Swagbucks - Lower Prices, Unlimited Rewards

Starting November 1st until the end of the year, expect lower prices on all gift cards (except the $5 Amazon card which I'll explain) in the Swag Store. Your Swag Bucks will be worth more than ever now. Swagbucks has announced 3 new changes that are sure to excite any Swaggernaut.

1. All gift cards' prices have been set to 100 Swag Bucks per dollar. So that $5 Walmart card is now 500 Swag Bucks instead of 659. The only exception is the $5 Amazon gift card, which remains at the awesome low price of 450 Swag Bucks.
2. There is now a $15 Amazon card valued at 1,500 Swag Bucks. Previously, the next lowest value after $5 was the $25 card.
3. No longer limited to redeeming just 5 of each prize per month (with the exception of the $5 Amazon gift card). Just in time for the holidays, now you can redeem as many cards as you can earn points for.

This really helps out the people that earn enough Swag Bucks to claim their limit of the five $5 Amazon cards before the month is even halfway over. It means you'll be able to redeem more cards, quicker. Tomorrow I will be able to order a $25 Amazon gift card, even though right now I am 570 Swag Bucks short of getting one today.

Swagbucks - The Big Earners

By now, you should be a little bit familiar with Swagbucks. I've already gone over several methods that require almost no effort and very little effort. Now I'm going to cover the methods that require your full attention, but in most cases reward you well above just a few points. I'll start with the least rewarding for their time and end with the most rewarding.

Games

If you venture into the gaming section of Swagbucks, you'll see a wide variety of games you can play. You'll get rewarded small amounts of Swag Bucks as you play, up to a maximum of 10 per day. This isn't a very big earner, but it will help you fill in your daily meter if you are trying to meet the goal it sets for you each day. I like to play the word games because they go by pretty fast and I seem to earn my Swagbucks more quickly this way.

Coupons

Powered by coupons.com, you can print coupons out and for each one is redeemed you earn 10 Swag Bucks. It's very easy to use - all you do is look through the available coupons, and if you see one you like then you put a check in the box where it says [ ] <<< CLIP. The coupons are really great for saving; here are a few examples: $1 off any two Welches juice, $0.50 off two cans of Del Monte tomatoes, or $1 off Angel Soft 12-pack or larger toilet paper. Save and earn at the same time by using these coupons.

Trade-Ins

You can enter any books, games, gaming systems, and their accessories. If it is something they are looking for they offer to buy it from you and you get paid with Swag Bucks. To give you an idea, I just grabbed a book from my bookshelf The C Programming Language and ran the ISBN number through Swagbucks and I could sell it to them for 960 points.

Tasks

These are a mixed bag. Their difficulty and time commitments vary as well as the amount of Swag Bucks each task awards. New tasks are constantly added and older ones removed, so it's hard to give you a consistent idea of what to expect. As of this writing, there are tasks up that range from 2 to 14 Swag Bucks. Some tasks are simple: Search google for articles and retweet them! currently rewards 10 points and only takes about 5 minutes. There are some tasks that have you search Google for a certain keyword, have you look for a particular url, and then ask you questions about it such as it's rank on the Google search or if the snippet Google displayed accurately set your expectations as to what the page contains.

Surveys

Pretty much every GPT (Get Paid To) site has some form of surveys to complete and Swagbucks is no exception. There are two different places where you can find surveys. The first and most immediately obvious is to click Earn and select Trusted Surveys. You'll see survey's listed that range from 10 to 200 Swag Bucks. The other way to access surveys is to click on Special Offers instead of Trusted Surveys. This will bring up all the offers, separated into tabs by what backend powers them. Select the Peanut Labs tab and you'll see several surveys listed for around 50 to 80 Swag Bucks. The thing to keep in mind is just because the survey is there doesn't mean you will qualify for it. If you don't qualify you'll be kicked out after a handful of questions and given 1 Swag Buck for trying.

Daily Deals

To find these, click on Earn and select Daily Deals. You'll see mainly a mix of Tippr and Groupon deals. If you access them through Swagbucks you'll usually earn around 50 Swag Bucks. I used this recently to get $30 worth of pizza from a local pizza place for $9, plus I got my 50 Swag Bucks! I occasionally browse through here to see if there is anything I'd probably purchase anyway or to look for really good deals.

