Swagbucks: Earn FREE Amazon.com Gift Cards!
Alright, so I am finally jumping on the Swagbucks bandwagon! I’m pretty embarrassed to say that I haven’t posted anything regarding Swagbucks and well, from what I’ve heard there are FREE Amazon.com gift cards to be made, so I’m jumping in and am going to start swagging it–whatever that means!
My awesome blogging buddy, Kristin, over at Couponing To Disney educated me on Swagbucks–BIG time! This post would not be possible without her help, so thank you, Kristen!
Do I have any readers that don’t know much about Swagbucks? If so, don’t feel bad because you’re definitely not alone. I’m right there with ya!
So the first order of business–What is Swagbucks?
Swagbucks is a site that lets you earn Swagbucks (points) by literally just searching the web… something we do on a daily basis anyways! They also have an excellent referral program! If you refer someone over to Swagbucks and they earn a Swagbuck, you will earn a Swagbuck too–up to 100 Swagbucks! So you could potentially earn 100 Swagbucks from each friend you refer! Plus, once you accumulate enough Swagbucks, you can cash them in for various rewards, including Amazon.com gift cards! Yay!
How do you get started?
- Go here and register on Swagbucks by creating an account
- You will get 3 Swagbucks just for signing up!
- After registering, you can immediately start searching for anything you want on the web just by using the Swagbucks search engine!
- Periodically, while searching, you may see a pop up that says you’ve won anywhere from 1 to 10 or more in Swagbucks. From what I’ve heard, the best time to search is in the morning or the evening.
- Another way to earn Swagbucks, is by entering the Swagcode that is released almost everyday. This is a special code that you can enter in the swagcode box and you will instantly earn Swagbucks without having to search for them! How do you get this special code? Go to the Swagbucks homepage, click on “Ways to Earn” in the top left, then click on “Special Offers” and then click on the “No Obligation Offers” blue box on the right.
One you get to this page, it will state this:
Welcome to Swag Bucks Special Offers. Sign up for the free money-saving offers you like,
feel free to skip the rest, and find a special swag code reward at the end.
Skip ALL the offers by clicking the skip button or the See Next Offer button beneath the advertisement. Finally after about 7 pages you’ll be awarded with a Swagcode! Enter the code in the box provided on the homepage to see how much you’ve earned.
- After you’ve earned enough points, you can click on the upper tab labeled “Prizes”. Scroll down and under the categories section on the left hand side you should see “Gifts and Rewards”–click there. Now you can start scrolling through all the gift cards they have available. The Amazon.com gift card is by far my favorite reward! You can score a $5 Amazon.com gift card with just 45 Swagbucks, so literally in a month (possibly less) you could earn a $5 Amazon.com gift card!
I am so excited to start using Swagbucks on a daily basis! I’ve heard from other bloggers and readers that they were able to pay for all of their Christmas presents last year by using Swagbucks! Can you beleive that? They had earned so many Amazon.com gift cards, that the gift cards covered the full cost of their purchases! With that being said, my goal this year is to pay for all of my Christmas presents with gift cards I’ve earned through Swagbucks! I’m so excited about this challenge of mine and I hope some of you are up for the challenge too!
If you are already using Swagbucks, then please let us know your thoughts below! And if you’re new to Swagbucks, I’d love to hear if you’re going to start swagging with me!
(Thanks again, CouponingToDisney!)
I have been using swagbucks for about a year now and have gotten $5 in paypal 3 times and have now gone for the amazon gift cards and have $15 coming to me and am almost there to another one. i even have my husband searching with it/
I’ve gotten 3 itunes gift cards and a paypal gift card.
I LOVE Swagbucks, and recently did this up for a friend who asked for tips on getting them.
(these are just how I do it, and how I’ve been able to get $60 in Amazon.com gift cards since July)
1. Install the toolbar. I was wary at first, but the toolbar is always right there, so I never forget to use it instead of using google or yahoo when I search. Also, there’s a little message feature that will send you a message whenever there are bonus codes good for 1 swagbuck (usually 1, sometimes 2 or even 3!!)
