I’d like to say that Points2Shop is a great website for earning things online for free. Yeah a lot of people have said that earning a good amount of points takes time, and while I agree with that entirely, the amount of points you earn is equally tied to how much effort you put into the website. If you put in the effort like these members have, then that effort will pay off in the forum of you getting your prize for free, just like what happened for all of these members.
http://www.points2shop.com/forum/8/Proof/1

Now, has for people that are trying to disown the website... A lot of people have said things about Points2Shop freezing your account when you reach a certain number of points. Not only did I want to knock out my entire goals list, but I also wanted to test this theory. This is the current number of points I hold in my account.
http://oi39.tinypic.com/5pjy2v.jpg

Now some of you are probably going to react with "oh well they only let certain people in!", that is not true. Every one that signs up is allowed to earn however much they want, with the only restrictions on how much you earn, is how much you actually want to earn.

I only joined this site because I was 14 and didn’t have any way to make money (my parents don’t give me an allowance, and in my neighborhood there is a no soliciting law which means no mowing lawns). I’m 16 now, and with the bare minimum amount of effort I have put into this website, I’ve earned over 400 USD. Believe it or not, there are some members who can earn that much in a month’s time.

At Points2Shop we run several monthly contests, one of which is to see who can make the most money in that one month. I’ll post a picture here of the latest contest that just ended on the 15th. The top picture is the contest that’s open to everyone except UK members, and the one on the bottom is the contest that’s open for UK members only.
http://oi41.tinypic.com/2zhi0iu.jpg

The reason why you see so many people hating here is because Points2Shop has somewhat strict rules. Those rules are in place simply because advertiser’s money is involved. To me they (P2S) want the advertisers to know that they aren’t being screwed out of their money by greedy teenagers. If you actually read the rules, they are surprisingly easy to follow and after a week or two of using the site they just become second nature.

Another reason I could probably tell you about the bias towards Points2Shop, as you have already seen in an above post, people are using what we like to call “discredit tactics”. Put simply, its making one site look bad in an attempt to get users to sign up for another site. If you also notice, many people who use those tactics also have a referral link added to their post. Example:
“Oh humdrum site is so bad, they take all your hard earned money away after you break one rule don’t go there! Instaid try using humdrum.com, it’s a great website where you can earn a ton of cash. All you need is a nickname and your house address so sign up here!”
The “sign up here” part at the ending is where most referral links are either pasted onto the words, or the actual link that you can copy/paste into your browsers address bar will usually come right after it. “Humberto” and “000” both make a great example of that in his post. Other times users such as “Tyler” will give you a referral code that clams if you use it, you’ll get extra points for signing up. Now Points2Shop gives a 250 point bonus to US and UK members that sign up. Many people will use that to their advantage and say that they will give you that bonus out of their own pocket, when really the site gives it to you themselves.

What these referral links commonly do is simple. Say you were to sign up under my referral link on Points2Shop and were living in the US or UK and you do an offer for 100 points, it approved for you and you got your 100 points. Points2Shop would send me an additional 15 points since I got you to join the website and you completed an offer. You earn all the points you want, and Points2Shop will send the person who referred you a small bonus, the user who completed the offer looses nothing, and the person who did the referring gets a small bonus since more often than not, referring can be a very tough business. Most people complain that someone else is earning money off of them, which is a major turn off, well just think about all that time that they could have spent doing offers, when instaid they decided to bring new members to the website and have those new members do offers in place of the one who is doing the referring.

If that indeed turns you off, then there are plenty of ways to get around a referral link, if it hasn’t been covered up by some URL masker such as tinyurl.com.
http://epicrewardz.com/home?refid=730
http://www.prizerebel.com/videogames.php?r=1764130
http://www.cashcrate.com/4398352

Most referral links will have most commonly the name of the website, followed by /refid=(username). Other times when refers don’t want their competition knowing who they are, they’ll mask their username with their ref ID, which is most commonly, if not always a string of numbers which is their user ID on that particular website. If you don’t want to be that users referral, simply type the address into the address bar and leave out the referral ID, cashcrate.com, prizerebel.com and so forth.

Oh, and about the giving out of personal information on surveys. The only info I've ever had to give out wasn't really personal. Zip code, city, state, country, birth date, gender, age, if I have a job, no social security numbers or credit card numbers. The only reasons that surveys ask you for your birth date, gender and so on, is so they can group you with similar people and see how your opinions differ, then compare the opinions of people from, say 20 year old's to 16 year old's.

Sorry for the spheel on referral related stuff lol. I guess I'll simply conclude this now. I'm not going to claim Points2Shop is the best and the greatest website out there, mainly because there are probably a lot more similar websites out there that I haven't tried yet so I can't really make that judgement, and I'm not going to hate it either. If you don't want to get in trouble with Points2Shop or any similar website like it, read and follow the rules right after signing up and use your honest information. If you get stuck in a rut and have to get in touch with the support team, provide as many details as possible, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and don't complain about the wait times. Other people just like you need help as well. Think of the support staff as your parents, they want you to have a good experience and get things fixed up as soon as possible, but if your not going to give them the info that they need to do that, it will be hard for them to give you the help that you need. Act with respect and courtesy, and you'll get respect and courtesy back.

Above all, on websites like this, have patience. Your not going to become a millionaire over night. Nothing will ever just randomly drop into your hands, and nothing will ever be free except for the samples at the super market. If you want to earn something on amazon for free, you will have to put in the time and work to get it. The only reason you earn more at McD's is because your doing physical labor, here your simply clicking your mouse and pressing keys on your keyboard sitting in the absolute comfort of your own home.

Lastly, Id also like to say that I’ve don’t so much more than simply make money off of Points2Shop. Here I’ve made many friends - several with whom I’ve played alongside on xbox live -, I’ve learned a bit about the art of Search Engine Optimization and have a site ranked on the first page of google, and lastly I’ve met people from all ends of the earth and learned more from them in a couple of hours through the IM system than I could have in one school day. The concept of Points2Shop is to make money then use that money to purchase things on Amazon and get them shipped to you at no out of pocket cost, but when you add in all the user interaction, you realize that this website that you have joined is something more than what it seems to be. Yeah maybe I’ve made Points2Shop a hell of a lot more than what it seems to be, but that’s what I created for myself and I love it.

Dedicated and long time Points2Shop user,
Mydragonsfly