Special Offers

From the Earn menu select Special Offers. You'll see several tabs, each with a bunch of offers for a very wide range of points. This is where the biggest earners are. For instance, a free trial of Netflix will net you 1300 Swag Bucks. There are videos you can watch that will reward 1 or 2 points each. Some offers just want you to go to their website and sign up for their newsletter. There really are way to many offers to list here, but if you wanted to sign up for Swagbucks, make a little bit of money, and then never touch it again; this is the way to go. Some offers can take a few days to credit or may have a limit on how long you must keep the trial account before you close it (Netflix was 3 days), but that's usually stated very clearly on the offer.

As you can see, there a bunch of ways to earn Swag Bucks all with varying levels of time commitment. You can earn slow or you can earn fast. It's entirely up to you. If you have any questions or feel as if I didn't cover any particular section well enough please leave a comment and I will be glad to help you.

Make Your Own Laundry Detergent and Save

I want this site to be as much about ways to save money as it is to earn money. This is the first guide in what will hopefully be many more to come. Me and Julie have been using our homemade laundry detergent for years now. It's extremely cheap and it works just as well as commercial detergents. To give you an idea of just how much cheaper, here is some math. I'll compare it to Tide.

• 5 gallon bucket with lid: $1.17
• Washing soda: $3.24
• Borax: $4.39
• Fels-Naptha bar: $0.97

Total cost: $9.77 + $0.73 tax = $10.50

We're already saving money compared to buying a single bottle of Tide, which is $12.87 after tax. The Tide is 64oz and says it lasts for 100 loads. One serving of our homemade detergent makes 10 gallons (1280oz) which is 20 times the amount of the tide, so it should last for 2,000 loads. Twenty bottles of Tide will cost you $257.40 after tax. After you use all 10 gallons up, to make more all you'll need to do is buy another 97 cent Fels-Naptha bar.

Here's how you can make some yourself. It only takes about 15 minutes to do,
Ingredients:

1. 4 Cups - hot tap water
2. 1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
3. 1 Cup - Washing Soda (must be sodium carbonate)
4. ½ Cup Borax

Directions:

1. Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.
2. Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.
3. Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with hot water and then fill rest of way with the soap. Shake before each use. (will gel)
4. Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.

• Works well in traditional or HE machines.
• Low sudsing. It is the ingredients in the soap, not the suds, that does the cleaning.
• Clumping and geling of the detergent is normal. Stir before putting in dispenser, and shake before each use.
• Use 1 capful of detergent for a normal sized load.

Click to Give - Give to Charity for Free!

This review is a little different from the others. It is not about how you can earn money, but about how you can help others in need. The way it works is there are ads you click. You can click on each ad once a day. Each time you click on an ad, a small amount of revenue is generated. I don't see the amount specified on their website, but on most PTC (pay to click) websites the payout is usually $0.005 or $0.01. Usually that money goes to you, the clicker, but with Click To Give that money is sent to a charity. I just timed myself clicking on the ads and it literally only took 13 seconds to click all six ads. I think you can spare half a minute of your day.

You have to register before you can click, but you never even have to confirm your e-mail. There is also a rewards program, but instead of gift cards and merchandise you spend your points to give even more to charity.

These are the 6 ads and the charity each one supports:

Animal Cruelty - ASPCA
Feed the poor - Feed the Children
Stop child abuse - Childhelp
End homelessness - The National Alliance to End Homelessness
Impact kids cancer - The Children Cancer Center
Sponsor children - Romina G Mendieta Montano

Something else that bears mentioning is that there are other ads on this site. Normal ads, meaning you don't have to click them. They use these ads as a means to generate revenue to run the site so that all the money generated from your clicking can go straight to charity. Please add Click To Give to the whitelist of any adblocker you may have running. Additionally if you are using TopLine, you will want to disable it for this site as well. To do this, go to your account display settings and add clicktogive.com to the excluded domains. Make sure you click Save All Changes when you are done.

Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme

I want to reassure anyone reading this that what I am posting about are not "get rich quick" schemes. In fact, at best, I am probably only making minimum wage and possibly lower. However, I don't have a job, and I still made $325 in a month! It may not be a lot of money, but it's way better than no money. Right now I've got a fairly long list of sites that I view and participate in every day, and I still find time to do things with my wife (at least when she's not swamped with school work), and search for a job. Sometimes I'm curious as to how much I could make from these methods if I woke up every morning and worked at them from 8 - 5 and only taking a lunch break. Maybe I'll try it for a few days sometime and see how it goes, but for right now that's not the plan. I honestly don't think I could stand doing this 8 - 9 hours a day.

I started this as a way to make a some money while I don't have a job. I definitely plan on continuing some of what I've been doing even after I find one. It's not a ton of extra money, but it's enough to pay for my Christmas shopping. Having some extra money is nice. You can see below what I've earned in about a month's time. The Amazon cards are a combination of Swagbucks, Superpoints (review for this one coming soon), and Bing, and the bottom image is from mTurk.

my Amazon gift card balance

$264.55 in one month from mTurk

Bing - Search to Earn Credits

In case you haven't heard of it, Bing is Microsoft's search engine. It is a re-vamped and re-branded MSN Search. If you've never used it, it's actually pretty decent. It provides results that are on par with Google's in my opinion, and it's definitely improving. If you want to try a side by side comparison I suggest trying out Bing It On. I tried several search results on there and was surprised to see Bing come out the winner in 3 out of 5 of them, and the other 2 were ties.

As an incentive to use their search engine, Microsoft has started a rewards program. To sign up, you link either your Facebook or Microsoft account. When you first start out, there is a "tour" you can take of Bing with various different things to click on that all reward credits. After that though, the main way to earn credits is through searching. You get 1 credit per 2 searches up to a maximum of 15 credits per day (20 when you get your status to gold). There is also a "daily offer" which is basically just a special search, but you get an extra credit when you click it.

There are not a whole lot of rewards to choose from, but it's very easy to cap your credits each day. Just head over to the Bing rewards page and click the daily offer. From there, just click on different related searches on the side until you get your credits for the day. The best reward is probably the $5 Amazon gift card. You can see in my screen shot that I had 76% of the needed 525. Since I took that I have cashed in for my $5 card which I received the next day and I am now 12% towards my second card.

There are 3 status levels - member, silver, and gold. Getting to silver and gold is easy, but it takes a little bit of time. There really isn't a benefit of silver over member except for a one time 50 credit bonus. Gold however gets 5% discount on Microsoft points, 5% discount on Xbox Gold subscription, and a 10% discount on all other items. So that $5 Amazon card that used to cost 525 credits becomes 475 credits.

Again, like several other methods I've talked about, you aren't going to be making a ton of money from this. However; it's easy, doesn't take a lot of time out of your day (2 - 3 minutes usually), and you get a free Amazon gift card every few weeks.

Swagbucks - Moderate Effort

Today I'm going to go over the easier active methods to earn Swag Bucks. This might seem like more work, but I assure you once you get the hang of things and get your own system down you'll be able to do this part and use your computer for other things as the same time without much extra thought or work.

Offer Feed

So as to provide users with an interface they are familiar with and not alienate new users, the main page of Swagbucks has an "offers feed" that aggregates new and most popular offers, similar to the Facebook News Feed. Keep an eye out for the ones that are videos. They open in a new window and award 1 or 2 points just from watching them. You don't have to watch the full video either, usually 45 seconds is about the time needed for the view to register. You can click the blue circle arrow next to where your current Swag Bucks offers to refresh the amount and see if it has increased.

Swagbucks TV

This is where I get a big chunk of my daily Swag Bucks. It's called Swagbucks TV. For every 10 videos you watch, you'll earn 3 SB. I don't actually watch the videos though; I just leave them running on the side of my monitor and change to the next video once the current one has finished. I usually get at least 50 Swag Bucks a day from this. However, you do have to be at the computer so that you can select the next video. This is good for me right now because I use the computer to search for jobs and do lots of other things. I expect the amount I make from SBTV to go down a lot once I get a job.

