A review of SwagBucks
Anyone who knows me will know that I am always on the lookout for little money-making opportunities, from surveys to cashback websites. In the past few months, I've earned somewhere between £50-100 from survey websites (bearing in mind I really don't have much time to do them either) and a £20 voucher from a cashback website (bearing in mind I really don't have much disposable income to spend). Find out more about those here.
Someone introduced me to SwagBucks a while ago and I never really got into it, but after reading some good reviews about it I decided to give it more of a go. As a result, I thought I'd better review it - because I'm not too convinced by it.
SwagBucks is a rewards website where you can sign up and earn points (or "swagbucks") for various activities including clicking links, voting on polls, using their search engine and watching videos. Sounds pretty good, but let me look into it in more depth...
You can redeem your SBs for vouchers, PayPal payments and a whole host of goodies, but a £5 Amazon voucher will cost you 849SB. This works out that 1 penny = almost 2 SB (around 1.67 to be precise). Every day, you can do three quick things - if you install their toolbar (which is legit, no spyware or any of that crap), you will earn 1SB simply for opening your browser. Voting in the daily poll will earn you another 1SB. And looking at some adverts quickly (their NOSO - no obligation special offers), you can earn a couple. Now you see the problem... Although these will only take you a couple of minutes altogether, you will earn less than 5p.
Then we take a look at the videos. You will often get invitations to watch an advertisement video for an SB or two, but in the Swagbucks TV section, you can choose from a whole host of subjects, although mostly news and entertainment. Once you've watched 10 videos, and you don't even have to watch them the whole way through and they're normally under 1 or 2 minutes, you earn 3SB. About 2p. You're starting to see the problem...
Now, they boast that one of the best ways to earn big SwagBucks is by doing surveys. This is all very well, but you will often simply be linked to a survey on ToLuna or OpinionWorld or one of the other survey websites I already use (mentioned in the above article). You usually get 70SB per survey, which is around 40p... or you could sign up on ToLuna directly and earn more.
One of the real ways of earning a bit more is, strangely enough, by using their search engine - they will periodically award a whole bunch of SB when you search for something, and although it's a matter of luck, I've used it around 3 times a day and always got at least one lucky draw per day. Sometimes you'll only get 5 or 10, but sometimes you'll get much more, I think my best one has been 56SB.
Another good way is if you follow their Facebook and/or Twitter pages, they will give out codes to earn you a handful too, however these often only stay active for a couple of hours so you have to be quick on the uptake.
You can also, like most cashback websites and rewards sites, enter competitions or sign up for free trials or even purchase special offers/magazine subscriptions for a lot of SB, however it doesn't really beat the cashback websites I already use and so this is also not an incentive for me to stay.
The final way you can supposedly earn SB is by playing free games and you'll be awarded them now and then. I've never had any from this, so to me it's a waste of time. Play the games for the purpose of playing the games if you like, but don't expect much physical reward. I also almost forgot "Tasks" but to me, these are usually a waste of time as you get little reward for annoying projects. I think last time I did one, I got 4SB for about 10 minutes' work. Screw that. I don't even bother looking at them any more.
If you need something to fill the time, it's a decent way to earn a few pennies. However, that's its problem - it is a few pennies. If you're looking for a more substantial way to get a little extra income, stick to surveys and clicking on links from MutualPoints. SwagBucks might be a little more in the way of entertainment, but it's probably not worth it if you're in it for the rewards.