There are many ways to score gift cards for less around the holidays. Here are 10 awesome ways to score gift cards for less:

1. Gift-card Exchange Sites

For example, GiftCardRescue.com. Sites like this give consumers the chance to buy, sell, and exchange gift cards at discount prices. With GiftCardRescue, the value on the card is backed by a guarantee which should give shoppers a secure feeling. Average deals can range from 8%-25% savings. Daily deals can go even higher and are often announced through their facebook page. Check the site regularly and expect a spike in selection immediately following holidays.

2. Social Buying

This includes sites like LivingSocial and Groupon and typically includes savings anywhere from 10%-60% off. These sites both have smarthphone apps as well as e-mail options which are region specific and will notify you when new deals are posted. Be sure to check out Groupon’s GrouponNow App which will target your location and provide nearby deals.

3. Coinstar Savings

Got change? It’s likely we’ve all seen or used a Coinstar machine at our local grocery store. These machines usually tend to charge 9.8 cents to every dollar counted but will offer free of charge counting in exchange for gift cards to places such as iTunes, CVS, and Amazon among over 25 other merchant partners.

4.  Foursquare 

It’s all fun and games until someone gets a free gift card dropped on them. Seriously, aside from earning badges and becoming mayor, Foursquare has proved to be a useful marketing tool for companies. Starbucks recently awarded 500 $40 gift cards to customers who checked in on their 40th anniversary. Other merchants enter those who check in into store gift card drawings, another tempting customer incentive.

5. Frequent Flier Miles/ Points

Got a bevy of frequent flier points that you haven’t used in ages? Well, not only can these be redeemed for flights but also gift cards to retail outlets and movie theaters. Make sure to check your options through your personal account.

6. Bulk Grocery Clubs

If you pay for a membership to a wholesale warehouse like  Costco, Sam’s Club, or Bj’s you might have the chance to save with direct purchase. These merchants often offer gift cards below retail price. For example, at Bj’s you can buy $100 iTunes for 5% off and $100 Uno Chicago Grill for 20% off. Even Walmart is offering $50 iTunes cards for $40 while supplies last. Don’t miss out on these killer members only steals!

7. Local Media 

Especially around the holidays, local news and media outlets will partner with merchants for promotional discounts.  If you don’t catch any announcements during your viewing, visit the website and search for holiday deals or discount gift cards.

8. Retail Loyalty Programs

Retail stores are all about return customers, which makes up for a large portion of revenue. Many have marketing strategies that include customer loyalty programs which differ based on merchant. Usually, they offer a certain amount off relative to how much you spend. e.g $5 off every $100 spent. This can be a great way to save at your favorite spots.

9. Targeted Smartphone Apps

Savings can be just an Application download away. Social apps like Shopkick and Loopt offer repeat users chances to earn gift cards to local restaurants and retail stores like Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Crate & Barrel, Rack your “kickbucks”  up this holiday season.

10. Crowd-sourced Deal Sites

This includes sites like slickdeals.com and FatWallet.com. These sites use social networking to find the best bargains around. A search of “gift card” will provide users with any deals available as well as tips for redemption and use.

Gift Cards Available at Walmart

• AMC Theatres
• American Express
• Apple iTunes
• Applebee’s
• Brinker Restaurants (Chili’s, Maggiano’s, Macaroni Grill, On the Border)
• Club Penguin
• Cracker Barrel
• Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze)
• Facebook
• Farmville
• MasterCard
• Outback Steakhouse
• Regal Cinemas
• Starbucks
• Subway
• Vanilla Visa
• Walmart
• Zynga

We divided the gift cards up into categories so that it would be easier to go through the list.

Restaurant Gift Cards

• Applebees
• Baja Fresh
• BJ’s Restaurants
• Bonefish Grill
• Boston Pizza
• Brinker
• California Pizza Kitchen
• Cheesecake Factory
• Claim Jumper Restaurant
• Coldstone Creamery
• Cracker Barrel
• Darden Group (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse)
• Dunkin Donuts
• Earls Rest
• Jack in the Box
• Jamba Juice
• McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood
• McDonald’s
• Mimi’s Cafe
• Outback Steakhouse
• Panera Bread
• Pappas Restaurants
• Peets Coffee
• PF Changs
• Pizza Hut
• Prime Restaurants
• Red Robin Restaurants
• Ruby Tuesday
• Starbucks
• Stuart Anderson
• Subway
• TGI Friday’s

Games and Electronics Gift Cards

• Best Buy
• Blockbuster
• Build-A-Bear
• Dave and Busters
• Ebay
• Forzani
• Gamestom
• Nexon
• Overstock.com
• Toys R Us

Clothing & Shoes Gift Cards

Trade your iPhone or iPad for a new gift card

The original iPad in the 32 gigabyte form with Wi-Fi in perfect condition will net you a $180 gift card. If there is a minor amount of damage to the iPad then you will get a $115 gift card. It’s very easy to maintain the pristine condition of your Apple products with one of the great cases or other screen protectors. You can use this trade in calculator found on the Apple website to see how much you will get for your used Apple products. The offer made on the website is not permanent and they will actually have to verify your product in-store before you will receive any sort of exchange.

