According to their website, SwagBucks.com is a “loyalty program” where you can earn prizes for doing the same stuff you do online everyday.
Shopping, watching videos, searching for products, playing games; all of these things and more can earn you prizes with the Swagbucks system.
How Does Swagbucks Work?
It may be confusing to understand why a company would pay you to just do “anything” online. But companies understand that the average American actually spends quite a lot of time on the internet, and that what people do online says a lot about their interests, habits, likes and dislikes.
If companies know what kinds of games people play or what kinds of products and advertisements catch their attention, it goes a very long way towards helping companies understand how to better reach their target market. Companies all over are discussing the benefits of understanding exactly how and why we do the things we do online.
So, Swagbucks will give you prizes in exchange for “doing what you already do online” because they are taking that information and providing it to others, who will use it to change and influence the way they do business online in the future.
What Is a “Swagbuck”?
Swagbucks, unlike other pay to search sites, does not compensate their members with money. Instead, they give them various amounts of points, called Swagbucks, for the tasks and activities they do online. At any point in time after you have begun collecting these Swagbucks, you can go to the Swag Store and exchange them for items.
One of the issues with Swagbucks is that they do not maintain a set rate of pay for activities. The pay changes as certain demands for information changes. However, keep in mind that you are still simply getting paid for activities you would be doing regardless, so though it may be frustrating, it’s still not a bad deal.
You also have the option of turning your Swagbucks into cash, but customers report that you get less bang for your Swagbuck when you make this choice. It takes more Swagbucks to get cash paid directly into a PayPal account then it does to simply redeem them for a gift card of the exact same value. This goes back to Swagbucks’ partnership with various companies, but luckily for their members these partners tend to be large vendors like Amazon.com and Wal-Mart, places where you are likely to spend your money anyway.
Tips for Earning with Swagbucks
- Take advantage of the referral system. When you refer someone, Swagbucks will reward you with matched earnings up to 1,000 points. The more people you refer, the easier and faster you’ll rack up Swagbucks.
- When you use the Swagbucks search, be normal. Swagbucks is recording your searches, and if you are continuously entering gibberish like “aldkjfa;ldkj” and hitting the search button, you won’t be a member for long.
- Take advantage of the Swagbucks “extras.” Once a day, they’ll have special offers for you to look at that will take a couple seconds. Or submit poll ideas. If yours is chosen, you earn more.
- Use their toolbar, and better yet, use Swagbucks. For everything. The whole point of the system is that they want to know what you are doing online. The more you use it, the more they benefit, and the more you will earn.
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I generally get a new CD about once a month for my troubles - but, BE CAREFUL. There is a whole lot going on under the surface that you need to be wary of...I will list some of the dangers here...
1. Whenever you go on the Swagbucks site, make sure you are using FIREFOX - and make sure that you have the Firefox add-on 'Noscript' installed (Google 'Mozilla Noscript' and it should be the first result). (I really WISH someone would write an equivalent for Chrome, which tbh, I prefer).
The reason for this is that there are LOADS of third party sites running silently in th background. With Noscript, no site will run anything (avoiding anything nasty) unless you let it. You can allow or forbid any domain with a simple click. To be honest, this is an increasing problem on much of the internet, but, Swagbucks is much worse than any other site I've ever been on. There may be parts of the site that won't function....but, you can still get points from a number of things on the site and your computer has that extra little bit of safety.
2. Do NOT under any circumstances download ANYTHING from the site. The Swagbucks toolbar is, apparently, almost impossible to remove, and there are plenty of 'make my computer go faster' type offers on the site. If you download anything, you risk spyware, malware, viruses etc.
3. Before you take up ANY offers, have a look round the net to see if they are really as good as they seem. For instance, there is an offer from VistaPrint, a company that I use anyway for 250 color business cards for a fiver plus postage. Sounds good, eh? Except that if you go straight to their site, you can get the same for £2.50 plus postage.
Some of the so-called offers are simply scams.
I'm sure there are some decent offers in there...but, as already said, look round the net first to see if the offer really is as good as it seems.
4. Paid Surveys : It's up to you. Several on here have said they want loads of your details. That's true. Nothing to do with Swagbucks, these are the details all survey companies ask for, more than anything, for classification purposes. You will get screened out of a LOT of surveys and earn nothing for your time. Again, this is normal for survey companies. Most surveys are simply market research, so, if it's a survey about, say, yoghurt, they'll only want people who eat yoghurt regularly. Of course, they won't tell you that, you'll get a list of say 'crisps, rice cakes, fizzy drinks, yoghurt, teacakes' and be asked which you buy regularly. If you don't tick yoghurt, it's bye-bye and you will get nothing.
4. Purchases : I've never made one on Swagbucks, so, it may well be perfectly legit....but, remember that you're going through at least one other website to get to where you are putting your card details into. Even if Swagbucks are 100% honest (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), this is a potential minefield for hackers.
As I say, I get a new CD a month for little effort. You can too, but, be aware of the pitfalls. If you're not web-savvy or tech-savvy, it's probably not for you, but, if you have read what I have said and are confident that you can avoid the pitfalls, then a few minutes every day can bring you small rewards...
All in all, you won't get money fast, but it earns me enough for beer and electronics that I couldn't normally afford.