How much are My Coke Rewards points worth? Is it worth your time?

As you might guess, not much.

Don't get me wrong - over the years, I've gotten a few decent rewards...gift cards, t-shirts, and the like.  And they don't HAVE to offer a rewards program at all.

I drink Coca-Cola products for three reasons, in this order...
1) I like soda, even if it isn't good for me.  It's my lower-caffeine option since I don't drink coffee.
2) I genuinely prefer Coke over Pepsi, and I've always been a fan of Coke Zero.  I find that, while it doesn't TRULY approximate non-diet taste, it is much more drinkable than Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.
3) The reward points are a nice bonus.

But things have gotten a lot stingier at My Coke Rewards.  The great contests (like the Coke Zero one during the NCAA tournament) have largely ceased, and the bang you get for your buck on point redemptions has fallen off dramatically.

A couple examples of the awesome spoils offered in their more glorious past:

1) From a couple years of participating in the NCAA tournament contests alone, I got two t-shirts, four bobbleheads, and a few other nice prizes.

2) As for the regular rewards program, you could often get $25 gift cards for only 625 points.

Now?  It's a different story.

A fairly representative gift card offering as of July 2016 is a $10 Amazon.com card for 690 points.

Let's break that down.  That means each point is worth only 1.45 cents.  Put another way, a typical 3-point cap code has a total "value" of less than 5 cents (4.35 to be exact).

So is it worth your time?  Depending on how poor you are, probably not.  Even if you could enter codes on the rewards site at a rate of two per minute, you'd be getting 8.7 cents a minute...or only $5.22 per hour.  Markedly less than minimum wage.  The value of your time is always an important factor to consider in any endeavor.

So why am I spending my time on it?  Well, again...I said "depending on how poor you are."  Since I'm poor, I don't mind spending a few minutes to enter the maximum number of codes per week (25, for 75 total points).  And I thought I might as well share some information (and codes) with others.  Maybe you'll follow along, get some free codes, and I'll get some ad click revenue out of it!  At least I'm honest.