You Pinspire Me
Over the years as a semi-stay-at-home mom, I’ve looked into various ways to make money online. I answered surveys for a while, and made about $50, but I found that I spent much more time than it was worth. The only real way that we’ve been able to make any money without much of an effort is Swagbucks. Swagbucks are virtual dollars that you earn into your account and can redeem for various items and gift cards. We usually save ours up for Amazon.ca and have made a few hundred dollars in the past year or two.
Here’s how it works:
You need to sign up with Swagbucks by clicking here (note, I do get a small commission when I refer people). Then you will set your home page to a Swagbucks search, instead of a Google search. Now any time that you want to go to a site (Facebook, Gmail, recipes), type it into the search box instead of your toolbar, then click on the link to the site. It takes an extra 2-3 seconds, but that’s all you need to do. You will be rewarded randomly for your searches (every 8-10 or so, I find) and you’ll get anything from 6 to about 12 Swagbucks. You may go for a whole day and not get any, then another day you’ll find that you get a lot.
(If you want to have a slightly quicker way to earn them, don’t set Swagbucks.com as your home page. Do a Swagbucks search for something you often visit, such as Facebook, then set that result page as your home page. This way your browser automatically does a search for you every time you open the browser, and every now and then I win a few extra Swagbucks that way).
You can also set your one account up on multiple computers, to earn more as a family.
There are a few other ways on Swagbucks’ home page to earn simple Swagbucks – by answering the daily poll, by installing the search toolbar, and by viewing the “NOSOs” – the no obligation special offers, where they’ll reward you after clicking through, with a few swagbucks.
You can also earn Swagbucks when shopping online in certain stores, Amazon.ca being one of them. If you check out their home page, they will give you the list to click on.
If you follow Swagbucks Canada on Facebook and Twitter, they give out codes every day or two for an extra 3-5 Swagbucks.
There are other offers and ways to earn, such as surveys, playing games, watching videos, and buying infomercial-type items, but I usually stick to my basic searches.
What is it worth?
As I said, we usually redeem our Swagbucks for Amazon.ca gift card codes, where one $5 card costs 450 Swagbucks, so essentially, 1 Swagbuck= 1 cent. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but remember, you’re not making a huge effort with this, yet you can still make money online. Once you purchase the gift card, it takes about 3-5 days to get the code emailed to you. We have bought all kinds of fun stuff with our Amazon credit – CDs, the whole series of King of Queens, the Anne of Green Gables DVDs, and most recently, The Lego Movie!!
Some people don’t like the fact that Swagbucks is compiling all our search information and studying our consumer habits, but I figure that it is happening already (come on, Google!) and I may as well get some money out of it, right?! And every time I win some Swagbucks on a search, I feel like I’ve won a tiny little lottery! Little celebrations all day long!
I hope I’ve answered all your questions. If you want to know more, please leave a comment and I’ll try to help you. It can be confusing getting started, but the longer you do it, the more automatic it gets. Head over here to get started!
Marya R
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