Get $1320 for travel (For Free) every year with 15 apps and websites

Don’t you feel that traveling is a basic need just like eating and sleeping? Even if it is for a couple of days, a getaway can rejuvenate you like no sports drink can.

However, lack of savings often stop us from going on that short trip to Disney world or that long vacation to India, right?

A lot of bloggers have tried to answer the question “how to save up money for travel/trip/vacation” but they all focus on being Frugal, a strategy that does not work in the long run.

We have worked out an approach that will help you get $1320 every year automatically and effortlessly without cutting back on anything or working more.

I have based this post on my favorite Personal Finance coach Ramit Sethi’s advice – Do not cut back on things, rather earn more to save more. But, like l promised in the headline, the savings will be passive, and you don’t have to work more hours at your job.

You will be learning about different apps and websites that pay you to do something you do every day – use your smartphone, browse the internet, etc.

I have put in over 85 hours in creating this beast. and I can’t wait to share it with you, so lets dive in –

Surf the internet and save for your Flights Tickets ( $510 )

You get– Depends on your PC ( $360-1800 per year)

Countries – Global

Suchflex is a desktop application that aims to connect corporation and institutions with vendors of computing power ( that is us).

In a recent Yahoo news’ article, Suchflex co-founder Ivan Zone tells us how “distributed computing is a huge untapped opportunity.”

Today’s computers are way too powerful and can do a lot more than simple internet browsing, that we mostly use them for. However, with Suchflex, which recently came out of its beta version, companies and institutions are paying you to rent them your rig’s unutilized processing power and storage for projects like cancer treatment research, analysis of large scientific data etc.

And your computer is completely safe in the process as no data from your computer is collected in the process.

Don’t confuse this with bitcoin mining or any cryptocurrency mining for that matter. Bitcoin mining requires high-end computers made specifically for that purpose whereas anyone with a decent computer can get started with suchflex distributed computing.

Beta testers report earning around $30-35 a month using their computers/laptops as they normally would while suchflex works quietly in the background. The earning potential is expected to go up as the program just came out of its private beta phase and as more companies sign up for its services. Moreover, you can get the amount transferred to your PayPal account or get paid in Bitcoin.

You get – $70-100 per year

Countries – United States

How it works – Bing, a search engine by Microsoft is trying hard to get more users, in a market which is dominated by Google. As a part of their marketing strategy, they are paying their users to use the search engine.

How does one earn:

They have a maximum limit of 15 credits when Bing search is used on a desktop/laptop and 10 credits on a smartphone or tablet. Every two searches get you a credit. Each credit is worth about 1 cent. Not very much but hey you are being handed free money for something we do every day. So the next time, your friend asks you “who won the game last night,” just say “I dunno, Bing it” instead of “google it”. You can refer your friends to this program and make their day !! Unfortunately, Bing does not pay much for your referrals: just 5 credits for each friend who signs up. But I know that won’t not stop you from sharing something useful.

You get – $80-100 per year with just the search feature alone

Countries – US, UK, Ireland, Australia, India, Germany, and Canada

How Does it work

Chances are you have heard about Swagbucks. It is one of the biggest players in the consumer reward industry and has been around since 2008. People who use it regularly, and take part in the various offers – surveys, free trials, cash backs, etc. unlike Bing , report to earning more than $250 per month but lets focus on just one feature of this site for now – the search engine.

How to earn Swagbucks

Swagbucks, unlike Bing, has no upper limit on the number of points you can earn in a day, I recommend you to keep 2 browsers on your computer. Set Bing on one and Swagbucks on another. Max out Bing first and then switch to Swagbucks.

They reward randomly. You can earn for back to back 3 searches or get nothing for 5. Expect to earn 20 Swagbucks for just 7-8 searches Daily. 1 SB equals 1.1 cents.

When you win some search Swagbucks, you are presented with something like the picture above. All you have to do to claim your bounty is enter the 3 letter captcha presented to you.

Eat the best Local food thanks to Market Research Apps and Websites ( $1040 )

[tweetthis display_mode=”box”]3 ways your computer can fund your #travel [/tweetthis]

Consciously or not, there’s a kind of deal we make when we use many online services — in exchange for free access, we accept ads and give up some of our personal data. Now some companies and startups are helping users to make that exchange a little more rewarding, with real cash.

