Swagbucks Review

 
Mr. Swagbucks with his emo hipster ass

URL: swagbucks.com



(2018 Update: Note that Swagbucks has a new policy of seizing your points if you don't log into the account for six months or use the points for two years.)

NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT

Instead of paying you in actual currency, Swagbucks pays you in ... well ... "swagbucks." Swagbucks are points that can be redeemed for a range of gift certificates, to major retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, as well as a number of chain restaurants and gas cards. Most importantly, when you reach the equivalent of $25 in Swagbucks, it can be cashed out to Paypal for an actual money payment. You can begin getting gift certificates at the equivalent of $5; most are in denominations of $5 or $10.

So what do you do on Swagbucks? You do a very careful dance in which you try to collect points without actually spending any of your own money first, or giving up too much personal information (and having your email bombed with advertisements forever.) Either that, or just use it as a sort of rewards program to get bonuses as you shop for stuff.

The most important thing to get into your head is that 1 Swagbuck is the equivalent of 1 cent USD. That's the redemption value for everything but Amazon gift cards  (which you can exchange at a slightly more favorable rate of 450 Swagbucks for $5.)

SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY

Swagbucks has been around since 2005. They are owned by Prodege LLC, a company that owns and operates a number of other sites such as deal site Froobi.com
From my personal experience, Swagbucks seems to be legitimate about paying what they owe. The site can be a little janky about registering points that you've just recieved, but they've always eventually shown up in the end. They're accredited by the BBB, but have no rating listed. They have overall favorable reviews at Sitejabber, but with a few complaints of unwarranted account closures. Trustlink is much less favorable, with many similar complaints. Reviewopedia sits at an even 3 stars with 90 reviews currently.

I was referred to the site originally by people who have been using it for years now with no issues. Apparently they can be touchy about the videos that you watch for money; the complaints about accounts being wrongly shut down almost all seem to cite those as the reason (Swagbucks accusing them of using an auto-refresh program.) If you're not planning on doing much of that, however, there seems to be little to worry about.

INTERNATIONAL ACCESS

Swagbucks seems to be accessible from anywhere, but if you want cash payments you'll have to be able to use Paypal in your country. If you're interested in gift certificates, make sure that the ones on offer are for retailers in your country as well. A list is available here.



STARTING OUT

Swagbucks offers an initially rather dizzying array of ways to earn. We'll do a quick overview of them here, breaking them up into two general categories: Things That Require You To Spend Money, and Things That Don't Require Money (But Probably Require Personal Information)

* Things That Require You To Spend Money -

Shop at major retailers and get Swagbucks back with your purchase. This is actually the best way to earn Swagbucks, as pretty much every major e-commerce site, retailer, airline, hotel chain (even Motel 6!) and hotel booking site (even Hotwire!) is linked up with Swagbucks and earns you anywhere from two to eight SB per dollar. Of course, they probably keep a profile on what you've bought, but for non-private stuff it can be a pretty nice bonus. For Hotwire bookings at 8 SB per dollar, for example, you can get almost enough for a $5 gift certificate for each night in a $50 room.

Subscribe to various services and get Swagbucks back. Some offer free trials but the terms vary as to whether the Swagbucks get revoked if you cancel during the trial.

Apply for credit cards. You usually get 2000-3000 Swagbucks if approved.

Shop with coupons you get off the site, and once redeemed you get a handful of Swagbucks.

* Things That Don't Require Money (But Probably Require Personal Information) -

Daily Codes: Every day, Swagbucks hides one or two codes (usually on their blog) that can be redeemed for 2 to 5 Swagbucks. Fortunately, there are websites dedicated to posting these, such as SBCodez. Be aware they are usually only good for a few hours after being posted, however.
Daily Poll: 1 Swagbuck for voting in the poll of the day.

NOSOs (No Obligation Special Offers): These are supposed to be a collection of ads that change daily, that you can simply click through for a few Swagbucks. I found from experience, however, that even if you Skip an ad, it still registers you as having expressed interest in it, and you'll get emails from that company later. Ads can also lock the Skip button until you fill out all the forms in the ad. I consider NOSO a spam minefield and don't even enter it anymore.

Watching Videos: Formerly you had to install a special app, but you can now watch videos in-browser to earn a few SB for every three to seven videos watched.

Random searches: Swagbucks has a search bar that can reward you with a handful of Swagbucks for searches, with an upper limit of 20 per day. There is also a search toolbar you can install in your browser to make this more convenient, though I have no idea what the possible malware/tracking situation is, or if you still have to be logged in in the background for it to work. Installing the toolbar also apparently passively gives you 1 Swagbuck per day of use.

Surveys: Swagbucks has regular surveys that offer 5 - 80 Swagbucks, but they are problematic as compared to sites like Mechanical Turk. They can drag on for a long time before screening you out, and the rewards are rather small for the time consumed. They also sometimes require you to go to a third-party site and enter your email address and a bunch of personal information to get compensated.

Playing Games For Free: Swagbucks has pared down their "play games to earn SB" selection to just three - Swag Jump, Swag Memory and Swag Dino. You now cap out at 10 SB per day playing these, with usually 2 SB randomly awarded after a session.


PROBLEMS WITH SWAGBUCKS

Aside from the fact that you can barely scratch out pennies without first spending a bunch of your own money, the site does seem to have frequent jags of loading really slowly.

FINAL VERDICT: SOME POTENTIAL


It's tough to make money without spending money on Swagbucks now, but if you have the patience you can grind the videos, surveys and daily codes into a $5 gift card maybe once or twice a month. Swagbucks is really best for just getting "cash back" on any major purchases you were going to make online anyway, as the list of retailers and merchants they are partnered with encompasses pretty much every big name that you can think of.
URL: swagbucks.com