2. Search regularly. Search using the toolbar whenever you’re surfing the web. But don’t make stuff up. Making up a bunch of search terms may make them deactivate your account.
3. Refer your friends. Use your personalized link to tell friends about swagbucks. It can be found here:
https://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-promote
Or email them from here:
https://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-refer
For every time a friend earns a swagbuck by searching, you get the same (up to 100 swagbucks).
4. Swagcodes. These can be found on the swagbucks website randomly, and can be hard to find….
5. Follow Engineer a Debt Free Life She seriously has the most up to date swagcodes and hints around.
on twitter: https://twitter.com/EADFL
or become a fan on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EADFL
or check out her blog for the updates: https://www.engineeradebtfreelife.com/swagcodes
(this is not my blog, but a helpful resource for swagcodes. if this was an inappropriate link, please let me know and I’ll delete it)
6. Search on Fridays. Usually you can win 1, 2, or 3 swagbucks from a search. But on Fridays, you can win 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 or even 20 swagbucks in one search. (in theory – hasn’t happened for me yet, but fingers crossed!)
6. Get the best bang for your swagbuck. (every time I reach 45 points, I immediately redeem them for a $5 Amazon.com giftcard) You may or may not want to do this. It is the cheapest (swagbuck vs actual dollar amount) reward that I’ve found.
Please keep in mind that you can only redeem 4 of the same reward per month. That means if you saved up 270 swagbucks, and then tried to turn them in for 6 $5 Amazon.com ($30) giftcards, it wouldn’t let you 🙁 “WAIT!” you say….I’ll just redeem them for a $25 giftcard. Sorry, but for some reason the value isn’t the same on the higher gift card. The $25 Amazon.com gift card is (?!) 300 swagbucks. Why? I have no clue….but I found it out early, and am passing it on to you. I don’t see any point in “saving” up my swagbucks. the Amazon gift codes are delivered to my swagbucks account twice a month, and they never expire. Then again, I’m trying to save up my Amazon gift cards to buy us a TV (our nice one broke last year). If you see a different vendor that you’d be more likely to get what you need from them, by all means, use it elsewhere!!!
I love Kristin…She got me hooked about a week ago. I got about 20 so far. Yay.
I have been swagging for a while now. I usually get 3 or so swagbucks a day. I was saving for Amazon giftcards – which I got a few. However, now I am getting $5 Red Envelope gift cards for 25 swagbucks. I am saving them up for a nice gift for my mom. I just love Red Envelope :o)
I LOVE Swagbucks, and recently did this up for a friend who asked for tips on getting them.
(these are just how I do it, and how I’ve been able to get $60 in Amazon.com gift cards)
1. Install the toolbar. I was wary at first, but the toolbar is always right there, so I never forget to use it instead of using google or yahoo when I search. Also, there’s a little message feature that will send you a message whenever there are bonus codes.
2. Search regularly. Search using the toolbar whenever you’re surfing the web. But don’t make stuff up. Making up a bunch of search terms may make them deactivate your account.
3. Refer your friends. Use your personalized link to tell friends about swagbucks. It can be found here:
https://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-promote
Or email them from here:
https://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-refer
For every time a friend earns a swagbuck by searching, you get the same (up to 100 swagbucks).
4. Swagcodes. These can be found on the swagbucks website randomly, and can be hard to find….
5. Follow Engineer a Debt Free Life – She seriously has the most up to date swagcodes and hints around. https://www.engineeradebtfreelife.com/swagcodes
(this is not my blog, but a helpful resource for swagcodes. if this was an inappropriate link, please let me know and I’ll delete it)
6. Search on Fridays. Usually you can win 1, 2, or 3 swagbucks from a search. But on Fridays, you can win 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 or even 20 swagbucks in one search. (in theory – hasn’t happened for me yet, but fingers crossed!)
6. Get the best bang for your swagbuck. (every time I reach 45 points, I immediately redeem them for a $5 Amazon.com giftcard) You may or may not want to do this. It is the cheapest (swagbuck vs actual dollar amount) reward that I’ve found. And it has the most uses for me.