Toolbar button

If you have Firefox or Internet Explorer, the optimal SBTV experience is just a click away. Just click the SBTV button on the Swagbucks toolbar. Move the little window that opens to the side of your screen, resizing your main browser window if you prefer. If you use Chrome, I suggest using Firefox to run SBTV. The reason for this is Google does not allow third party toolbars to be installed in Chrome. I move the SBTV window to the top right of the screen and resize the Firefox window so it is completely behind the SBTV window.

Click to enlarge.

In the image above, what you see in the red is a video in the Offers Feed I mentioned earlier. I usually drag those into the empty space below SBTV and then open a new tab in my main browser and start doing normal things like checking my e-mail.

What you see in the blue is Swagbucks TV running in Firefox.. I like to run the Splash channel because the videos seem to be the shortest. I just do my normal browsing and when I need to, I click the next video from the little bar. Once you've done it for a while you can completely tune out the videos and your brain will automatically register that there is no movement and trigger your reflex to click the next video. I do it almost completely without thinking about it anymore.

Shop & Earn

This one is pretty easy to explain. I have not used this service personally through Swagbucks yet, but I have used a similar service that my credit card offers. You can access this feature by clicking on the Earn tab at the top of the Swagbucks website and selecting Shop & Earn. You'll be presented with a list of stores (as well as some coupons you can use!). Clicking on the Shop Now button for any store will simply take you to that store's website. If you use this method to access the store when you buy something, you'll receive Swag Bucks based on how much money you spend, which also varies by store. For example, as of this writing, you can receive 4 SB per dollar spent at BestBuy, 3 SB for every dollar spent at Target, and 2 SB for every dollar spent at Newegg. Most of the major retailers are listed, so you should be able to find exactly what you're looking for. Ordering some Christmas presents online? Access the store through Swagbucks and earn.

Swagbucks - Very Little Effort

I figured with Swagbucks I'd start small and ramp up. These are the things you can do that will take very little time. You can do all of these in about five minutes time, and you'll end up with roughly 20 Swag Bucks if there is a Swag Code available, and about 15 if there isn't. If you come back and search again later you can end up with 30 - 35 SB for the day with almost no effort. If you do just these methods and nothing else, you should be able to average a $5 Amazon gift card every two weeks.

• Search using the swagbucks search. You have a random chance of winning some SB - usually in the 5 - 15 range. Friday is Mega Swagbucks Day and your chances of winning larger amounts of SB increases. Amounts of 15-30 SB are more common. The most I've won is 60 SB. You can only win points from searching roughly every 5 hours it seems like, so don't spam. In fact, if you search for gibberish or just search way to fast in general you'll get temporarily blocked.
• The daily poll. Just a few mouse clicks and you get 1 SB.
• NOSO (No Obligation Special Offers). Shows you about 4 or 5 ads or offers. You don't have to complete them. Just click Skip or Next Offer a few times and you get 2 more SB.
• Use the Swagbucks toolbar. Google does not allow toolbars to be installed for Chrome, but will work for every other browser. If you use Chrome, I recommend you installing Firefox just to install the toolbar in. This gives 1 SB each day.
• Swag codes. These are codes that are put out by the Swagbucks team on Twitter, Facebook, or their blog. You can see if any codes are available by clicking Swag Codes on the widget below.

Swagbucks - Earn Reward Points and Redeem Them For Free Stuff

At a very simple level, Swagbucks is a site that allows you to accrue points (called Swag Bucks) by various methods, and then you can spend those points in their store. In the month's time I've been using Swagbucks, I've accrued enough points to order $40 worth of Amazon gift cards and have entered a drawing for a Wii U. I'm about a day away from getting another $5 Amazon card. Click the banner above to go to the Swagbucks page and create your account. You can use a traditional username/password, or you can log in through Facebook; it's up to you. There is a plethora of ways to earn Swag Bucks, and I'm going to categorize them by how much effort each requires.

The gift cards I've earned. Click for a larger image.

Very Little Effort

• Use Swagbuck's search engine
• NOSO (No Obligation Special Offers)
• The daily poll
• Use the Swagbucks toolbar
• Swag codes.

