Swag Bucks

I’m usually very suspicious of getting something for nothing, or very little. I’ve been doing Swag Bucks for a couple of weeks now, and I ‘m still suspicious, but I’m also impressed.

Swag Bucks are virtual currency. You ‘earn’ them by using the Swag Bucks toolbar for your searches (powered by Google and Ask so you get good results) entering codes that are often hidden on the website, and following Swag Bucks on Twitter and Facebook. The prizes you can ‘buy’ with Swag Bucks are impressive, and as you might suspect the more expensive a prize is in real life, the more Swag Bucks it costs. I’ve been signed up for a couple of weeks now and I’ve earned just under 600 Swag Bucks. That’s a far cry from the 38,000 Swag Bucks you need for the iPhone 3GS, but not bad for the 2800 Swag Buck wireless Xbox 360 controller. All for using a different search bar.

I was also concerned that this was a passing fad, or a business that wouldn’t last long, but Swag Bucks just celebrated its 2nd birthday last week. The drawbacks? Well when you searched some of the first results are ‘Sponsored by’ so you might not get exactly what you’re looking for in the first few hits, the codes that are given out are usually only good for a few hours (I have literally missed some codes by 5 minutes on more than one occasion), and the rewards for searching with the toolbar are random, but that’s OK with me, I usually spend a few minutes each day Googling random stuff.

Then there are the referrals. If you look around swagbucks.com and decide to sign up, I’d appreciate it if you used my referral link. When you win by searching, I’ll win too, so there’s a small bit of “Welcome to Amway” feel, but it’s totally free.  If you don’t like the tool bar, but you still want to win by searching, you can switch your browser bar to use the swagbucks engine.

No pressure.  I’m not giving out emails or anything like that.  When I win something cool I might post it on Facebook.  Give it a look and if you decide to sign up, I’d appreciate the referral.