Types of information collected with Market research apps –

Apps installed Duration that apps are left open (but not app contents) Battery and performance of your phone Location of your device through GPS (if you have it turned on)

You get – $110/yr passively per device

Countries – USA, UK, Germany,Japan

If You are smart about Money and are serious about saving, then you need to get the smart panel, made by one of the leaders in behavioral research – Verto Analytics.

This sleek looking app pays you $5 for just joining their Panel. $5 for every month after that as long as you remain a participant. And a bonus of $5 after the first 3 months, $10 after the first 6 months and a $15 bonus every 3 months you have remained a participant for 9 months.

So, effectively they are putting $9 every month in your pocket for no effort on your part.

The company, like any other market research app included in this guide, does not see the contents of the apps you use, not does it collect any personally identifiable information.

You get – $144 per year

Countries – USA, India

The Big G wants to pay you for using the Internet. Using the information collected, it aims to improve its services like Youtube, Gmail, etc.

Don’t know about you but I would happily grab this money with both my hands. Google earns billions advertising stuff to us, so why not the other way around.

The best part is:

You can connect 3 types of devices(only 1 of each type ) to your CM account – computer, smartphone, and tablet.

The more devices you connect, the more you save for your trip. To be more specific, they give $1 per device per week. So if you connect all three eligible devices, you get $12 per month and help improve Youtube. Improving Youtube means more Cat videos. More Cat videos mean a happier you and a happier you means a better world. And it is everyone’s duty to make this world a better place.

Some users may worry that the data they are consenting to give away is violating their privacy. It states in their FAQ that the data you release may be shared in the form of articles and research summaries. However, all of your data is kept anonymous.

For example, Google may collect what type of sites you are browsing, your search terms, etc. But your personal name will not be associated with any of this. If you visit Facebook and send messages to your friends, there’s no way to find out the content of these messages or the fact that it was you that visited Facebook.

You get – $500 a year if you get in !!

Countries – USA

Platform- Iphone

Another promising startup that is looking to disrupt the market research industry is Data wallet.

Promising the highest return for your data among all the apps and websites, data wallet works as a market place where interested companies offer you a particular amount in exchange for your data, and you can either accept or reject the offer.

What makes Data wallet unique is that it links to your social media accounts and unlocks a whole new level of data for you to sell to companies. Moreover, their platform enables you only to share your data with companies you trust.

“All data shared through DataWallet is encrypted, and consumers can choose to opt out of a sale at any time with the click of a button,” Serafin Lion engel told TechCrunch in an interview.

Expect to earn around at least a couple of hundred bucks each year. The only downside is that there is a waiting line to get inside. Yep, it is that famous.

You get – $120 per year

Countries – USA

Nielsen, the most famous market research company on the planet runs this program. As the name suggests, the app aims to study how you consume media.

While signing up, remember to choose Perk points instead of sweepstakes to be eligible to earn $10 per month passively. If you chose sweepstakes for some reason, which will break my heart for not heeding to my advice, you would be entered into a weekly, monthly and yearly sweepstakes automatically.

There are three ways you can earn points through Media Insiders:

Mobile Meter: Have the Media Insiders installed on your phone. It will quietly run in the background and award you points.

TV Activity: If the app hears a TV running for at least one minute throughout the day, you will be awarded points. The phone just has to be close enough to capture sound for it to count.

M-Connect: This is a VPN service which is completely optional. By using the VPN that they provide, you will earn more points. However, from what I have read online, most users advise against enabling this feature as it interferes in the working of other apps.

If you have more smartphones lying around in your home, you definitely should add them to your media insiders account to boost your savings.

You get – $60 per year

Countries – USA, UK, Australia, Canada

The app works with a variety of different market research panels. These panels are very interested in knowing what places you frequent. This helps them understand where people are going, what they’re doing, so they can get an idea of what’s “popular.” Participating in surveys for these panels means getting points. You’ll get invited to join different panels through Placed.

You can use the points earned on two types of drawing – lottery(for $5-10 amazon gift cards) and guaranteed

drawing which is you redeeming your points for a guaranteed gift card or transferring an equivalent amount to your PayPal account.

Unsurprisingly, guaranteed drawings require more points to get the same amount of gift card/PayPal transfer as compared to sweepstakes.

Coming to the best part about this app – its referral program.