You do have other options as well for selling your unwanted Apple products. You can sell electronics for cash at websites like BuyMyTronics or Gazelle who will pay you to ship your products to them. Some of these websites will pay up to $250 for the same iPad that Apple will give you $180 for. Cash is definitely better than having a gift card, but as a consume it’s important to do your own research before you decide to exchange your electronics.

Previously Apple only offered to recycle old computers for a fee or free if you were buying a new iMac in store that day. But now with the gift card exchange program you can swap any of your old Apple products for a brand new gift card. They even offer options to trade in off branded products like any computer that is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad 3.2 ghz processor will net you a cool $108 gift card. This is because Apple will recycle the hardware inside of the computer to use for other products.

The Different Types of Gift Cards

Plastic Gift Cards – these are the most common type of gift cards that can be purchased online and what everyone always thinks of first. You can order your gift cards online and have them shipped to wherever they need to be sent. This is a great tool if you have a friend or family member that you will not see, you can just visit the merchants website and have them ship the card. This way you can avoid going to the store to buy the card and then having to visit the post office to get it shipped.

Online Gift Cards – these are also known as e-gift cards, electronic gift cards or e-cards. These gift cards are meant to be used at the businesses website and some of the most popular cards are Amazon.com, Walmart, and Target. When you buy online gift cards you will need to select the method of delivery to your recipient which can be sent directly to their email, cell phone, or sometimes even to their Facebook account. It’s important to communicate with the person you’re sending the e-gift card to so that they do not think that the message is spam and accidentally delete it.

Discount Gift Cards – did you know that there are gift cards online that you can buy for less than the face value? You can get deals for these cards and sometimes save up to 30%! You can save on everything that you normally do like go out to eat at restaurants, shop for new clothes, or buy home improvement supplies. Another savvy shopping tip is to combine these discounted gift cards with coupons and sales offered by the merchant. You will be surprised by how much money you’ll be able to save and be able to spend towards other things.

Prepaid Debit Cards – prepaid debit cards are just like gift cards except they can be used wherever you want and aren’t limited to just one store. Some of the most popular prepaid debit cards include the Walmart MoneyCard and the RushCard. With a prepaid debit card you can shop online at your favorite stores, withdrawal cash at ATM’s, or use it anywhere that Visa, MasterCard, or American Express is accepted. They usually come with a small activation or card fee and will have a monthly charge that is something that you do not see with gift cards.

Free Gift Card Week provides the best way to find gift card deals that include a sweet bonus for yourself!

USPS has teamed up with American Express to run a market trial focused on presenting consumers a different way to purchase cards and retail product, with the goal of bringing in extra revenue. The cards will be available in $25 and $50 amounts as well as a variable $25 to $100 option.

All the cards that will be sold at the USPS locations are “open loop” and are the type of cards that are accepted anywhere Credit or Debit cards are accepted. This unlike the specific store gift cards gives consumers a broader variety of spending options and in turn brings in more revenue. The gift cards are also being sold alongside greeting cards – already being sold- to take advantage of both avenues. USPS receives a portion of the purchase fee for the cards: $3.95 for the $25 card, rising to $5.95 for the variable-denomination card.

USPS plans to run this market trial for up to two years to test out the sale of gift cards. During the trial period, USPS will try out different price structures and can expand the test to include vendors other than American Express, which is just the first company to join the program.

In the US, the gift card market is thought to be worth around $86bn/year and for American Express is $1billion/year. First data reported that popularity of gift cards are rising again following a decline due to the recession. According to the National Retail Federation, gift cards are the most requested gifts among American adults in the last 4 years.

Here are some of the benefits of the Visa Buxx Prepaid Card:

• Promotes financial responsibility among teenagers by limiting their spending to the amount loaded on the card
• It is flexible and convenient, allowing parents to re-load the card any time via phone or online
• It is accepted everywhere Visa debit cards are welcome
• It gives parents greater control by allowing them to track where their teens are spending their money.
• It is safer than using cash because it is replaceable when lost or stolen.

