Swagbucks

Summary

Note: Links may award me referral rewards such as in-app points or money.

Swagbucks is one of the longest running reward websites. It has its own digital currency, unsurprisingly called Swagbucks, which you can earn in a very large number of ways. This currency can then be redeemed for cash or gift cards.

More: Swagbucks Hints and Tips

More like this: Treasure Trooper

The main ways of earning currency are:

• Watching Videos
• Answering surveys
• Shopping
• “Discovering” products and services
• Web searches

You can also upload your receipts to earn additional currency – although I can’t take part in this myself as it’s not currenly available in the UK.

The Swagbucks team offer an associated mobile app on Android and iOS, and also offer the SwagButton which is a browser extension that gives easy access to each of the main categories and alerts you if a particular website offers Swagbucks on sign up or purchase.

Safe?
Pays Out?

Ratings

Earnings:
Time Commitment:
Fun:

How does it work?

Swagbucks is one of the longest running reward websites, having recently celebrated its 11th birthday. It has its own digital currency, unsurprisingly called Swagbucks, which you can earn in a very large number of ways. This currency can then be redeemed for cash or gift cards including Amazon vouchers (my favourite), PayPal payments, Steam credit, GAP gift cards etc.

The site rewards loyalty by offering daily goals to complete which will earn you additional SBs if achieved.

The main ways to earn are briefly discussed below.

Watching videos

Swagbucks Watch allows you to earn SBs by watching short videos. At the time of writing, you are required to watch six videos to earn 2 SBs. A short advertisement is shown between each video which you are required to watch the majority of to continue.

Answering surveys

Swagbucks Answer requires you to take surveys of varying length. The number of SBs you receive tends to be in line with the length of the survey but this is not always the case.

It is possible for you to be rejected from a survey midway through completing it. This is because the survey deviser has either deemed that they already have enough people of your demographic or that you do not match their target demographic at all. If this happens, unless explicitly specified you will receive a smaller number of SBs in line with the amount of time you have invested in the survey.

Swagbucks will attempt to target you with appropriate surveys but this targeting can be improved by completing your survey profile. This rewards you with 2 SBs for every 10 questions answered.

There is also a daily poll which is one question earning a single SB.

Shopping

Swagbucks Shop allows you to collect Swagbucks through purchasing from online shops affiliated with the site. This comes in either a lump sum (e.g. 500 Swagbucks for signing up to a paid trial with Readly) or a certain number of Swagbucks per pound spent.

There’s also Swagbucks Local which allows you to earn Swagbucks when shopping in physical shops and is available on iOS and Android. Unfortunately for me, this only appears to be available in parts of the USA but for anyone in the US it’s probably worth a look!

Additional information can be found at the following two blog posts:

• Swagbucks Local Release
• Swagbucks Local new brands

Discover

The Discover section of the site includes apps, games and other offers provided by partner companies. Some of the Discover offers do require payments. For example, you may need to pay a certain amount into an online casino. Again, these are clearly marked and no money is taken unless you explicitly enter your payment details.

Web Searches

Using Swagbucks as your search engine can occasionally earn you additional SBs. To avoid forgetting to use it you can set Chrome and Firefox (and probably others) to use Swagbucks search by default to ensure you never forget to use it. I believe it uses Yahoo search to provide the actual search functionality which may not be everyone’s favourite but I’ve found it more than good enough in most cases.

Swag Codes

Swag codes are generally released once a day and can be found by visiting the Swagbucks social media channels (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) or by installing the Swagbutton (discussed below). When these are entered into the site or the SwagButton it will earn you a small number of Swagbucks.

SwagButton

The Swagbutton is a browser extension which gives easy access to each of the main Swagbucks categories and alerts you if a particular website offers Swagbucks on sign up or purchase.

It also alerts you when a new Swag code is released and makes is straightforward to view and submit it. The button is accessible from the browser toolbar and at the time of writing looks like this:

Events

Events are run periodically which allow you to earn additional Swagbucks. These are:

• Team challenges
• Swago

Opinion

I tend to spend most of my time on Swagbucks doing surveys and using the Discover functionality to find offers to complete. Generally the best paying offers are those from freemium games and those which require you to sign up to a free trial or make a purchase.

The freemium games often pay out quite well and don’t require any investment other than the time required to achieve the goal given, which is usually achieving a certain level within the game. The number of Swagbucks offered for each game is usually (but not always) a fairly good indication of the amount of effort required to reach the specified goal within the game.

Surveys

The surveys offered by Swagbucks are a mixed bag – occasionally you find one which takes forever and is very dull but on the whole, even if I’m not particularly interested in a survey it doesn’t feel too painful to complete.

It is true that the rejection rate for surveys tends to be fairly high but I actually quite like this as you usually get rejected at the beginning or within the first few questions. This allows you to “snipe” a few SBs quickly and with minimal effort while waiting for a bus or walking home. Although the payout is very low (usually 1 SB) I find that these tend to add up fairly quickly.

One aspect of the surveys which is a bit frustrating is that you often have to enter the same data more than once (e.g. date of birth) as the different platforms used to provide surveys don’t appear to talk to each other very well.

A steady internet connection is also important as most surveys don’t handle the internet dropping out at all well, just failing to load the next page of the survey and offering no way to recover. This is particularly frustrating when you are nearing the end of a long survey. Fortunately, this has only happened to me half a dozen times and I’ve completed many many surveys.

One positive to mention is that on the odd occasion where a survey does not pay out (very rare) I’ve found the Swagbucks staff to be very good. So far, when I’ve had to report an error they have always given me the SBs I’m owed.

Shop

I’ve used this for both purchases I was going to make anyway and for purchases I made simple because I gained more back in Swagbucks than the cost of the service.

Watch

Personally I don’t use their video service as the videos are generally not of interest to me and the number of Swagbucks you earn per set of videos is low.

Discover

The main thing I’ve used Discover for is games. Often companies will reward you with Swagbucks to play games to a certain level. These games are invariably freemium so presumably their hope is that you get addicted and spend money on the game. However, unless explicitly stated there is no requirement to spend anything.

You have to be a little bit careful, particularly when signing up to competitions for Swagbucks as the sites attempt to sign you up to every mailing list and phone service under the sun. This can be avoided by carefully selecting the right options but it’s arguably just worth avoiding as the payout is generally not particularly good anyway.

SwagButton

I enjoy using the Swagbutton as it alerts me to new Swag codes and makes it easy for me to view and submit them. The fact it also alerts me when I visit a website that SBs can be earned on is useful, although admittedly it can be a little irritating if I’m not interested in a particular offer and it still continues to pop up. On the whole however I think it’s worthwhile.