I have been meaning to sign-up for netflix…today I signed up for swagbucks – then netflixs and got 80 points! Within 10 minutes of being registered I was at 90 points = $10 @ amazon!!!
i wish there was a “like” button for comments hahaha!
great job!!
I love swagbucks! I’ve been using their site for about a year, and have gotten $90 in Amazon gift cards, and a $25 Restaurant.com gift certificate. And I haven’t gotten a single referral. They are the best!!
I <3 swagbucks! I use it to search for any and every site I go to, instead of clicking links or typing in web addresses, I do a swag search! I have won many a swagbucks searching for "Hip2Save!"
I’ve been on swagbucks for about 10 months and have redeemed $75 in amazon gift cards so far with one referral. I love it – though if I have a more “educated” search to do, I use Google and not swagbucks. It seems that the hits from swagbucks are from paid advertisers? I’d like more balanced information on some searches. For roaming from blog to blog, though, swagbucks is awesome!
I have only been swagging for a couple of months (3 at the most) and I have already scored 8 amazon gift cards!!!!! With the amount of REFERRALS someone like you could end up with you are gonna be a swaggamillionaire!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE FUN!!!!!
I have only been swagging for a couple of months (3 at the most) and I have already scored 8 amazon gift cards!!!!! With the amount of REFERRALS someone like you could end up with you are gonna be a swaggamillionaire!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE FUN!!!!!
Oooooohhhhhh and BY THE WAY Collin……I have won tons of SWAGBUCKS just by searching It’s Hip to Save……multiple times, no kidding……funny but 100% TRUE!!!!!!!!
I just went to Special Offers’ under ‘Ways to Earn’ & clicked on a few instant offers. But my account doesn’t reflect any points? Any suggestions?
after you are done clicking “skip” there will be a page with a code. you have to copy and paste the code back on your homepage where it says “enter swag code here”
Sometimes it takes a little while to credit. Give it a day. If it still doens’t credit, then contact swagbucks about it. Keep any emails you get from the offer company to prove you actually did the offer.
I heard of Swagbucks but I didn’t understand how it worked. Thanks to your easy explanation it all makes sense now and I will start using it more often.
Collin-
You should have posted your referral link for people to use! You deserve it for giving us all the great deals!
When you click on swagbucks, it connects to her referral page, I am sure she won’t be tell ya all about it without linking up! That’s alot of referrals 😉
I love swagbucks. I got several Amazon gift card to buy Christmas presents. They also let you donate your swagbucks to donate money to Haiti relief.
I’ve been “swagging” since last March. I go thru Swagbucks everytime I want to get to this site or any other. I’ve earned $80 in Amazon gift cards so far, almost exclusively from searching (only 1 referral for 20 swagbucks so far). The thing I wanted to emphasize is that you can maximize your savings with Amazon gift cards when you purchase one of their great deals on magazines which are a good source of coupons. I got my All You subscription strictly with swagbucks (which were free), so the savings keep accumulating every time I use a Q from this magazine. A few minutes each day can add up to a lot of savings this way. The key is to hold onto them so you can take advantage of a good magazine deal.
You can also recycle old cell phones, video games and video game consoles for swagbucks. Click the “Trade In” link on their site and follow the easy directions.
I almost forgot, when you search with Swagbucks & are ready to exit the site, back out rather than close out because many times that is when you can earn swagbucks.
What do you mean back out?
Just a note that I tried to install the Shop At Home Toolbar and my Avira anti-virus program popped up to warn me it contained a virus.
Wow, so many great tips! I’ve seen swagbucks mentioned on other blogs, but wasn’t really sure what it was all about. I’m signing up and I hope to save a good amount of Amazon gc’s for Christmas!
Thanks!!
Just signed up a week ago – already have 19 swagbucks – they accumulate pretty quickly! Hoping I get lots of free stuff!!
I love Swagbucks. .. . doing it for about 3 months and have already cashed in $50 in Amazon gift cards.
The key is to get referrals. . . . Colin is going to get tons. I’m very jealous!!
