Swagbucks provides "Bucks" for searches, entering special SwagCodes, shopping, referring others, interacting on Swagbuck's Facebook page, commenting on Swagbucks's blog, and other stuff. 3 Bucks are awarded just for registering (free). Bucks can be redeemed for a very large selection of gift cards and other goodies. Some samples as of December 11, 2009:
$25 Restaurant.com e-Gift Card for 40 Swagbucks.
$5.00 Amazon e-Gift Card for 45 bucks.
$50 Southwest airlines e-Gift Card for 570 bucks.
$5 credit to your PayPal account for 70 bucks.
$20 Target e-Gift Card for 235 bucks.
$10 Barnes and Nobel for 125 swagbucks
$15 iTunes for 185 swagbucks
$50 REI for 840 swagbucks
$50 TicketMaster for 840 swagbucks
$50 Lowes for 865 swagbucks
Please tell me if any of the specific prizes I mentioned disappear, or if a good one of general interest is added. Thanks.
The web site says that searches are by Google and Ask. So you may get the same results here as on those web sites, though I have not yet verified this. If you do several searches per day anyway, it would cost you little time to simply open your Swagbucks account in a separate window and use it to do your searches.
Not all searches result in bucks. I am still trying to determine if the bucks are dependent on the specific search, or are random.
2 Swagbucks per day gets you, for example, a $5 Amazon.com certificate every 23 days. Easy. Just do the searches you would do anyway via Swagbucks.
I seem to regularly be awarded 1-3 bucks for my second, third or fourth search in the morning and again at night.
Frequently clicking on page two or three of a search result gets me a swagbuck. So now I automatically do this for every search.
Searching, clicking on a result, then clearing out my cash and clicking on my back button very often results in bucks.
SwagBucks will deactivate your account if they think you are doing "unatural" searches. I suggest you just open a separate window for SwagBucks and simply do your normal searches there.
SwagCodes are codes provided by Swagbucks on its Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter pages, in its emailed newsletter for which you may sign up, on its toolbar which you may download, and on its blog. Sometimes the code comes in the form of an interesting puzzle which you must solve.
Fortunately you do not have to read all of these to get the codes. Some enterprising Canadians post them on a RedFlagDeals.com thread. The codes last for only a short period of time. So it is best to sign up with RedFlagDeals.com, then subscribe to the thread. You can chose to receive instant notice of new posts to this thread via email or cell phone. After you receive a notice of a new post you must visit the thread while you are logged in to receive another notice. I just stay logged in and click on the link to the thread in the email. Please carefully read the instructions at the top of this thread. It is for posting SwagCodes and their expirations only. No thank yous, no discussions, etc, because every time you post something on that thread it gets emailed to everyone subscribed to it, thus forcing us to visit the thread to get the next email.
SlickDeals has a similar thread, but it does not have the level of cooperation of RedFlagDeals, as people post thank you's, comments, duplicate information, etc.
SwagCodes usually earn one easy buck, sometimes more. To get credit for a code, click on My Account at the top of the page, enter the code in the Enter your SwagCode field to the left of the page, and click on Gimmie.
Please do contribute your finds of SwagCodes on these threads.
There is a flyertalk thread on which SwagCodes and successful searches are posted. You can subscribe to this one for email notices of new posts.
There is a useful general discussion of Swagbucks on the afore mentioned RedFlagDeals.com. This is where you read and post comments other than finds and expirations of SwagCodes, say thank you if you must, etc.
Whenever you successfully refer someone, the bucks earned in that person's account from searches are matched in yours, to a maximum of 100 bucks per referral. This, of course, is why I hope you will use my referral link to join the program
