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Are you starting on your journey of earning extra money on the side but are unsure where to start?

Perhaps you want to bring in some more cash to pay off debt, save for a down payment on a house, or give yourself some breathing room after you pay your bills.

When browsing the net for ways of making money online, you have probably come across some paid online survey sites.

You’ve heard of some things that you can try, but are they legit? Are they worth your time?

I get it, it’s scary. You gotta be safe while you make money and earn gift cards.

We can show you the best ways to earn extra money, as well as learn how to budget your money, with all the best tips and advice we know.

Some of them look pretty spammy though, and are they worth the time and effort that you put into them?

One survey site that you may have heard of is Swagbucks.

In our in-depth Swagbucks review we are going to help answer that exact question for you. Let’s get started!

Is Swagbucks Worth My Time?

This is quite a relative question, depending on how much spare time you have, and if there are other things available for you to do/work on that could get you a higher return.

Most of us have time throughout the day that we have a few spare minutes and could do some small things that don’t require a lot of concentration, which will add up over time.

There are some things that you can do to earn money on Swagbucks that won’t mean you doing any additional work to what you would usually do, which we will share with you in this article.

Is Swagbucks For Real?

Yes, Swagbucks is safe and legitimate and one of the easiest ways to earn money – we wouldn’t be recommending it if we weren’t 100% confident in doing so!

It’s good to be wary, as you don’t want to be sucked into a scam and end up giving away your personal information or worse, losing any money.

Luckily for you, we try out everything and let you know what is legit and what isn’t, and whether it’s worth spending your time on or not.

You can also check them out on Better Business Bureau (BBB) under their parent company Prodege LLC, which has an A- rating.

Swagbucks is a free way to earn cash or a gift card while playing games or earn money back on your shopping, without much effort on your part.

Swagbucks has paid out over $266 billion in cash and gift cards to their members since they started, so it goes without saying, you are able to get money from this site.

It’s also on Trustpilot with a TrustScore of 8.3 out of 10, and there are over 8,000 reviews from users that you can read through.

How Swagbucks Works

Swagbucks is primarily known as a survey site, but there are other tasks that you can complete on there to earn Swagbucks rewards, known as SB points.

Each task that you do will earn you a different amount of SBs- and there’s plenty of fun ways to earn SB points!

Once you reach a certain amount, you can exchange it for either cash or a free gift card at popular retailers like Amazon. You could even get a PayPal gift card and use it at even more retailers.

There are some Swagbucks hacks that you will find sprinkled throughout this post to help you earn more SBs, including Swagbucks codes!

Sign up to use Swagbucks today and earn your FREE $5 sign up bonus!

Signing Up to Earn Money With Swagbucks

You can create a Swagbucks account for free (never pay to join a site!) by simply clicking the picture below.

You will be asked some basic information about yourself, which is because they will want to match you up to specific surveys based on your demographics.

Next, you can add the browser extension, which will provide you with savings and coupon codes while you shop online

Earn Money With Swagbucks

There are loads of ways that you can earn extra money with a Swagbucks account, which is great because you can then pick and choose the things that you prefer to do.

There are coupons, cash back, watching videos, answering survey questions, shopping deals, and more!

Coupons & Cash Back

Have you heard about cash back before? It’s the best way to earn money on purchases you’re already making!

If you are on a cashback site, and when searching the web while shopping, you’ll earn cash back on the purchases you make.

It’s essentially a way of getting money for free, for doing something that you were going to do anyway!

Make sure that you start off on the Swagbucks website, then select the retailer that you wish to buy from. This will send you through to the retailer site, where you will complete the transaction as normal.

Your click-through will be tracked and you can get cash back on this purchase.

To get free coupons (food and grocery) on Swagbucks, you will need to click on your desired coupons, which will put them into your grocery coupon cart.

You can then print them out and use them at your usual store as you would do normally.

If you use their Chrome Extension called Swag Button, you can be alerted if there are any coupon codes on the site that you are on (like with the Honey Extension that we’ve discussed before), and also if the site you are on offers cash back too.

Watch Videos

Who doesn’t enjoy watching videos in their free time? This is Kelan’s all-time favorite, he’s watching TV anyway so why not earn money doing it?

This is probably one of the easiest ways to earn money on Swagbucks, because you can leave them running in the background whilst you’re doing other stuff (is it only me who can’t sit down and watch a video, but must be doing something constantly?!).

When you are in the watchlist on Swagbucks, you can watch the videos that they have listed on there, and you will have to manually click through them to earn as many SB points as you can.

You can also use their extension Swag Button here as well to use the Watch part of Swagbucks, and most of these videos are reasonably short.

