Here’s how to get Amazon and iTunes Gift Cards for Free*

Do you know there are services out there that will pay you to try their apps? FreeMyApps is one such. Basically, how it works is an app developer comes to them and says “we’ll pay you to get your audience to download our free app”. FreeMyApps takes their money, assigns a credit value to the app and tells you to download and use the free app for 30 seconds. When you do, you’ll get that credit value added to your account. You can exchange those credits for things like iTunes gift cards, Amazon gift cards and currently, Postagram gift cards.

You might ask, why would an app developer want to do that? Well the answer is simply to increase ratings, in the App Store. Apps that manage to find their way in the top rankings, which are normally shown in the featured page on your smartphone or tablet’s app market, are likely to have more downloads which means more money to the developer. It’s a win-win-win! We get gift cards. FreeMyApps gets money from the app developer. And the app developer gets thousands of new downloads of their free app which gives them a) exposure and b) help climbing the app market’s charts which is how the majority of folks find out about new apps.

The question that remains is Would you like to get paid to try out apps? There is a minimum time investment, no monetary investment, (and obviously internet data) and it actually pays off. I’ve been doing it for a while now.

Here are the things I’ve earned on my iPad:

Try not to pay too close attention to how long it took me to earn each reward because I have gone through streaks of checking the app daily and a whole lot of ignoring it for weeks at a time. I missed a lot of points generating opportunities.

So let me show you how this works.

1. On your iOS device, go here: m.freemyapps.com. If you are on an Android device just go to Google Play and search for FreeMyApps.

It will walk you through the setup on your device which involves installing a “verify settings” profile. This just allows FreeMyApps to make sure that you had the app open for 30 seconds.

2. Then it’s just a matter of downloading apps and earning points.

When you launch the app (web shortcut, really) you’ll see the following loading screen:

When it loads completely you’ll see your credits balance as well as what apps you can install to earn points. To download, you just click the credits button next to the app. For me no apps are showing since I have already tried them all out and I have 2,964 credits, need just 36 more to get a $10 iTunes gift card.

When you log in for the first time though you’ll have a lot of apps listed.

You can tell which apps you’ve received credits for because they will show up as redeemed. If I scroll beneath that banner that invites me to Share FreeMyApps with Friends, I’ll see this:

Each app has a point value. As you saw above Zillow is offering you 300 credits to download and use their free app for 30 seconds. Bubble Safari was offering 120 credits. And it seems that most apps have a value of around 80 credits.

So how many credits are required for a gift card. Let’s look at what FreeMyApps is currently offering:

$1 Amazon Gift Card – 300 credits.

$2 Amazon Gift Card – 600 credits.

$5 Amazon Gift Card – 1500 credits

$10 iTunes Gift Card – 3000 credits.

$15 iTunes Gift Card – 4500 credits.

$25 Amazon Gift Card – 7500 credits.

$25 iTunes Gift Card – 7500 credits.

$50 iTunes Gift Card – 15000 credits.

As you can see there are a lot of different gift card denominations. There are usually some Xbox Live, Fandango Bucks and Hulu Plus Subscription gift cards available as well but the rewards change too. Sometimes a $10 iTunes Gift Card is available, and sometimes it’s sold out. But they have been pretty steadily available as of late.

I did the math recently and if you get the minimum amount of credits per download and you play each app for only the 30 seconds required, then it’ll take you a whopping total of 18 3/4 minutes to earn a $10 gift card. Now what’s cool about that is the fact that you’ll get apps that are worth far more than the minimum amount of credits. For example, today’s Zillow was worth 300 credits. As for the time spent, that’ll probably increase because sometimes you’ll stumble across an app you end up really liking.

One last thing. The first time you load the app you’ll either be excited by all of the credit earning opportunities or you’ll be overwhelmed thinking about all the apps you have to install. If you fall into that latter group don’t be discouraged. After you run through the initial pool of apps it becomes a really easy thing to maintain because you’re just checking for new apps on whatever interval you decide works for you. You can also follow FreeMyApps on Facebook here and they’ll announce when they have new sponsor apps.

Here is my workflow in case you were wondering how I handle the app:

1) Download new app through FreeMyApps which redirects to AppStore
2) Use new app for at least 30 seconds
3) Go back to FreeMyApps and see if I got credit – Is it showing redeemed? If not, I go back to the app and use it some more.
4) If I liked the app, I’ll keep it. If I didn’t like the app, I’ll immediately delete it.

That’s about it. Hope you enjoy the free stuff. Freemyapps is not really the only app that does this. Others apps that you can try for free gift cards include FreeAppSlots, AppCasher, FreeAppDaily and Feature Points.

This guest article was authored by Stanley Choto.