Age: 13+
Payment: Gift cards
Skills: None
Time: Short (1 second to 5 minutes) tasks. Work any time.
Availability: US, UK, India, Canada, Australia, Ireland
Overview:
Swagbucks is probably one of the most popular ways people have been getting rewards online. Although it is not exactly a 'work online' site, it is a way to get gift cards - even for PayPal and Amazon. This makes it an excellent choice for someone who does not have a bank account - a teenager for example.
The website allows you to collect swagbucks (SB), a virtual currency of sorts that allows you to redeem gift cards. The value of a $5 Amazon gift card (the most popular option) is 450 SB, making a swagbucks worth roughly 1.1 cents.
You collect points through searches, daily polls, videos, tasks, games, surveys, and doing offers and sign ups.
Here are some activities and their reward:
- Searching: 1-1000 SBs (average appears to be roughly 8 SBs). This is the main feature of Swagbucks. It has its own search engine (not as good as Google) that will randomly award Swagbucks every once and a while. Maximum of 20 SB a day from searches )-:
- Daily polls: 1SB
- Videos: 3 SB per 10 videos up to 150SB a day.
- Tasks: 0.4 - 4 SBs. Tasks are offered by crowdflower and are generally very poorly paid when compared to websites like Mechanical Turk.
- Offers: 1-100 SB for free offers in which you signup, download apps, or do third-party surveys. There are also ones in which you buy something and they give of swagbucks in return (I don't recommend these)
Sign-up process: 4/5
Very easy. Only need a name and email. Obviously you will need an Amazon or Paypal in order to receive gift cards. Additionally, Swagbucks is an international company and allows membership in places like India. I give this a 4 because you need to provide your address for shipping even for a gift card.
Compensation: 6/10
The search rewards are usually sufficient (similar to Qmee in amount). Average per search is about 7SB (7 cents). Only your first 20 searches have a chance of winning swagbucks.
I noticed that the tasks, offers and videos have very small pays for the time spent. Some tasks are less than one swagbuck (one cent) at times. Additionally, the videos are never worth your time unless you enjoy watching them.
Availability: 8/10
There should always be something to do although the 'good' offers on the offer walls tend to disappear at times. There is also a limit on Swagbucks for watching videos (150SB) and searching (20SB)
Payment reliability: 10/10
I have always been paid.
Payment speed: 3/5
Takes up to 10 business days to redeem a gift-card. There are no minimums to buy something, but the minimum gift card is 5 dollars (450-500 SB)
Enjoyment/Variety: 4/5
There are a lot of different activities if you get bored of doing one. But a lot of the 'fun'activities like watching videos pay abysmally.
Privacy: 4/5
You never really input private information, that is until you do surveys and third-party offers:
"Generally, we collect Personal Information when you provide it to us by signing up on Swagbucks.com Sites, filling out surveys or questionnaires, joining our mailing list, corresponding with us..."
However, swagbucks does not give information to third parties.
Thankfully, searches are recorded with and anonymous ID:
"The Company assigns an anonymous ID number to your requests and links the following additional data to that anonymous ID number: the date and time you visited, your search terms, and the links you choose to click. "
Money making potential:
$0.80 to $5 per week depending on use. I made roughly $40 in two and a half months.
Payment type:
Gift cards (Amazon, Paypal (only $25), Walmart, Target, Nike, restaurants, etc). Swagbucks appears to have discontinued other types of rewards (like electronics) and is now limited to various gift cards.
Referrals: (+1)
Yes, you receive 10% of the Swagbucks that your referral receives.
Overall 8.0/10
Decent - use as extra income
- If you are looking to do searches with Swagbucks, you should download their toolbar (malware free) in order to use the search without having to visit Swagbucks.
- When buying something on websites like Amazon, try to look for Swagbucks offers prior to buying (like 2 SB per dollar spend on Amazon)
- Do not try to use bots for searches or you may be banned.