Friday, November 13, 2009

OT: A Fun Way To Earn Prizes While Searching The Web



I thought Swagbucks was a scam when I first read about it. And it may still be a pyramid scheme of sorts, in that people who refer others to sign up, profit from it. 

But since there's no cost to participate, and I have definitely received the prizes I earned from my own searches, I thought I'd mention it here in the hopes that others might enjoy it.

Disclosure: If you use the link I provide below to sign up, I will receive extra Swagbucks every time you earn one for your first 100 points. You can also go directly to the Swagbucks site and sign up without using my referral link.


So here's how it works: You can register at Swagbucks. Initially, all you have to give them is an email address, but after you collect enough points to collect a prize, you'll need to give them a snailmail address as well. 

Then you simply use their search engines to do searches. The search engine is based on the Google engine, but you don't get the identical results you would from using Google. So I use Swagbucks first to search, and then if I don't find the best results, I sometimes switch to Google and check it as well.

You won't earn SwagBucks every time you search. It's allegedly random both when you receive SBs and the quantity you get when you get them. Honestly, I rarely get more than one SB a day, but I also don't search constantly through the day either. I get enough SBs that I manage to earn an Amazon giftcard (45 SBs) every five to six weeks.

There's lots of other prizes you can apply your Swagbucks to if you'd rather, but I think the Amazon giftcards are probably the best value for my time. 

Anyway, I love getting something for practically nothing. And I don't know how SwagBucks' business model works, but earning points for doing searches I'd be doing anyway is pretty great to me.

(Helpful hint: I seem to get the bulk of my SBs by clicking on "next" for the next page of links.)

And thanks to anyone who signs up using my link! 

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