College students really love free stuff. College students also really love the Internet. Fortunately for us, Microsoft has developed a program for college students — and anyone else who uses the Internet — to be rewarded for simply surfing the Web. The Microsoft Rewards program turns the time you spend searching for news, music videos, academic help, etc. into an opportunity to earn gift cards to popular stores as a reward for all of your searches. The idea of the program is simple: you use Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and receive points for the searches you make. You can earn up to 150 points daily by searching on a computer and another 100 points daily by searching on a mobile device. The opportunities to earn points continue with daily trivia questions and other offers that really start to add up. An easy way to make sure you are earning the maximum points every day is to set Bing as your default homepage and always stay signed in when using the search engine.
The number of points required for each reward varies, but usually, once you reach about 5,250 points you can redeem some of the more popular gift cards like Amazon, Starbucks, GameStop. There is also an option to use your points to raise funds for organizations like Teach for America and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Similarly to how you trade in your points for gift cards, you can choose the option to donate your points to the organization you wish to support.
From my experience so far, there has been no trouble whatsoever with earning points and redeeming awards. I have been able to trade in my points for valid Starbucks and Amazon gift cards as well as donate some of my points to Teach for America. I definitely recommend this program to anyone who would be interested in being rewarded for the time they spend on the Internet. The only effort required on your part is to just use Bing instead of your current search engine. Then you can watch the points increase as you spend the same amount of time online as you normally do, except this time, you’ll be rewarded for your searches.
