Get Paid to Shop! Quri Introduces Mobile App. EasyShift

Mobile apps that incentivize you to shop around locally aren’t new. With Groupon and similar companies owning the coupon market, customers are getting used to going around and getting told about local deals, or stores they may be interested in going to. It’s a system that works because the customer gets something out of it, the lower priced deal, and the business gets something too, publicity and hopefully more clients. But new startups have to think hard in order to get people to adopt their platforms. Other than offering coupons, what else can shoppers gain for actually going into a store that they didn’t intend to? Quri came up with an interesting solution to this problem with the app EasyShift, and this startup started offering some interesting incentives in the form of pure cash.

The way the app works is simple. By downloading EasyShift, you give your location to the system, and then get told to do ‘shifts’, which is simply going to a store and then locating a particular product, in a sort of eggs hunting exercise. These products are always brand names, such as coffee or cereals, and the app tells you both the store name and the approximate location that the product can be found. In order to complete your shift, you have to take photos of the store front and the product you find on the aisle. The incentive is simply money, and the company will pay between $3 and $8 directly to your PayPal account. So you’re basically asked to walk around and take a few photos in a local store in order to make a few bucks.

The way that the company did this is fairly simple, although it’s hard to say whether this could scale. Instead of making deals with stores, they made deals with brands. The idea here is that brand names spend a lot of money on promotion and advertising, and they expect their products to be positioned in specific locations inside of stores, and shown well at a price that’s competitive. They often have complex contracts with local businesses to ensure this happens. So what you end up doing as a EasyShift user is simply going around and verifying that this is the case. You’re checking on stores to make sure these brand items are where they should be, and in return the company is willing to pay a few bucks. The store owners aren’t in the loop and don’t know this is going on.

Will a few bucks be enough to bring a lot of users to use this app? That’s hard to say, and what’s even harder to say is whether enough brand names will be willing to pay money on a continuing basis to get this service. Still, right now the app is available on iPhone and Android for free, so you can check it out if you want to make a few extra bucks.