new app time yay

Introducing Sweet (Nonref)

Sweet is a new app that pays you to answer questions every day. The goal of the app is to help connect you with new or "on the rise" artists. As you engage, you'll earn Sugar. You can then redeem sugar for various prizes on the app.

How It Works

Earning sugar is extremely simple. There's a couple different ways to earn sugar.

Cards:

Each day, you'll receive a set of "cards" that you can go through. It's mostly going to ask you questions like "do you know who <artist> is?" and then you'll say "no" or "yea sure", or you'll get questions like "what animal could you have been in another life?" and you'll select an option. It's easy. To go through your cards each day will take you no more than 2 minutes. At the end of the deck, you'll get a 'bonus', which ranges from 5 sugar to 500 sugar (I've gotten both, and all in between). Then you'll come back and do it all over again tomorrow. 100 sugar = $1.00. Each question is worth usually somewhere from 5-10 sugar, so you should average ~$1.00/day worth of sugar from answering these questions.

Sugar Rush:

Sugar rush is a live trivia game that they do probably a couple days a week. If you're familiar with (or remember) HQ trivia, it's sorta like that, except there's 10 questions, and you go at your own pace, while trying to finish all 10 questions (correctly) as fast as you can. If you get a question wrong, you'll start over (and the questions are randomized). The first 5 people to complete the "sugar rush" will win the grand prize (which is usually 10,000 sugar ($100)). Everyone who finishes after the top 5 will receive sugar, too. Usually 100-200. At the bare minimum, you'll win $1 worth of sugar just for trying.

BTW, they let you "replay" older games to play for the 100 sugar, so if you're extremely late to the game (literally days/weeks), you can still play them for sugar.

Referrals:

Referrals are confusing. I don't have any referrals so I don't really know how to explain what the program is, but as far as I can tell, once you reach 5 referrals, you'll earn a 125 sugar bonus. Really weak if that's all it really is, but we'll have to see.

My referral link is listed above, so thanks to those of you who might use it. Feel free to start a train below.

More?:

It's clear that they're trying to add more ways to earn sugar. The app is very cluttered. Since they're trying to push new artists, I wouldn't be shocked if they start giving you sugar to listen to some new songs. They do mention this on their site, so I expect it to roll out soon. (It won't be like AA Music, though, so don't expect that).

Rewards

Okay, this is where things get weird, and overly complicated.

Sweet doesn't offer PayPal or even gift cards to redeem for. Instead, you'll find an extensive catalog of rewards (2,080, to be exact). Of these, you'll find some electronics, apparel, some backpacks, beauty products, accessories, etc... but you'll find a lot of artist-related rewards, such as a, "phone call with <artist>" or a hoodie that was warn in a music video they were in... or a video call, or some of their merch. Personally, none of the artist stuff excites me.

The way they do rewards has led me to notice some problems:

• Products are rarely updated. For example, you'll find some iPads in the store. Here's one of the cheaper ones. What you'll find is that the iPad they are offering is actually the 6th generation iPad, even though the 7th generation has been out for a while. There's a hope that they would keep their products updated to the latest generations, but a lot of products like this are outdated. Not even to mention that the prices they set might not line up with the actual present-time retail prices.
• Stock is rarely changed. From what I can tell, once an item goes out of stock, it's gone. Even their hat has been out of stock for weeks, if not months.
• You'll have to pay for shipping. You'll be able to use your sugar to bring down the cost, but sugar won't cover shipping. So you might still have to pay $10-$20 for that iPad.

NOTE: You can use sugar to foot part of the cost, while using a credit card to pay for the remaining balance. For example, if you want to buy a $400 laptop, but you only have $300 worth of sugar, you can pay the remaining $100 plus the ridiculous ~$20 shipping cost on your card. Could be useful if they add a product that you'd likely pay for anyways.

Conclusion

Sweet is easy. You could probably make ~$50/month worth of Sugar if you use the app daily just doing the cards and participating in some of the sugar rush games. The rewards are extremely annoying, and there's something really dissatisfying about still having to pay for shipping for products, and even more annoying they won't let you use sugar to pay for the shipping.

It's extra annoying to think about how the program can (and probably will) be devalued at any time. Imagine saving up 30,000 sugar to get a playstation, just to find it sold out or the price went up. A related app "Current Rewards" did this recently, and the sustainability of this app is absolutely in question. They're not making money from you answering a few questions every day.

I'd suggest finding an item on the cheaper side that you could actually use or find a way to resell easily. The problem is that if you pick something that's too cheap, you'll still be eating a shipping cost. So a $50 Google Home Mini (which is inaccurate, because they're usually selling for $30) will still cost you $13 just for shipping. The problem with picking an item that costs too much is that you'll risk it getting sold out or the program devaluing. I'm picking an in-the-middle item that I found that I hope doesn't sell out before I get there.

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