swagbucks, celebrated

This is another one of those posts that I have been meaning to write for a looooong time. 

You have probably wondered at some point what that little thing over on my right-hand sidebar that says "Swagbucks" is all about.  Swagbucks is essentially a marketing tool--but I don't see how they are making any money off of me, the way I use it, and I am getting free money in return. 

Seriously.  I recently decided to finally cash in my accummulated swagbucks (SB) for gift cards to amazon.com, and just yesterday I used them to get books for our home library.  I got thirty bucks worth of books, for free.  And the gift cards are good for any amazon purchase--food, clothes, music, toys, whatever is being sold through amazon!

Now, there are lots of other ways you can cash in your swagbucks--the most bang for your buck is actually music downloads, but we don't download music yet (I know, we are SO nineteen nineties) and I get a lot of stuff on amazon, so that is the way I'll be using my SB.

Now, it also takes a loooooooong time to rack up $30 worth of SB.  There are ways you can get them faster--and Moderate Means posted here and here about her SB experiences and methods so you can compare with mine--but I am all about 1) laziness and 2) not signing up for anything I don't want, and 3) privacy.  So, I basically have Swagbucks set as my homepage and use it instead of Google anytime I do a search, if I am not being particular about the results.   If I don't find the results I want, I hop over to Google and try again.  (And don't bother using the SB search engine for images--it's not make for it, and has a clear dearth of images.) 

(And it works!  Just this minute I put "Moderate Means" into the SB search engine, because I was being too lazy to open a separate page with my blog so I could see her link from my sidebar--and won 10 SB for my "effort"!)

I also use the Swagbucks search engine as a dictionary!  I just type the word as I think it might be spelled and hit "search" and it will come back with "did you mean _____?"  and there is my answer, with sometimes SB awarded for my "effort"!  I also sometimes use it to get places like amazon.com, zappos, etc.--places that I could type an actual address for, but for which I sometimes get SB when I get to them via the Swagbucks search engine. 

I am on the computer looking things up a lot.  So just by doing what I would normally be doing anyway, I get about 6-14 SB a day.  It takes a long time for them to add up this way, but I'm ok with that.  Because I don't want to get sucked into thinking I need more swagbucks--because that is when I would become prey to the marketing, and might end up tempted to spend money on some special offer just to get a bunch of swagbucks.  And unless the special offer involves something I want to do anyway, it is just not worth it. 

The only offer I routinely see that I would do--except I am already doing it--is Netflix.  If you ever want to sign up for the Netflix trial subscription and have not yet done so, this would be the way to do it--free trial period AND free swagbucks.  (And that's another thing I want to write about soon--how we stretch our family's Netflix subscription to get the most for our money, so stay tuned for that! ; )

Anyway, Swagbucks is a no-brainer way to get a little bit of something for free, for almost no effort. 

If you do decide to sign up for Swagbucks, just please do it by clicking on the link on my sidebar--I think if you sign up that way I get a few extra SB as kickback! 

Oh, and before I forget--I think SB has a partnership with some online stores so that if you visit them through the SB home page you get one SB for every dollar you spend in the store!  I always forget to try this, though.  And of course it would only be wise if you were already planning on spending that money in the store.  (But I do a lot of my shopping online, so this is something I need to remember!)

Free stuff?  I am all over it.

(If you currently use SB, and have an easy sure-fire way of getting them, please let me know in the comments!  Stacy, I just saw the SB widget on your blog--will be checking that out!)