Not too long ago I came across a web page in which someone was ranting about how Swag Bucks is a great site to earn extra money online. Now, sometimes it feels like I’ve tried all those “make money online” and “work from home” sites. And at this point I have learned one thing: If they want you to pay them to work for them, then it’s a scam. But, Swag Bucks was different, you just sign up and use their search engine to build up “Swag Bucks” – their point counting system – to redeem for items, gift cards, and yes even cold hard cash brought to you through your pay pal account.
So, I signed up. Figured, why not give it a try. But was it worth it?
Well, let me start off by explaining exactly what happens when you search. You do not look for specific searches that they have predetermined. What happens is that you use their search engine and they randomly award a person swag bucks. So, there is no way for you to actually use this feature to your advantage, it is strictly luck of the draw.
When I first looked into this I found many people saying that they were awarded enough swag bucks to get a $5.00 Gift Card to Amazon within the week. For me, after using the site for a week I had 199 swag bucks, a $5 Gift Card to Amazon costs 450 swag bucks. At this rate you are earning $5 in about 2 ½ weeks. And that is only if you want an Amazon card, some cost more, and a few cost less. However, if you want $5 cash money, then it is going to cost you 700 swag bucks, that means it will be 3 ½ weeks to earn $5.
I was looking around thinking that this site may not be worth it, I hadn’t made any money online. So, I checked the “other” ways to earn money, and what do you know one of them is shopping, and the other is trying out offers. So, you can either spend money (a lot more than you would make back in swag bucks) or fill your inbox with useless offers, and that is if you don’t have to dish out money for a “free trial membership.” I was shaking my head, this place might not ask you to pay them to work for them, instead they are asking you to buy from their sponsors. At this point Swag Bucks isn’t looking so hot. But, I forge on.
I soon discover that you can vote in their daily polls to receive swag bucks, and after I few day I discover that I am getting 1 swag buck for every poll I click on, not bad really, easy actually, too bad they only have one poll a day though. So, still no money to be made here.
Now there is only one thing left to try: Trading in cell phones and video games for swag bucks. Now, I’ve been buying and selling on EBay for a while now, and I know I could post these items there to sell them, so I decide to do a little comparison between the money I would receive on EBay and the money I would receive through swag bucks. So I took 4 items, one cell phone, and 3 video games – an old Motorola RAZR, Wii Fit Plus, Sega Superstar Tennis and Winter Sports 2.
Starting with the cell phone I checked out how many swag bucks I would receive for trading it in, and discovered it was worth about 10. To determine this in dollar amount I took $5 and divided that by the number of points you had to have to receive the Amazon Gift card, and the pay pal cash. With this I determined you would receive .11 cents towards a gift card and .07 towards cash. Um, not looking so good there, still not making money, enough to actually account for anything anyway, but I might as well check to see if I could even sell it on EBay. And you know what? It turned out I could. On average a person was paying 1.00 for my old phone. That is 89 – 93 cents more than I would get a swag bucks, minus the 6 cents it costs to post an item and you are still making several hundred percent more by selling on EBay. The same held true for Wii Fit plus, which wasn’t even listed on swag bucks.
But, then I checked out my other two games: Sega would bring me in 302 points, or $3.55 gift card/ 2.15 pay pal, and while many were posted at retail price, even those auctioning them off for .99 cents didn’t have any bidders. The same held true for Winter sports which would bring me in 8.18/5.26 at 737 points. I actually found something that would make money!
Overall though I would have to say that Swag Bucks will not get you rich, and it isn’t even likely to help you bring in much extra money during the month, but I do see it having a some use for a work at home mother. If you are a student, or tend to wonder around online a lot then you may have good opportunity to bring in a few more bucks each week than I did. Buying Amazon cards could be a way to pay for, or partially help pay for, books each semester, and saving up cards throughout the year could help pay for Christmas presents at year’s end. This site is not for someone looking to actually make money online, but it could bring in a couple extra bucks here and there, that saved up properly could be of some use in the end.
