Hallelujah! A money-making site that isn’t a total internet scam.
What the &$%# is Swagbucks?
Swagbucks is a free website that allows you to earn real-life money, including PayPal cash and gift cards to places like Amazon, Target, Whole Foods, and tons of restaurant chains (think: Chipotle, Panera Bread, and Starbucks).
Shockingly, it is not a scam, unlike most sites that claim to offer free stuff on the web. Swagbucks is not going to pay your mortgage or put your kids through college, but it will make you a little extra cash-money on the side.
If you find this info helpful please use my referral link here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/tmeronek
NEW MEMBER BONUS (works as of December 2016): After clicking the referral link above, enter the code RSWAGBUCKS when signing up and get 70 free Swagbucks.
(Full disclosure: I get a few Swagbucks myself when you use this link to sign up.)
↳ Swagbucks has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which everyone’s heard of. The BBB is a legit organization that measures whether or not a company is good or evil toward consumers.
↳ I’ve heard stories of people paying for all their Christmas/Hanukkah/etc. gifts through gift certificates they earned while using Swagbucks. I personally got hooked on the site after trying a bunch of other sites like it, but that only got me a few pennies here and there. My first day on Swagbucks I actually snagged a $10 eBay gift card – not bad for playing a few games and answering some surveys.
The following info is just my personal opinion (which was not bought or paid for by Swagbucks).
How do you earn money and gift cards on Swagbucks?
(I’m listing these in terms of how worthwhile/easy I think it is to earn money through Swagbucks. I’m sure other regular Swagbucks users will have their own strategies, but these are mine…)
1. Taking surveys.
Swagbucks surveys can take anywhere from 4 minutes to half an hour of your time. In exchange, you usually make anywhere from some pocket-change to a few bucks per survey.
You can easily fill out a few surveys while you’re sitting in front of the TV, which is what I do when I’m binge-watching Homeland; How to Get Away with Murder; Mr. Robot; random Food Network and HGTV shows; or whatever’s on my DVR at the time.
If you’ve ever taken an online survey for cash, you know that they can sometimes take up more time than they’re worth. And as with all online survey sites, you have to answer a few initial questions before they decide whether or not they want you as a survey participant. But even if they decide not to use you for any given survey, you’ll still get a consolation prize: 1 Swagbuck.
2. Giving up Google and searching via Swagbucks’ Yahoo!-based search bar.
This is maybe the simplest way to earn ‘bucks – every 10 or so searches, you get automatically rewarded with some credit toward gift cards. Your free credits (known on the site as “swagbucks” or “SB”) are paid for by the folks at Yahoo!, who are obviously trying to win back users that left when the big, bad Google took the internet by storm a decade ago.
Getting 50 cents just for a single internet search? That’s more than enough incentive for me to switch back to Yahoo!
3. Shopping at sites you would normally shop at (like Home Depot, Target or Wal-Mart), and getting a percentage back.
The percentage back comes in the form of Swagbucks, which, as I explained above, you can turn in for cash or gift cards. The actual percentage you get back depends on the store – sometimes they have limited-time deals where you can get extra Swagbucks. Watch out for those, especially around the holidays.
I’ve seen the deals for some stores go as high as 30 percent off.
Getting a third of your money back? Not too shabby, especially if you were planning on doing some shopping at a particular store anyway.
This part is important though: you have to click through the Swagbucks site to Amazon, PetCo, Travelocity (or wherever), in order to earn that Swagbucks money back.
4. Voting in a daily poll.
Granted, you only get 1 Swagbuck (aka “SB”) per poll per day, but it’s super-easy and only takes a second.
5. Signing up for free offers.
You can get quite a bit of Swagbucks through their so-called “special offers,” but the offers do often require signing up with your name and address, and occasionally entering in credit card information (Swagbucks has a strict privacy policy, fortunately).
Some examples:
- Installing an app, like a game, on Facebook (which you can uninstall later).
- Registering to receive free samples (I got some free laundry detergent and kitchen cleaners in the mail recently, for example).