When you refer one of your besties to use this app (and eventually go on that road trip with you), not only do you get 10 % of points your friends and family earn but also 5 % of the points their referrals make. This 2 tier referral program makes this passive source of saving even more Passive!

Just, don’t forget to keep your location services ON.

you get – $80-100 per year

Countries – USA, UK, Australia, Canada

This is an app from the same company – Placed Inc as placed panel app. The app works exactly like panel app, the only difference being you get airline miles for sharing your location data. Their website claims that you can earn up to 100 miles every month.

However, you can have only one app, either placed panel or frequent flyer on your smartphone. If you have two smartphones, and want to have best of both worlds by keeping PP on One and FF on the other one, make sure you don’t use the same email id to signup for both the apps.

If you have just phone, I would recommend keeping the Frequent Flyer for two reasons –

The Obvious advantage of airmiles for us. On a side note, frequent flyer miles are best spent on first and business class tickets than economy as explained by Nick in this blog post. A better referral program than Placed panel. You get 10 % of airmiles earned by your friends, for life. Wish this app was available in India ?.

AppOptix

You get – $50 per year

Countries – USA, India

Platform -Android

Don’t let the old look of their website fool you. They are as legit as any other website listed on this page.

I Don’t know why they are interested in scaring away most of their potential users, but one thing is for sure, they pay. With more than 800 combined Positive ratings for their app on Indian and USA app store, I don’t need to say much.

The Indian app does a Rs.50 recharge every month to your mobile, and a gives a chance to win gift vouchers of Flipkart every month.

The American counterpart promises to reward around $50 worth of gift cards a year to its panel members. Not a lot, I agree, but it all adds up.

Moreover, the app uses minuscule space and power on your device.

You get – $96- 100 per year

Countries – USA

Data Coup is a startup founded by Matt Hogan, with an aim to educate netizens about the value of their data and use it for monetary benefits.

Data coup is similar to Data wallet with a few minor differences like – the available platform, Number of services they can link to, etc.

After you have connected your Data Coup account to one or more of the linkable services, you will be able to see how much is your data worth. You can easily get $15 a month by connecting all your accounts. Even if you don’t have accounts with some particular social media services, just sign up with them.

It will take hardly 5 minutes, and you will be able to maximize your Data coup earnings.

Once everything is setup, you can forget about Data coup. Set a reminder 1 year into the future to check your savings. And I am dead serious about it. A Year from now, About $110-130 will be there to greet you.

You get – $180 per year

Countries – USA

Survey Savvy is a Market research program run by Luth Research. When you sign up with them, You get a chance to earn $5 passively every month per device you connect with them. You can connect up to three devices with them – 1 Smartphone, 1 tablet and 1 PC.

No need to tell you that they are paying you to collect anonymous data to conduct research for other companies.

This offer is valid just for citizens of USA. The UK, I know how it feels to be left out. I had been kept out of the school soccer team a lot!

Apart from the 5 bucks you get for each device, you also get a chance to get invited to more and better paying surveys conducted by them. It is up to you, though, to participate in them or not.

I know some of you will be afraid to signup with these websites. But do you know that companies like Acxiom and CoreLogic, which you might have never even heard of, have even more in-depth and vast databases of user data than those of Google and Facebook. These companies sell your data to other companies who use it to fine tune their products and improve their marketing efforts, similar to what google and facebook do.

There is no need to tell you how tremendously valuable your data is for these companies as it helps them improve their bottom line, yet they do not pay you a single dime to collect and use this data. However, the companies listed above reward users who share their data directly with the companies, who have till now bought data from data brokers like Acxiom, for their market research purposes.

These services take the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude to data-snooping.

I will reiterate the fact that these services do not collect any personally identifiable or confidential information like credit card, social security number, etc. And this is why more and more people are signing up with them.

3 Ways to Save for those sweet souvenirs ( $150 approx. )

[tweetthis]9 market research companies give you free money. I am spending it for #travel[/tweetthis]

Featured in TIME, The New York Times, Forbes and many others, this app takes away all the excuses one can think of not to invest in stocks and bonds.

” I don’t have enough money ”

” I don’t know how to invest.”

” I don’t know where to start.”