I cannot be on it all day long at work because I’m an Autistic Teacher and have NO time for the computer, but I’m still doing GREAT with it!!!!
https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/LoveLyseLiv
I’ve used SwagBucks for several months, and find the search engine to be slow and provide only very general results. I will use Google every time, because it saves me time with its accuracy. I’d rather have more time and better information than gift cards. But I’m not a very patient person. 🙂
That said, referrals might be an easy way to gain points quickly (making it a pyramid scheme) but no one I know was interested in using it.
ps-Hip2Save DID put a referral link in all the ‘highlighted’ SwagBucks links. . . . . so she will be reaping the benefits.
Feel free to sign up here, too 🙂
https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/LoveLyseLiv
I love SwagBucks! I’ve been doing it for almost 2 months and have gotten $25 worth of Amazon giftcards. I have 4 referrals but only one of them uses it and he doesn’t do it much. I wish I could convince all my friends how great it is!
if you look at swagbucks fb page there is a code for 1 swagbuck that doesn’t expire until 10pm pst
Collin,
I love Swagbucks. I jumped on the bandwagon about 4 months ago and I have already traded in my bucks for 3 $10 Starbucks Gift Cards and a $50 Bass Pro Gift Card (for my hubby), I figured I would get him a little treat! The rest I am saving for Amazon Gift Cards.
I signed up through another website, but the cool think is they give alerts when the codes are out. I have not missed a code yet!! Can I share that with you all? I don’t want to step on blogger toes….
We paid $2 for our daughters DS Lite at Christmas time thanks to Swagbucks & Amazon gift cards!
It’s about time you jumped on the wagon. With all your readers you will most definitely start seeing the benefits very soon. It’s actually fun too!
I love SwagBucks! It’s easy and they accumulate pretty fast for me. Remember the deal you posted about ‘The Pioneer Woman Cookbook’ for $11.50 on Amazon? Well, I used 2 $5 Amazon Gift card codes from SwagBucks, used my free Amazon Prime shipping (thanks to you, Collin) and got the cookbook delivered in 2 days for $1.50 OOP!!! Pretty sweet for doing nothing but my usual internet searches….I would encourage everyone to give this program a try! (ps. love, love LOVE the cookbook, too!)
Welcome to the world of Swagbucks!
I love Swagbucks! I have gotten $30 in Amazon gift cards so far & 1-$5 Paypal gift card so far since Sept. 2009! $14 more swagbucks & I am on my way to my next $5 Amazon card.
They did recently change how many gift cards you can redeem in a month. Now you can only get 5 of the same thing per month. I will just save my points till the next month!
I love free!!!!! I do a lot of searching online for my childrens’ home schooling. I thought why not make money while doing searching. I switched from Paypal cards to Amazon cards since you need a lot less swagbucks to qualify for one.
I did download the tool bar but then removed it because it seemed to be screwing with my computer! I keep it as our families main search tool & they win me swagbucks too!
BTW, COLLIN THE AMAZON.ca GIFT CARD YOU HAVE UP AT THE TOP OF THIS POST IS A CANADIAN AMAZON GIFT CARD. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT PURCHASE THIS ONE BY MISTAKE WHEN YOU BUY YOUR FIRST GIFT CARD! =]
LOL! I’m such a dork! Oops! I’ll change that now!
Ok, ok! I finally signed up using the link provided – hope your kiddos have a very Merry Christmas! 😉 Honestly I’m a little skeptical…bad experience with My Points, but if you guys think it’s worth doing then I’m willing to give it a shot. Thanks!
I do not have one negative thing to say about Swagbucks yet and I have been doing it for over a year now. Love it!
I’ve been using Swagbucks for awhile now and I always get the $5 Amazon e-gift cards and then immediately enter the codes on amazon.com to credit my account.
My husband and I are not fans of toolbars at all, so I read on the Swagbucks site and figured out how to change my Internet paramaters so that when I type in a website address in the Google toolbar that it will automatically go through Swagbucks. This is great, because I was often getting impatient and didn’t want to go through that extra step of searching through Swagbucks
I haven’t done any of the free offers yet, but I would like to try some that are no risk and still credit you for the Swagbucks even if you don’t buy something.
I haven’t gotten a lot of referrals, but I posted the referral link on my Facebook page and I have also added it to my e-mail signature and have had some friends to sign up!
