expand their APP availability to capture a new audience.

I’ve been using the APP for a little over a month now and have to say that I like it and find it well worth my time. My gift certificate of choice is the Old Navy gift card which is currently available for 18,000 points. I’ve already collected one and should be able to collect a second one in a few days.

In my opinion, you don’t have to be a crazy TV watcher to use this APP. Individually we aren’t huge TV watchers in our house, but between the four of us it does add up. There are also a variety of other ways to earn points.

Ways to Earn Points

• Log onto any TV program and you will receive 1 point per minute of watching
• Log on to bonus programs (they are specifically identified) and in addition to the point per minute you will also be awarded 100 – 300 bonus points depending upon the show that you watch. Last Friday if you were able to watch Ellen and checked in you were awarded 1,500 bonus points!
• Play games on certain shows while checked in. Some of the bonus programs will have questions that if answered correctly can earn you up to 25 bonus points. Answering the questions wrong will give you at least five points.
• Watch commercials and trailers. I just watched a David Beckham Burger King commercial and earned 75 points. The points per trailer/commercial vary; the biggest award that I’ve seen is 100 while the smallest is 5.
• Invite your friends. By registering here or through one of the links I have posted throughout this review, I will earn 200 points for anyone who signs up the first time they check in.

Positives

• Ease of the program. The APP is very easy to navigate around and doesn’t take much time to check in
• You do not need to be glued to the TV at all times. As I said, we aren’t crazy TV watchers. We have one account that we share as a family. My husband and I usually have the news on all morning while we are getting ready, my son will typically watch sports in the afternoon and after dinner we’ll flip on the TV for some evening shows. While we may not be glued to the TV at all times it is usually on so we just check into whatever is on. Sometimes we’ll decide what to turn on based on the value of the bonus points!
• Points accumulate fairly quickly. We average about 1,000 points a day between our bonus points, games that I’ve played and commercials. If I’m checking in consistently that equates to a $10 Old Navy gift card every three weeks.
• Variety of prize levels available. The prizes range from $5 certificates to Starbucks and Redbox all the way up to an Kindle Fire.

Negatives

• My biggest negative is the evolution of the program. In the short time that I’ve been with the program I’ve seen the prices of the rewards go up. My friend who has been using it longer than I have has stated that the prices have risen several times and the earning potential has decreased. As a business person I totally get that you need to do what you need to do to stay profitable. As I consumer I don’t always like it.
• Sometimes getting your program checked in is difficult. The way it is supposed to work is that you “tap” to check in, your phone listens to your TV and identifies the program that you are watching. The system will go through that cycle twice before it gives you the option to manually check in it if can’t determine your show. For some reason, mostly on my iPad, there are times that it won’t give me the manually check in option. This is quite frustrating when the show is playing, the device won’t identify it and I can’t manually check in. I’m even more frustrated if it’s a high value program.

Overall this is an APP that I would recommend if you have an Apple device. The program requires very little work with a fairly lucrative payout. While you won’t get rich, having $50 - $60 bucks to offset your Christmas spend (or before school clothing spend) will be very beneficial.

Have any of you used Viggle? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

You might also like:

Paying for Christmas - Swagbucks
Using Kaizen to Simplify Life