Moderate Effort

• Watch video promotions
• Swagbucks TV
• Shop and Earn

Active Effort

• Surveys
• Coupons
• Special offers
• Daily deals
• Tasks
• Trade in
• Games

It sure is Swagbucks, it sure is.

Each day there is a daily goal meter on the Swagbucks main page. The goal it displays depends on the day of the week and if you reach that goal you'll receive a 10% bonus. Today's goal was 90 and I earned about 100, so I'll get a bonus 9 SB. The bonus is credited at the end of the month. If you meet the daily bonus 7 days in a row you get an additional 25 SB. Meet it 14 days in a row and you get an extra 100 SB. Go 21 days and get an extra 200 SB. If you manage to go the full month you'll get 300 SB. I usually do just enough to reach the daily goal.

So that's what Swagbucks has to offer. It seems like there are a lot of ways to earn Swagbucks, and there are. You can mix and match the different ways to create your own system. Over the next few days I'll be writing more in depth about all the different methods as well as sharing what I do. This will hopefully arm you with enough information to make your own decisions about what's worth your time and what isn't.

My Future Prospects

If I go back to school, it's going to be at least a year from now. The earliest I could possibly start is the Fall 2013 school year. This means I don't want to get a job that will demand a long term commitment from me - unless it's a job that pays sufficiently well so that going back to school would be undesirable. I'm actually applying for a grant program that would make it unnecessary to go back to school. It's called HBOTT and instead of paying for you to go back to school, it pays you to work for an employer at comparable wages so that you can receive on the job training. It sounds good, and exactly like what I need, but I'm not sure I'll meet the eligibility requirements.

I'm a pretty stubborn person. Anyone who knows me well will probably tell you that's an understatement. When it comes to finding a job, I find myself resisting looking for minimum wage jobs that I could have gotten when I was in high school and probably by now would be some sort of manager. The reason I resist is not because I feel like those jobs are beneath me, but it makes me feel even more like the last 8 years of my life have been a waste. I'm 26 and at the moment I don't have any sort of meaningful prospect for my future.

Finding a job is hard. There is a lot of stuff listed on Craigslist, but I've been moving away from checking that because the number of scams on there is ridiculous. I've applied to most of the stores within a 5 minute drive from here and haven't heard back from anyone. I've applied for several full time teller positions at banks that were advertising the job and haven't heard back from anyone. Most places I ask for an application tell me to apply online, but then when you check the website you can only apply for specific positions that are listed as open, and there are no open positions. You don't have the chance to fill out an application and leave it in case a position becomes available tomorrow. I'd say about 80% of the places I go to apply at fit this scenario.

I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually. I'm just glad I found a way to be productive in my spare time. I know I'm not the only one that is being effected by tough times, and that's why I'm sharing the methods I've found to make a few extra bucks. The ones I've blogged about so far are relatively short and fit well into one post.  Next time I'll talk about what is my second best money earner, Swagbucks.

Paid Viewpoint - A 3-5 Minute Poll Every Other Day

I love Paid Viewpoint. As far as sites go that let you do surveys, it's the most user friendly one I've come across. Instead of a long survey every few weeks, they send you a small survey around every other day. When there is a survey to take, they will e-mail you. Just click on the link, answer a few questions, and you're done; the whole process takes about 2 minutes.

Paid Viewpoint is the market research survey site built upon 4 principles:

• We pay cash for every completed market research survey.
• We never screen you out once you've been invited into a survey.
• We've cracked the code that takes "boring" out of the survey answering experience.
• Privacy – we never ask you to register your real name or complete physical address.

Emphasis on the second point. Many times at other survey sites, I have been 15 to 20 minutes into a survey and I click the next button only to be told I don't fit the demographics they are looking for and I've been disqualified from the survey. No points, no rewards, nadda, zip, zilch. This never happens with Paid Viewpoint

Example traits survey question

There are two types of surveys: traits survey and biz survey. A trait surveys asks questions about you personally and pays $0.10 for completing one. These are used to increase your TraitScore. You always want to answer these truthfully because they will re-ask some of the same questions in later surveys and if you choose a different answer the second time your TraitScore will go down. The higher your TraitScore, the more likely you are to receive a biz survey. The biz surveys are a little longer - probably closer to 5 - 6 minutes, but also pay much better. I've been with Paid Viewpoint for about a month and so far I have received four biz surveys, so that's about once a week.