Acorns help you invest the spare change from your daily purchases in one of the 5 investing portfolios of your choice. The app takes away all the resistance away by automating the process of investing from your credit/debit card or bank account with not only spare change but also the option to set recurring deposits on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

It is a great feeling to know that every time you purchased something, a small amount is being added to your travel fund effortlessly. You can take your automated investment game to the next level with acorns’ “found Money” feature

With their found money program, you can have companies that you have purchased through, will put a part of the payment back in your acorns savings account. The program is still in beta. Therefore, they don’t have many partner companies, but the ones they have are the market leaders in whatever they sell.

Lock screen apps – Basically, these apps pay you to advertise on your lock screen when you wake your phone up. They are nonintrusive and work smoothly.

There are a lot of options to choose from, so I am just going to list the best of them here for you. Download the one available in your country.

Slide

Slidejoy

fronto

S’more

You get – 1 walking $ (W$) for every five miles.

Countries– Global

Unless you have been living in a cave on some remote mountain for the last five years, you must have heard about Bitcoins. At the peak of their popularity, the value of 1 bitcoin reached as high as 1000 dollars. Now, it is hovering around 150 which is great ROI if you mined them in their infancy like this guy did and is now a millionaire.

If you missed hopping early on the Bitcoin train, then pay attention to this.

The bitwalking app launched recently, is all set to disrupt the fitness industry by paying you to walk. And it is not an empty promise. In an interview with BBC, founders Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi reveal that they have raised more than $10m (£6.6m) of initial funding from mainly Japanese investors to help launch the currency and create the bank that verifies steps and any transfers.

The app just came out of its beta phase and is available on android play store for everyone to install. Their iOS, they say, is coming soon. The bitwalking store, where you will be able to spend your walking dollars, is going to be launched soon too.

The Idea and execution so far look great. We urge everyone to give it a try!

Time for some Bonuses

I am including 2 extra resources for people who want to save more and are willing to put in little work.

You get – $10 for every review

Countries – USA

Software insiders is one of the many industry-specific search engines owned by graphiq.

What TripAdvisor is for destinations and Yelp is for local businesses, SI strives to be for apps and softwares. And it can’t achieve that goal without a large number of users and user reviews.

Their plan?

They are paying $10 for every software/app review you leave which hardly takes 10 minutes to do so.

Way better than surveys, IMO. Speaking From my limited experience in doing surveys, they promise you to be 15 minutes long and end up taking 25 minutes and still pay a measly $2 for it.

SI has a pretty generous referral program too. You get $10 for every friend who submits his first review.

Dscout

You get – $50 – 150 a month

Countries – Global

Dscout is used by huge companies like Facebook, Intel, and the likes to know how their current and potential users think and know them better.

The payout is decided by the company conducting their study, but it is somewhere around $40- 80 per study. Each study is divided into multiple missions.

TO get qualified for a study you have to answer 4-5 qualifier questions and make a short video of around 60 secs answering a question.

Once qualified, you are invited to participate in the mission/study. Dscout’s FAQ page describes a mission as ” mission is an adventure you’ll go on while using thedisc out the app! Completing a mission usually, involves answering a series of questions several times over a couple of days. Each time you share your experiences and give your opinion by answering those questions (which frequently includes taking a picture or short video), we call that “creating an entry.”

The End

Money is a big pain point for a lot of my fellow travelers, and I hate to see that. Anyone can work for more hours and save more for his dream destination, but I wanted to find a way to help people save more without more work.

This led me to put in more than 85 hours to dig out these gems, test the ones I could read as many reviews as I could. I sincerely hope you like it.

I would suggest everyone set aside a couple of hours this evening to sign up with all of these apps and websites. After all, you are going to get around 1320 dollars for a one time work. Use websites mentioned in the bonus section and got $800 more for your travel fund.

And Please comment below to share with me and the readers where do you plan to go with all this extra savings ? We might get some inspiration for our next trip !!

Till next time guys.

[tweetthis]15 apps and websites which will give you money (passively) for travel + 2 bonuses[/tweetthis]

Further reading

How to save money for any trip by nomadic matt

3 ways to save money without being Frugal by Ramit Sethi

27 time tested Money saving tips from grandparents.com

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Abhay Kumar A story Teller. An adventurer. An explorer. This and much more.

Traveling is not my passion, it is my life. And when I am not traveling reading and writing about different places keeps me alive.