My Gosh Collin, I can’t believe YOU haven’t been doing the swag bucks thing. Besides your site that is where I am always at (in fact I just won a swag buck about two mins. ago 🙂 ) I have been swaggin for a little over 6 mos. and have gotten about $120 worth of Amazon.com gift cards. I am not super active with it in the respect that I do not have tons of referrals. (just 2 and one is already maxed out for me) so I think I have done pretty well so far. With your blog being so popular, you ought to be able to snag tons of referrals and you should be rolling in dough or rather cards…lol. Anyway jump in and start making the bucks!
I’m in! I am finally jumping on this band wagon with all the rest of you swaggers. Joined this evening and am waiting for all these things to jump out and announce themselves….nothing yet but I am sure it is going to happen real soon. Got on Kristin’s CouponingToDisney Swag Alert list just now. Thanks for explaining some of the aspects of SwagBucks. I found your explanations much more clearly stated than the home site. Good luck!
Does anyone know if you can use “ebates” or “shopathome” while using swagbucks? I’m also new to swagbucks (started about a month ago) and I’m still learning the in’s and out’s
No you can’t, since ebates, swagbucks, and shopathome all require you to click on the store’s link through their website to get them to count. I ordered some business cards from VistaPrint a few months ago and got 45 swagbucks which equates to a $5 Amazon gift card. Ebates and Shopathome would only give me 5% of my order which was $0.50. So in most cases, Swagbucks gives you the most bang for your buck (if they have an offer available)!
I hope this post doesn’t get lost in all the great comments about Swagbucks. I love it also, but I have tried repeatedly to earn the “swagbuck per day”, followed Collins directions and still do not find my swag code. Is anyone else having this problem or is it just an operator error?
Some questions? I signed up and I think got a few referrals….. I have 6 bucks so far. A few questions?
I downloaded the tool bar and there is a message thing that says “from TSG” what is that?
Where should I look on the toolbar for codes?
When you win points where does the pop up come?
TIA!
I have no idea what I’m doing. I signed up and got the bonus bucks for signing and going through the offers. I also checked it out on Facebook and got a code from that page. Other than that, when will these mysterious swagbucks make their appearance? I downloaded the toolbar on my home computer (can’t do it here at work) and will search through that when I can. Other than that, am I missing something? I didn’t notice anything on my toolbar.
Okay, I signed up for this after I read all the comments about how great it was. I did a search this morning and got 2 Swagbucks so I’m already up to 5 and I was like YEAH! I went to do the special offers, declined all the offers, and my code appeared at the bottom of the page. However, when I go to enter it, it says that it’s not a valid promotion code and I’ve tried it several times with caps/no caps, etc. Alright, now I’m not so excited about this. ;-(
Karen,
When you copy and paste the code, make sure you don’t copy any blank spaces on either end of the code or it will show up as invalid when you enter it in the “gimme” box. Also, The code you copied from the special offers section may just have expired. Don’t worry, they put a new in there every Thursday. Happy Swagging
Was yours Expired? Thats what mine was showing up as…..
mine was “expired” too
I would love to know how many points Collin has scored in one day (she totally deserves it)…. I think I have 3-4 people under me and I have 13 points already!
i’m not sure about this, but i believe only one person per household can have an account. i tried to sign my husband up under me and this is when i found this out.
Also, weird, but dh noticed that whenever he made a, shall we say, “riskee” search, he’d get more swagbucks, but whenever he does something perfectly innoncent like the weather or school lunch menu, he gets just 1 swagbuck. He’s not into porn, so don’t think *that* riskee, but mature content definitely earns you more points. i thought it was coincedence or he was just being silly so i checked his hunch and made a, ahem, “grown-up” search to enforce skills for his marital bliss, and i, who in a year never get more than 1 swagbuck even on Mega Swagbuck Friday, got 5 for the first time. Every once in a while for fun we’ll show a friend how swagbucks works and it’s pretty consistent when we get away from the innocent searches. Naughty Swagbucks!
I am new to swagbucks and didn’t even know about adding friends. Here is my link…I would love to add some friends to help earn some swagbucks. Thanks so much!
https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/ohsewgirlie