What Is Swagbucks & How Does It Work? Is It a Good Deal?

Swagbucks.com is an online rewards program that pays for doing a variety of online tasks, mostly things you already do when you get online – watching videos, searching, playing games, etc.

Originally, the site started as a platform where charities could raise money by having their supporters perform internet searches on Swagbucks’ custom search engine.

It then grew into a kind of “Get Paid to Search” website where users could earn points (known as SwagBucks) for every search they performed using the site’s search engine. Once a user had enough points, he or she could redeem those points for gift cards and/or PayPal payments.

As the site got more popular and got a lot of attention from the mainstream media – Los Angeles Times, Forbes, to name a few – Swagbucks became a full-fledged reward program where users could earn points for taking surveys, searching, playing games, watching videos, shopping and more.

To date, the site has paid out over $120 million in cash and free gift cards to its users.

How Does the Point System Work?

The number of points you earn for each activity differs.

Obviously, the more time-consuming and harder a task is, the more points you get.

The good news is that you’ll know before hand how many points any given activity can earn you. So you can decide whether it’s worth your time or not.

I’ve been using the site about 5-6 years now. And although, initially it was difficult to earn points as I was new to the concept, soon I started to develop a system where I’d rack up points easily and quickly by doing certain activities daily.

Throughout the years, I have managed to earn a few thousand dollars worth of cash and gift cards (mostly Amazon.com gift cards since I buy almost everything from Amazon).

These days, I don’t login as often as I used to, but whenever I have a little free time or need to buy something from a site that Swagbucks gives cashback for, I login and use the site to earn some points.

How Do You Earn Swagbucks (Points)?

There are a lot of different ways you can earn points.

For a complete list, check out our post on making money with Swagbucks.

To get started, you have to register for the site, which is free by the way.

The best part is that you’ll also get a free $5 bonus for joining Swagbucks.

Use this link to register with Swagbucks and get $5 bonus.

Install the Toolbar

Once you sign up, the first thing you want to do is to install their toolbar.

There are two reasons why this is important:

1. First, the working Web browser toolbar can earn you one SwagBuck every day.
2. And the more accessible this toolbar is, the more regularly you’ll use the site.

Now you’re ready to go. From now on, whenever you want to search for something, instead of going to Google or Bing, use the Swagbucks toolbar to do your searches so you can earn points.

Not every search gets you points, though. The process seems pretty random, and my observation is that the more I use it, the more points I earn.

Other Ways to Earn Swagbucks

Searching isn’t the only way to earn points here.

When you login to your dashboard, on the left side you ‘ll see the “Earn Your SB” tab.

Under it, there is a list of ways you can earn points. Click on one that interest you and get started.

Here are some of the way you can earn SBs:

1. Get Free Swag Codes
Swagbucks gives Swag code randomly on their social media pages. So following them on social media and keeping an eye on the activities, is an easy way to get those Swag codes that you can exchange for actual points.

2. Complete surveys
Members are also encouraged to participate in online surveys so as to earn points. It’s fun and easy, not to mention, sometimes you get to hear about new products that haven’t even hit the shelves.

3. Play Games
You can play all kinds of flash games and earn points.

4. Complete Tasks
This is a newer feature of the site where they have partnered up with Amazon’s famous crowdsourcing site, Mechanical Turk, to allow members to complete simple tasks right from their Swagbucks account and earn points for doing so.

5. Shop Online
Like most other reward sites, SB also has a cash back section where not only you get exclusive deals and discount for things you are going to buy, but you also earn cashback for shopping. If you shop a lot, this is an easy way to get some money back.

6. Take the Daily Polls
They conduct daily polls for the users. Participation earns you SwagBucks.

7. Watch Video on SB TV
This is cool! For every 10 videos you watch there, you earn 3 points. It’s not much, but if you like watching videos online, this is a fun way to rack up a few points.

8. Print Coupons
The website also features grocery coupons, which you can print out and redeem. Redemption made will earn you points.

The coupons are just as good as those from the food manufacturers.

9. Swagstakes
You buy entry into this sweepstakes like competition with your Swagbucks and the winnings here are quite generous, including a $2,000 Amazon gift card.

I won once and the prize was a Visa gift card, pretty neat, isn’t it?

10. Refer a Friend
You can earn up to 100 swag bucks for every friend you refer to the site.

11. Set (& reach) Daily Goals
Every day you can set a number of points you want to earn that day. That becomes your goal for that day. A meter displays your progress throughout the day, and if you reach your goal, you earn bonus points.

12. Random Winners
Once a while, they will announce a random winner, and this random winner will have just half an hour to get back to them in order to win.

You can find these winners at the lower right sidebar of the website.

It’s ridiculous to sit in front of the PC and regularly check this page to see if your name appears on the winning list. But I do check if I have some time to kill, and so far, I have only won once, which was three years back.

13. Other Offers
Promotions are held from time to time on their website to help you accumulate even more SwagBucks.

What Can You Redeem Your Swagbucks Points for?

You have gone through all that effort to earn enough points so you can get something.

What can you get?

Well, almost anything you can think of!

It’s mainly PayPal payments and gift cards. You can get gift cards for any major brand you can think of – eBay, Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc.

It used to be that you needed at least $5 worth of points to be able to redeem your points. But now you can redeem as little as 5 points.

Normally, such small number of points can be redeemed for charity donations. They have tons of different charities that you can donate your points to.

To redeem for gift cards, you need at least 85 points which can get you a $3 gift card for companies like Amazon,
Dunkin’ Donuts and a few others.

The more points you have, the more options you have when it comes to redeeming them for gift cards. There are hundreds of brands you can get gift cards for.

Bottom Line

I think Swagbucks is an awesome way to earn free gift cards and cash in your spare time.

It’s a legitimate site that does actually pay you, so you don’t have to be worried about being scammed.

So, if you are looking for an easy and fun way to earn a few gift cards and perhaps cash, sign up with Swagbucks here and enjoy your free stuff.