Swagbucks
is a pretty cool way to get some extra spending money. I’ve been using
the Amazon gift cards to get mostly kid things; they have some really
good deals on usually-expensive things like Kamik boots.
So, Swagbucks is basically a pyramid scheme, to be honest. It’s not the illegal kind though, because you can still earn without having referred anyone. The easiest way to get Swagbucks though is to have other people sign up through your page. I’ve seen people on various work-from-home forums mention that they got hundreds of dollars of referrals by printing up free business cards (using one of the free trial offers that earns you Swagbucks!) with their referral link and leaving them in the laundromat and other places where people are looking for, ahem, get-rich-quick schemes. I haven’t gone that far, but have done nicely by giving some referral links to friends. So, hey, if you don’t have Swagbucks yet, sign up using my account and help my family buy school clothes while earning some gift cards to get some for your own family.
Once you get to the site, you can earn Swagbucks by using their search engine, buying things through their referral links, signing up for things, and various other ways. There’s a coupon engine that uses coupons.com but earns you Swagbucks for every coupon you redeem, which is pretty cool. Like any sort of reward-for-buying-stuff program, you can earn if you use it only to buy things you can afford and were going to buy already, but can easily get sucked in if you aren’t careful. One Swagbuck is equal to 1.11 cents (450 Swagbucks = $5 on Amazon), so if you buy something that costs $10 in order to get 100 Swagbucks, you’re an idiot. If you had planned to buy the thing anyway though, you might as well get some free money in the process.
Oh, and it goes without saying that if you’re signing up for car insurance quotes and whatnot through Swagbucks or any of these sites, for god’s sake, use one web browser for all of this slightly sketchy web browsing and another one for your normal browsing, like logging into your bank’s web site. And of course get a throwaway e-mail address for all the spam you’re going to be receiving. Swagbucks is pretty reputable and I’ve not known anyone to have anything happen to them other than receiving a lot of spam when they sign up for offers, but still, I’d be cautious and have anything this gimmicky be in a separate browser where it can’t possibly track my important personal info.
So, Swagbucks is basically a pyramid scheme, to be honest. It’s not the illegal kind though, because you can still earn without having referred anyone. The easiest way to get Swagbucks though is to have other people sign up through your page. I’ve seen people on various work-from-home forums mention that they got hundreds of dollars of referrals by printing up free business cards (using one of the free trial offers that earns you Swagbucks!) with their referral link and leaving them in the laundromat and other places where people are looking for, ahem, get-rich-quick schemes. I haven’t gone that far, but have done nicely by giving some referral links to friends. So, hey, if you don’t have Swagbucks yet, sign up using my account and help my family buy school clothes while earning some gift cards to get some for your own family.
Once you get to the site, you can earn Swagbucks by using their search engine, buying things through their referral links, signing up for things, and various other ways. There’s a coupon engine that uses coupons.com but earns you Swagbucks for every coupon you redeem, which is pretty cool. Like any sort of reward-for-buying-stuff program, you can earn if you use it only to buy things you can afford and were going to buy already, but can easily get sucked in if you aren’t careful. One Swagbuck is equal to 1.11 cents (450 Swagbucks = $5 on Amazon), so if you buy something that costs $10 in order to get 100 Swagbucks, you’re an idiot. If you had planned to buy the thing anyway though, you might as well get some free money in the process.
Oh, and it goes without saying that if you’re signing up for car insurance quotes and whatnot through Swagbucks or any of these sites, for god’s sake, use one web browser for all of this slightly sketchy web browsing and another one for your normal browsing, like logging into your bank’s web site. And of course get a throwaway e-mail address for all the spam you’re going to be receiving. Swagbucks is pretty reputable and I’ve not known anyone to have anything happen to them other than receiving a lot of spam when they sign up for offers, but still, I’d be cautious and have anything this gimmicky be in a separate browser where it can’t possibly track my important personal info.