If you head on over to the nCrave section on Swagbucks, you will be able to autoplay a lot of videos there to earn your SBs with minimal effort.

Also don’t forget that to use Swagbucks apps, where you can look to earn around 60 SB per day, with bonus rounds added in too.

Tip: There are other ways to earn money from watching videos too!

Answer Surveys

Swagbucks surveys are probably not going to make you a millionaire any time soon, but it is a simple way of earning SB points.

You will be asked some easy questions to answer, and this will earn you anywhere from 1 to 1,000 SBs. The amount that you can earn from them will be displayed before you click on them, with the longer surveys generally earning you more.

The surveys that are available to you will be dependant on the information that you gave when you signed up.

If you take surveys o, we have put together a list of the best survey sites to earn extra money each month.

Discover Deals

It’s worth heading over to the Deals section of the website to see what there is, as there is always so much on offer!

It shows you the cash back that you can get on various sites, the best surveys, popular ways of earning on the site, and a whole bunch of other ways to get SBs from doing different tasks.

For example, on there right now as I am writing this, you can earn 75 SB for signing up to receive a free money making eBook, or earning 300 SB for signing up to a credit score site.

Gift Cards

Getting a gift card as a gift is my favorite thing! It will save me money on something that I either need or want.

I just used a couple of gift cards this past week on groceries and toys for my daughter. All free for me!

You can buy discounted gift cards via Swagbucks for popular retailers, that you can either give as gifts or use yourself for getting money off your shopping.

Play Games

Are you addicted to playing games on your phone?

You can play games on Swagbucks to earn SB points when you make an in-game purchase.

It doesn’t matter if you win or lose on the game – you will earn SBs based on your in-game purchases.

You could make money playing games like:

Angry Birds Champions
Wheel of Fortune
Dynomite
Bejeweled Blitz
Solitaire TriPeaks

You can earn 4 SB per $1 on these games, and there are plenty more games for you to check out!

Refer Your Friends

This is a great way of getting SB points because if you are enjoying using the site and want to let your friends know about it, you can earn SBs for doing so.

If you refer your friends to Swagbucks, you will both get 300 SBs once they have reached their first 300 SB, earn 200 SB when they shop and earn 25 SB, and the best one yet – you will get 10% of their earnings for life!

You can refer friends with a unique referral link that is provided for you on the site, or you can enter their email address, or post on social media.

Birthday Points

On your birthday you can get a bonus 50 SB (which is valid for 30 days) when you cash out a voucher.

These are called a ‘Rebate SwagUp’ which is like a bonus or power-up that Swagbucks will award you.

You can also get SwagUps from participating in Team Challenges, as prizes from the Spin and Win Wheel, and you can also receive them randomly from the Swagbucks team.

Swag Codes

A Swag Code is like a secret code that is given out, that will earn you extra SBs. Each code is worth a different amount, but they will all only be valid for a short space of time – so it’s worth keeping your eye out for them!

If you’ve downloaded the Extension, you will be notified when there is a Swag Code available. It won’t tell you that specifically, but it will tell you something like “Check Facebook!” – meaning that there is a code on their page.

When you have found the code, you can enter it on Swagbucks by heading to the top of the page and clicking on the Swag Safe icon (if you’re using one of the apps, there will be a lock icon), where it will bring up the Swag Code box. You can then enter the code that you’ve found in there to redeem.

Daily Goal

You can earn money from Daily Goals that will come up on the homepage. For example, on the site now there is a Daily Goal of earning 30 SB to get you a bonus of 3 SB.

Pros and Cons of Swagbucks

As with most things that you can do, there are pros and cons for you to use Swagbucks.

It’s up to you to give it a try and decide for yourself, but these are our thoughts:

Pros

Easy ways to earn money online
Gift cards can be used at a huge variety of places, like Starbucks, Home Depot, and more – but most importantly, Amazon and Paypal!
- PayPal is a great one because it’s essentially money, not just a gift card, that you are getting,- we all love a bit of money in our accounts!
Lots of different ways that you can earn money, so it’s different every day and you can mix it up
A simple way to earn money online if you have some spare time, such as when you are watching TV or waiting for an appointment

Cons

Takes a long time to earn enough money to cash out
How much money you earn depends on the time you put in
Could encourage you to spend (such as within the games where you can earn SBs with in-game purchases)

Our Bottom Line

It’s always a good idea to earn some passive income on the side or earn some gift cards to use down the road.

We have plenty of passive income ideas, from earning money walking to working online.

Although taking paid surveys is not earning passive income it is the easiest way to earn a little money on the side in your free time, with just a little bit of effort.

There appear to be many good reasons to start using Swagbucks. So we are happy to recommend Swagbucks to you and have personally used it, but it’s down to you to have a try and see what you think!