If you’re like me, you’ve heard the term “Swagbucks,” but really never dug into its meaning. After a few years though, as I keep hearing the phrase over and over again (with more popularity), my curiosity finally got the best of me. I started out by asking myself the simple question, “What is Swagbucks?” and how are people earning money from it? This is when the deep dive ensued. Feel free to learn along with me on this one.
What is Swagbucks?
Swagbucks began in 2008 as a means to promote businesses through a web search portal, all while paying digital money to its visitors for using the platform. Over the years, Swagbucks has grown into quite an impressive company with revenues over $50 million a year. Today, they offer the following activities on their site (summed up nicely in Google search by the way):
Swagbucks pays out digital currency (points called SB) if you use their site as a web search tool, participate in daily polls, answer online surveys, by shopping, and even by playing games! Before you run up to your boss and quit your job with plans of earning a living through Swagbucks, you might want to slow your roll a bit. While it is true that Swagbucks does pay out money for all of these actions, it can take some time to build up enough to get a payout.
Breakdown of SwagBuck Earnings
At the time of this writing, 450 SB would buy you a $5 Amazon gift card, which means that each SB is worth approximately 1.1 cents, or for simplicity sake, 1 penny. Surveys and games typically pay out between 1 and 15 SB (approximately 1 and 15 cents) and can take 10 minutes or more to complete. If you can constantly keep up activity on the site, then your average earnings will total to somewhere around $1 an hour, or at the absolute maximum, $3 an hour. So again, these earnings are not going to make you rich, but it is a pretty nice perk if you’re enjoying yourself and earning a few bucks in the process.
How Does Swagbucks Do It?
After learning about Swagbucks, many people wonder how they afford to pay out money to their users without ultimately going bankrupt. They must be earning money from somewhere, right?
You got it.
Swagbucks is paid by the businesses that want to show up in their search engine, surveys, and even within the games that are played. The model is actually pretty simple. Companies pay Swagbucks to advertise their product or service, and Swagbucks passes a portion of that payment to the viewers as a way to attract more eyeballs to their website. The more visitors there are, the more businesses are willing to pay in advertisement dollars. The model is simple and genius all at the same time. It isn’t evil, it isn’t underhanded, it’s simply a win-win situation for all involved and I applaud the Swagbucks creators for their creation.
How to Earn with Swagbucks
Do you want to earn money through Swagbucks? Well the process is pretty simple. Just follow this link and you’re in. Once you sign up, you can utilize the search engine tool, participate in surveys, or even play a few games. All of these actions will earn you some SB, which will lead to future gift cards.
Have you ever asked the question, “What is Swagbucks?” Do you use it today?