shopkick 3.0 – SnipSnap

Shopkick Referrals: Earn 2,500 Kicks for Each Friend You Successfully Convert

October 24, 2012

If you want to earn mega kicks with shopkick, it turns out shopping isn’t actually your best bet. You can earn around 500 kicks in a solid day of shopkicking at the mall, but you can potentially earn up to 2,500 kicks per friend referral for your first 100 referred friends.

That’s 2,500 kicks or $10 x 100 = a whopping potential $1,000 dollars worth of kicks for you.

In order for friend referrals to work to your benefit, your friends have to sign up for shopkick using the unique referral web links you’ll send them with your invitations. And you’ll only earn kicks at the same rate they do: if a friend earns just 60 kicks in her first month of shopkicking, that’s all you’ll get for referring her. But, hey, I earned just about 2,500 kicks in my first month of shopkicking, without any referral-kick-hungry friends breathing down my back, so it’s not unreasonable to expect you’ll earn a significant amount of kicks by inviting just about everyone you know. I’ve just started inviting my friends; I’ll update once I see the kicks roll in.

Shopkick 3.0 Update: Unlocking Walk-in Kicks, New Scans, New Stores

October 23, 2012

Recently, I blogged about the new shopkick update: 3.0. (Read my original review of the old shopkick here.) After my first impressions, I was definitely less than impressed with the reduction in walk-in kicks (many stores’ walk-in kicks were cut in half). However, shopkick’s new “lookbooks” are now allowing users to “unlock” extra walk-in kicks on certain days, in certain stores. Today, I tried out this new feature in Target, Crate & Barrel, Old Navy, and Aerie. All I had to do was open the app and enter the main screen. Shopkick supported stores appear in little cards you can either swipe through or stretch out.

Stores with locked kicks have a lock icon in the upper right hand corner. Open that store’s “lookbook” to preview merchandise, swipe through all the pages, and unlock bonus walk-in kicks you’ll score the next time you visit that store. For example, here’s a page from Best Buy’s lookbook:

Ordinarily, I’d get just 35 kicks for walking in Best Buy (50 with the old version of the app), but now, if I spend 30 seconds with the Best Buy lookbook, I can earn a 100 kick walk-in.

You can only unlock extra walk-in kicks on certain days, so part of successful shopkicking means checking out what the app has to offer and planning your shopping trips on lucrative kick days.

Shopkick is adding a ton of of new stores like Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, and DSW, which is really exciting. Right now, you can only score a couple one-kick bonuses in these stores’ shopkick cards but I hope that, soon, they’ll dish out walk-in kicks too.

Shopkick is currently offering some pretty good scanning opportunities. I earned 100 extra kicks scanning easy to find items in Aerie today. However, there is some store overlap when it comes to scans. I scanned a few items in Target today, and now those same items no longer qualify for kicks if I scan them at CVS. Bummer.

When I originally blogged about the shopkick update, I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to score as many kicks as I was used to. Now that the “unlock walk-in kicks” feature is accessible, I’m not too worried that kicks will be hard to find. I earned over 500 kicks on a brief shopping trip to the mall today, without really trying.

Buy & Collect is getting bigger. More stores, like Crate & Barrel are offering kicks for purchases.

TIP: The new version of shopkick will seriously drain your iPhone’s battery. I used to leave shopkick running while I made my rounds at the mall; now I’m going to have to close the app between walk-in kicks, if I’ll be shopping at one store for a while. Nothing will put a damper on a shopping trip more than a dead smart phone, so I’ll have to be smart about when I have shopkick up and running.

Shopkick Adds Digital Catalogs, Cuts Walk-in Kicks

October 17, 2012

From: Shopkick Adds Digital Catalogs, Saved Product Lists And More To Location-Based Shopping App | TechCrunch.

In the last few months, my entire recreational shopping life has been completely transformed by a little interactive incentive app called shopkick. Shopkick rewards you with kicks, just for walking into a store and scanning items. You can trade in your kicks for rewards (about 250 kicks equals a dollar). It used to be that a full day of shopkicking earned me a $5 Starbucks card with minimal effort. Now, well, it’s going to take a lot longer to get any kicks from my kicks.

Shopkick announced its new version 3.0 to millions of users today (shopkick says it’s the 4th most widely used shopping app after eBay, Amazon and Groupon).

As a super-loyal shopkicker, I was so ready to see all the new updates:

Store “lookbooks” that allow users to preview, select and save items/ receive future push notifications when those items are in store
Map layout that lets users see exactly how many kicks are available in each shopping center
All-inclusive store cards with all kicks, coupons, and kicks-for-purchase opportunities on one screen

For me, the updates are absolutely not worth it. Here’s what I really, really dislike about shopkick 3.0:

Walk-in kicks are half of what they used to be. I used to get 60 kicks (more on bonus days) for walking into Target. Now I’m getting 35. Every, single shopkick store has had its walk in kicks reduced by half.
You have to do a lot of work for bonus kicks. Bonus kicks were already a waste of time (1 kick is less than a penny, so finding one in the old shopkick app was far from a big deal). But now you have to swipe through endless items in the Coach lookbook to find four bonus kicks, which are the only kicks the Coach store has to offer.
The map layout is a pointless visual. The old version listed nearby shopkick hotspots by proximity and you could see all of the possibilities on one screen. Now, stores are lumped into shopping centers and you can’t clearly see what’s where anymore.

I’m extremely bummed out. Shopkick still has some of its great main features like Buy & Collect, coupons, and item scans. But it’s not the same, simple app I fell in love with. And it’s going to take me twice as long to turn in my kicks for these Nike kicks.