The higher your TraitScore, the more often you will receive biz surveys, and you also get paid more. So you'll start off slow and after building up some momentum you'll be earning at a higher rate than when you started. I think my TraitScore was at 600 when I started. This is what is stated explicitly on the website about the value of your TraitScore

Your goal is to achieve a TraitScore of 9000 or better. That will place you in the top 10% of PV members and means you will earn more for each answer.

There's two important questions you might be wanting to know the answers to right now: How do I sign up? And how do I get paid? Well, signing up is easy; just click on the banner at the top of this post. It'll ask for some basic demographic information. Make sure this information is correct, because some of the traits surveys will ask you a question like, "I'm female and I live in Montana." and you'd have to choose the answer (if you were me), "False, I'm male and live in Florida." They ask for a phone number, but this is only to make sure that you don't register multiple times. I believe they text you a verification code, or you can have an automated robot call you with your code. You'll also have to enter your Paypal e-mail adress, which brings me to question two of how do you get paid. You can cash out to Paypal anytime after you reach $15. Also, did I mention that they pay you for answering the demographic information when you sign up? Yup, anytime they ask you a question you get paid. You'll start out with a little over a dollar just by registering.

As far as pay to time ratio goes for online surveys, Paid Viewpoint is excellent. So far, if I average the value of all my surveys I get $0.25 per survey. 20 of them took 2 minutes, and 5 of them took 5 minutes, which comes out to right at an hour total. I've made $6.31. Yes, it's below minimum wage, but I never promised you'd make a fortune. I am usually checking my e-mail, or maybe Facebook while I do this. It takes away literally no time from my day. So what are you waiting for? Sign up and get started now!

Introduction to Beer Money

Well, as I'm sure as obvious to you, this is my first post. Here's a little blurb about myself and the situation I find myself in. I'm 26 years old, married with no kids. My wife is going back to school for graphic design (and if she wasn't so busy with school I'd get her to make awesome graphics for my blog) and working a part time job. I am currently unemployed.

Finding a job in this economy is pretty tough, especially when you're as stubborn as I am. You see, I have my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of West Florida. That's not as great as it sounds because unless you specialize (UWF is a small school and didn't offer any specializations) you learn a bunch of theoretical knowledge that you could later build upon by getting a Masters degree and becoming a professor or researcher and then pursuing your Doctorate. I literally did not learn anything a normal business would consider practical. When applying for jobs I get asked if I know SQL or if I have any experience networking. I have to say no, but I am a good learner. That hasn't cut it so far. No one in the real world cares if I know the difference between Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, or Merge Sort. No one cares that I know how to represent data in a binary tree, an array, or linked list. None of the stuff I learned matters.

A binary search tree

What I want to do is go back to school to do something along the lines of a Network Administrator. I really can't do this though until Julie (my wife) finishes up with her schooling. We just simply can't afford for two of us to be in school. While looking for jobs, I stumbled upon a concept that has changed how I view using the Internet. I came across this concept one night when I was taking a break from job searching and browsing Reddit. This concept is called Beer Money. The idea is to devote small amounts of time doing something online that pays a fairly small amount of money, and at the end of the month use it to buy beer. It's almost like free beer because you put very little effort into collecting the money for it. Of course, this money doesn't have to be used for beer, but the concept remains the same. I was intrigued so I started trying different websites. Some were recommended by others, and some I found on my own. I've been doing this exactly 3 weeks now and I've earned $205.14 in cash and $40 in Amazon gift cards. Plus I have somewhere around $20 pending.


My goal with this blog is to share the sites I have found. The ones I liked and the ones I disliked and why. I'll review them and post guides on here with the steps I take every day. I plan on getting up one review at least every 3 or 4 days. I've been working on the first review and I'll hopefully have it up in a day or two.