Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Swagbucks

Ok, so I usually don't do a lot of affiliate type promotions on my blog (except for a few ads on my sidebar and the ones Google inserts wherever it so chooses), but after a Twitter conversation (Twittersation?) w/Em today, I decided I wanted to take a minute to talk about Swagbucks.
What are Swagbucks? The best way I can describe them is as a "currency" of sorts. They can be used to buy any number of odds and ends and, most importantly in my opinion, Amazon gift cards. You earn Swagbucks by using their website to search as you would normally use Google, or Yahoo or Bing or whatever you are inclined to use. Sometimes searches get you nothing but search results, but other times you can win 10, 20 or 30 Swagbucks.
Currently a $5 Amazon card costs 450 Swagbucks. I've been using Swagbucks for a few months and have so far earned enough for 2 $5 Amazon cards. I know that isn't very much in the scheme of things, but it was still completely free and easy so I consider it worth it! Plus I would have just been using Google to search anyway. My hope is that through Swagbucks and survey-taking I can earn enough to pay for Christmas presents.
Swagbucks is powered by Google and Ask, so you get similar results to if you used those search engines. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that I love about Google, so sometimes I still have to search in both places. It's a little bit of a pain, but I'm usually willing to spend the extra few seconds to try Swagbucks and see if I win.
Fridays are "Mega Swagbucks Day" which means you have a chance of winning even more Swagbucks than normal (50 or 100 so they say). This hasn't actually worked for me yet but I am keeping the faith that it could someday!
There are other ways to earn Swagbucks, like completing offers or buying things through their partners, but searching is definitely the easiest and it doesn't cost anything!
Another free way to earn is through a section called "Special Offers" where you can click on "No Obligation Offers". If you skip through about 5 or 6 offers it will give you a few Swagbucks just for doing so. You can do this once a day and pick up around 10 or 15 SB a week.
Swagbucks is active on Facebook, Twitter and their own personal blog. Sometimes they will give out "Swagcodes" that can be entered to earn some extra Swagbucks. They also have "Swaghunts" which are like virtual scavenger hunts to find Swagcodes. These aren't necessarily worth the time it takes to track them down, but if do you have free time on your hands it can be kind of fun.
If you'd like to give Swagbucks a try, it is free to join and you can go through my referral link and help me earn extra points! See, that's where my selfish motivation for this post becomes clear...
As I am an accountant and not a salesperson, I hate being pushy so please don't feel pressured to join just for me. Even if you don't use my link, I'd still recommend checking it out and seeing if you like it.  As I said, it can't hurt and it can get you some free stuff, so why not?
Search & Win

1 comment:

Traci said...

Like you, I haven't earned tons of Swagbucks, but I agree that a few $5 Amazon gift cards is worth the practically zero effort. My only complaint is that the search results are far heavier on the sponsored links so I find that I just automatically skip to the 7th or 8th result to get the one that likely would have been in the top 3 on a regular Google search.

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