Swagbucks

You may have noticed the widget at the bottom of my blog for swagbucks.  Swagbucks is a site that offers reward points (called swagbucks) for things like taking polls, filling out surveys, watching their videos, doing tasks like answering questions about internet searches, and doing internet searches with their search engine.  There are also a few other things like printing out and redeeming coupons, trading in electronics and books and things like that, but I've never done those things.  When you earn enough swagbucks (points) you can redeem them for a number of prizes, but my favorite is the amazon.com e-gift card. 

 
There are several other great gift cards, but you always have to look at the fine print.  Many of the gift cards will give you a coupon code after you redeem them, which you can enter at checkout of your online shopping and get $5 off or however big of a gift card you got.  With the amazon.com gift card, you copy the code and apply it to your amazon.com gift card balance, which never runs out and you can add as many as you want and only take away what you want when you want to purchase anything.  I have purchased several home school books for free (the gift cards cover shipping too)  but we mostly use books from the library and have a few to use as references and guidelines (What Your Kindergartener Need to Know, What Your Preschooler Needs to Know, the Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas, and Homeschool Your Child for Free are the main ones).  So I am not working to get household items for free from amazon.com.  To get one $5 amazon.com gift card it takes 450 swagbucks.  There are bigger gift cards, but strangely, they require more swagbucks per $5 increment (For example, to get 5 of the $450 gift cards, it would take 2250 swagbucks.  To get a $25 gift card, it's 3150 swagbucks, you get the idea).  There is a limit on how many gift cards you can earn in a month, but I've never earned enough to top that out.  I usually earn 55 to 60 swagbucks a day.  It's not much, but that allows me lots of time with kids and household responsibilities and hubby time, and gives me one gift card every 7 to 8 days. 

Here's what  do:
I get online and go right to swagbucks, at the top of the website there are several tabs, one is "earn" I click on that and scroll down to daily pols, I answer the daily poll and get one swagbuck (hey, every little bit helps!)  Then I go back to the earn tab and go to NOSO (no oblligation special offers) It takes me through a series of ads and I click skip on every one of them every time, then it gives me a word or phrase to types in and I get 2 swagbucks.  No, that's not much, but it all adds up.
Next I go to swagbucks TV from the earn tab and start one of their short videos.  I usually keep the volume down, unless it's really interesting, like a lot of the ones in the home and garden DIY network section, of in the Paula Dean part of the food section.  When that starts to play I open another tab and usually go to my blogger homepage, I check to see if there are updates on any of the blogs I'm following, and click on them if there are.  Every two or three minutes I click back to the swagbucks tab to click on another video.  The vidoes are short and your earn 3 swagbucks for every 10 you watch.  But since it takes almost no time, it's a good way to keep adding points up.  When I'm done reading any of the blogs I follow (sometimes during if a post inspires a question) I'll go to swagbucks in a different tab than swagbucks TV ( I close other tabs so I don't get too distracted) and so a search or two for something I've been wondering about of questions that come to my mind.  I also don't bookmark very many pages, if it's a blog I really like, I follow it, other than that I just read it carefully, ad then if I want to refer to it again I do a swagbucks search (like google) to find it.  You don't get points for every search, and it doesn't help to keep hitting search in rapid succession, but if you really are looking for something, open some of the links and go the succeeding search pages you can earn quite a few (most of the time when I get rewards for searches it's around 7 to 12 swagbucks, but I've gotten as high as 28 before). 
Keep in mind that this is all in several chunks throughout my day, I don't just sit on the computer for hours on end trying to earn swagbucks, but if I'm on for other reasons anyway, you can rest assured I'll be earning swagbucks simultaneously.
When the kids are alseep and I've had a busy day and want to relax, I will go to swagbucks games.  I only do a few, but I really enjoy puzzle games.  Usually I get 2 swagbucks for every two games I play, which doesn't take very long, and I only do it a little so I'm not wasting my day on frivolities.
I do check the survey section regularly, but I rarely qualify for surveys, I guess I'm too boring.  I also do tasks from time to time to change things up a bit.

If you aren't already signed up for swagbucks, but you'd like to be, you can go to my widget at the bottom the the page.  At the bottom right of the widget it says sign up.  If you sign up through me I get a few more swagbucks (Thanks in advance!).

I hope this helps with those of you who want to save some money or get things for free!