.. well ALMOST nothing.
I like getting stuff for free – I’m a prolific user of Quidco, the cashback website, and over the years I’ve got a bit of cashback for buying products I would normally get. A good example currently, is if you sign up to Virgin Media, they’ll give you £160 cashback. Awesome.
This post isn’t about Quidco though.. It’s about another company ‘Swagbucks‘.
Now, I was first introduced to Swagbucks by the lovely Vicki, I’d seen a few tweets and Facebook updates mentioning ‘Swagbucks’ and what she’d earned using it. I must admit after taking a look at the site I was unconvinced, it all looked a bit spammy and crap, and I didn’t really think much about it. That said, Vicki is a pretty smart girl (her choice in boyfriend notwithstanding) so I thought I should at least sign up and try it..
The idea of Swagbucks is pretty simple, you can use their search engine, play their games, partake in their surveys, watch their videos, and shop via their links (similar to Quidco) and in return you get ‘SwagBucks’. Yes, I sounds a bit wanky, but stay with me. These Swagbucks (cringe) can be turned into vouchers for Amazon.co.uk and Starbucks, so 849 Swagbucks turns into a £5 Amazon Voucher, 1049 Swagbucks can be turned into £5 cash in your Paypal Account. Obviously the more ‘bucks you have, the bigger your reward. It’s also worth checking out what Careful Cents have written about getting a free Amazon gift card.
Realising I had nothing really to lose, aside from a bit of time doing some surveys, I thought I’d give it a whirl, and today, after very little effort and not much time I’ve got a £5 Amazon voucher. The surveys seem to be the big earners, you can get 100 Swagbucks in 10 minutes! There are some verification things in the surveys, so you can’t just mindlessly click as you’ll get caught out. You can easily earn ‘bucks by watching videos (you don’t have to ‘watch’ them, just let them play!) It all adds up, they also give out codes on their Facebook and Twitter to bump up your figures.
It all works pretty well, I’ve found some of the surveys can be a bit specific, one of them I found myself halfway through, and then ‘disqualified’ from as I am a blogger. Weird. Generally though, it’s all pretty simple. I suppose even if you spent some time everyday just doing a survey, and watching a few videos, you’d quickly rack up some rewards!