How it Works:

Here is how the Visa Buxx Prepaid Card Works:

1. You can buy a Visa Buxx Prepaid Card online at participating financial institutions, including Wachovia and USBank. Click here to see complete list.
2. Parent then funds the account either via phone or online using a credit card, debit card, or checking account you have with any financial institution (does not have to be funded with account from participating bank)
3. You and your teen both have access to the account online to check balances and track spending. Parent can reload card online or via phone using number provided at the back of the card.

Sites like Bidzillion work in a very different way. Let me start by saying that these sites claim you can buy brand new items at up to 99% off retail price. And after doing some research, it does appear that this is possible. However, in order to place a bid, you must first buy a “package” of bids. These can range anywhere from $15.00 for 20 bids, to $500.00 for 1,000 bids.

So, before you can even attempt to bid on an item, your spending money. The way the auction works is very different from traditional auction sites as well. All the items, which is typically about 30-50 items available to bid on, have a countdown timer displayed which typically lasts about 6 to 9 hours. Usually, there is no action on the items until minutes before the auction is ending.

So, as an item I was interested in, a $100 American Express Gift Card came down to about 5 minutes left. I placed a bid. The way the bidding works is that every bid is 1 penny more than the last. So at the time of my bid there was .15 cents already placed. I placed my bid, took it up to 16 cents and anxiously awaited my gift card.

However, shortly after, I was out bided by another cent! I bid again, and then so did somebody else. What eventually happened is that as the timer goes down, someone would place a last second bid, and then the timer restarts! It restarts at a 10 second count down, so every 10 seconds someone would throw a bid on it, over and over again restarting the timer!

This went on for hours, in fact about 2 hours until the auction finally ended. As a result the gift card cost got up to around 8.oo, but I had placed my last bid hours ago.

The only way this style auction would be useful, is if you had hours to sit around and spend watching the bids, making sure you are the last one bidding. After the money it costs to actually buy the bids and the time it takes to win the auction, I can conclude that this was a big waste of time and money!

It’s almost impossible to get the item you’re actually interested and buying bids is expensive. If you’re looking to buy discounted gift cards, or discounted anything; in my opinion its best to stick with websites who offer set discounts on these items in a straight forward, easy manner.

Ebillme is a payment service that uses your traditional bank’s online bill pay service to checkout at a variety of different merchants. They sell electronic gift cards, but their company is more of an alternative payment service that uses your bank account rather then credit or debit card. This allows you to pay for items that you want using cash and avoid the high fees associated with credit cards. With the recession, it is very common for people to avoid credit cards by using services like Ebillme or prepaid cards.

Using Ebillme

Because you only pay using cash Ebillme is definitely safer than using a traditional credit card. This is because your personal information like social security number or address cannot be compromised and this decreases the chance of fraud or identity theft. Chris Brogan does a good job in his blog post explaining how the process works and can use some improvements

EbillMe Gift Cards

Ebillme allows you to email electronic gift cards or online gift cards to anyone with an email address. Their service differs from many other egiftcard vendors like iCardSystems because eBillme is a payment service. They are not just a gift card vendor and you cannot purchase one of their gift cards using traditional methods (credit card or paypal). You can use their gift cards as a prepaid card to shop and pay at a huge number of merchants that can be found here.

There have been a number of problems using their system as found on the complaints board website. A few users are quoted as saying that they experienced heavy delays using the service and those funds were not transferred in an appropriate amount of time. One user even mentions how the pending rebates are not as advertised and that you can only use them in $10 increments at a time.

I’ve earned $25 in rebates but can only use $20. The remaining $5 will go unclaimed because (I’m not kidding) I’m never using this service again.

For some reason this does not seem fair and from what I can tell these terms are not clearly covered. It is difficult to navigate through the site and find all of the information you are looking for. I think that eBillme is a great concept and secure for online users, but from what I’ve read their service still has a few flaws. It will be interesting to see if they are able to sell online gift cards to users who are not looking for a payment alternative, but just a gift card.

eBay is one of the most popular sites to buy and sell pretty much anything. However, if you’re attempting to sell a gift card, better look somewhere else. eBay has some pretty strict rules regulating the selling of gift cards, here’s a quick overview:

Why does eBay have this policy?

In the secondary gift card market, there is a large potential for fraud.  People often try to take advantage of this by using sites like eBay.  At GiftCardRescue we have put in place several measures’s to deter fraud to ensure the best consumer experience possible. If you’re looking to buy or sell bulk gift cards, its best to stick with the pros.

Here is eBay’s explanation:

“We understand that you may have gift cards that you can’t use or would like to sell. The restrictions on the value and the frequency of gift card listings are in place to promote a safer and more satisfying experience on eBay.”

Source.

While you can sell gift cards on eBay, the number of cards, amount, and frequency is highly regulated and restricted.