- Signing up for a free trial subscription of something (say, a magazine), which you can cancel before the trial period runs out.
You’ll want to note: many of these free offers come with A LOT of junk email. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time though – thanks to the ol’ anti-email spam act Congress passed in 2003. Congress did right for once!
6. Checking Swagbucks’ social media accounts for free codes.
Each and every day, Swagbucks posts codes on their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts that you can easily enter on the Swagbucks site. The catch is that they are only good for a limited amount of time – usually a couple hours. But they do post new ones every day.
Hint: the site Swag Codes Spoilers regularly posts the codes so you don’t have to keep a constant look out for them.
7. Watching sponsored videos.
Some of the videos Swagbucks serves up are pretty random or not super-entertaining, but others are actually watchable and interesting. Sorta like you accidentally stumbled onto some YouTube channel that you may (or may not) be into. See the image to the right for an example of the massive variety of videos they show.
A lot of them are movie trailers for upcoming, new releases, which I don’t mind since I go see quite a few movies and like to see what’s coming soon.
The site will actually let you play videos while you’re taking surveys or doing other tasks on Swagbucks, if you’re into multi-tasking (which I am).
Occasionally, loading the videos takes an ungodly amount of time, which is another reason that it’s not nearer to the top of this list.
8. Playing online games.
Finally, Swagbucks lets you earn more Swagbucks, or use your current Swagbucks to gamble for more Swagbucks, via the “Play” portal.
Most of the games fall into the more “casual” games category (à la Angry Birds or Candy Crush) and in the tradition of old-school games like Tetris or Mario Brothers. Games you will probably have actually heard of are Boggle, Deal or No Deal, online slot machines, Poker, and Wheel of Fortune.
The only reason this is so low on the list is that with the games that are on the funner side (read: ones I’d actually want to play), you usually have to cough up Swagbucks to start playing.
But, like they say: sometimes it takes Swagbucks to make Swagbucks (ahem).
How do you sign up for Swagbucks?
Sign up is super-easy, here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/tmeronek (note – this is a referral link. It is free – it costs you nothing, but I do get a little credit for your sign up.)
NEW MEMBER BONUS (works as of December 2016): Enter the code RSWAGBUCKS when signing up for 70 free Swagbucks.
How does Swagbucks compare to other similar websites, like PCH.com or the Ibotta app?
As a pretty avid sweepstakes-enterer (aka sweeper) and survey-taker, I’ve tried pretty much ALL of the sites out there to make a little money on the side.
Now, Swagbucks is kind of like my version of Candy Crush. I gave up Candy Crush (after getting to level 650 and realizing how much time I’d spent crushing those sweet, sweet jellies), and instead started doing things like answering Swagbucks polls and surveys which in turn put money in my wallet (or online e-wallet, depending on which gift cards I pick – including PayPal money, which you can then transfer into your personal bank account).
Now that I’ve used Swagbucks for a while, places like Global Test Market, Publisher’s Clearing House (or its online equivalent, pch.com) seem almost like scams. Like, you know someone eventually wins money, but the odds are 1 in a billion (actually, in some cases, the odds are worse than 1 in a billion). And when you do the math, many of the survey sites pay less than 25 cents per hour. Certainly not worth my, or your, time.
Here’s Swagsbucks’ own video explanation of how the whole thing works:
If you found this information useful please use the referral link here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/tmeronek
(As I mentioned, it costs you nothing, but I do get a few Swagbucks myself when you use this link to sign up.)
New member bonus (works as of December 2016): After clicking the link above, enter the code RSWAGBUCKS when signing up and get 70 free Swagbucks.
Questions? Comments? Haterade?
If you have any questions, or I didn’t cover anything you think needs to be answered, feel free to email me through this form, or leave a comment below. (I promise not to spam you or automatically sign you up for Swagbucks or anything shady like that.)
Read my review for the cashback site Ebates here.
Swagbucks: Surprisingly not a scam! 