The $1000 Walmart gift card is the most popular gift card on the Free Gift Card wiki.  It is the most popular in terms of people visiting the offer and the most popular in terms of people actually following through on the offer.

The Walmart gift card has, across a network of people promoting it, done very well over the past several months.  This is probably due mostly to the high reward value of $1000.

Free gift cards are a reward for participating in a series of promotional offers.  The reward isn't really free in terms of time or money but the cost is often very small compared to the reward.  The typical promotional offers required by the gift card sponsors include a large number of free trials where they are totally free.  Then there are a large number of free trials where a physical product is shipped to you and, should you return the product, you are stuck paying a shipping and handling fee of less than $10.

All told the price in terms of time and money for a large gift card like the $1000 Walmart card is fairly minimal.  To prove this I recently assessed the Walmart gift card to find out a few things.  I wanted to know:

• How long did the initial research take?
• How much would it cost me to get the "free" gift card?
• How long did I usually have to decide to cancel or return a product from these free trials?

How long did the initial research take?

All told it will take me longer to post this Hub than the initial research took.  Here are the steps:

1. Enter a disposable email at the beginning
2. View the offer levels and save the promotional offer information in a spreadsheet
3. Visit each offer looking for the "Terms of the Offer" or "Terms & Conditions"; note the initial price, days to refund/cancellation, and the price should you decide not to cancel
4. Assess all the offers from each level to determine the minimum amount of money you can spend in order to get your gift card

Spreadsheet Details

My spreadsheet had 4 workbooks:

• Offer Requirements (for the Walmart gift card they are 2 from Level 1, 2 from Level 2, and 9 from Level 3)
• Level 1 Offers
• Level 2 Offers
• Level 3 Offers

• Offer Name
• Initial Price
• Expected Refund
• Comments

In the final assessment of the Walmart gift card I found that I could sign up for

• 2 programs in Level 1 for a cost of $1.00 with an expected refund of $1.00
• 2 programs in Level 2 for a cost of $0.00
• 9 programs in Level 3 for a cost of $199.53 with an expected refund of $148.95