SwagBucks Review: Waste of time?

Disclosure: Please keep in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. I link to these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours. 

SwagBucks is the site that offers it all. This isn’t just a survey site, there are so many other ways to earn points called SB. Such as cashback deals, playing games, discovering great deals and searching the web. 

I started using SwagBucks earlier this year and to begin with I only took surveys. I found it very disheartening as my balance was increasing so slowly. It felt like a waste of time! Then I had a look at all the other offers on the site and that’s when I actually began to make some money on this site. To date I have made just over £70 on SwagBucks, about £48 of which from taking surveys over 7 months and £22 from one afternoon taking a few discover offers.

As you can see it is better to focus your time and effort on the offers rather than using it simply for surveys. The offers I have taken include signing up for free trials, playing a slots game and buying a scratchcard. These are all very easy tasks that take hardly any effort or time. 

PERKS OF SWAGBUCKS?

Monthly bonus and daily poll

These are both great ways to boost your balance and be able to redeem your SB sooner. Your monthly bonus is dependent on you earning a certain amount of SB each day. The more days you reach the daily goal set by SwagBucks, the higher your bonus will be. My monthly bonuses are usually between 20-60 SB, so not an insane amount but a nice boost. 

Swagbucks live

This is a great unique feature! Essentially it is a quiz game played daily through the app, where you win points called SB for answering questions correctly. Those who answer all 10 questions correctly win a share of the prize fund, usually $1000. However, thousands of people play so the most I’ve seen people win is around 30 SB, which is 23p so nothing huge. The major downside to this is it is played at 1 am in the UK as it is based in America. Only worth it if you live in an American time zone or you’re already awake. 

Like making money doing online tasks? Have you tried 20 cogs? Make at least £100 in a day!

DOWNSIDES OF SWAGBUCKS?

Not worth it just for surveys

Surveys on SwagBucks are not very well paid. As with everything, there are a few outliers and you will occasionally get a survey paying 250 SB. But these are very rare and often take at least half an hour, which makes it a terrible hourly rate. Further, most surveys that I take end up screening me out. I probably only end up finishing one in ten surveys I start due to screening out. Hence, for surveys alone I would not recommend this site. However, the other aspects of the site make it worth signing up to.

Takes a while to see the money

Taking surveys alone means it will definitely take a while for you to be able to redeem and see that money. Some of the offers, such as downloading certain apps and playing games, pay more than the minimum cashout. Such as one that I did, which paid 1300 SB for buying a scratch card from Lottoland. This works out to approximately £9.80, for less than 5 minutes of “work”. Yet I still had to wait 30 days for this offer to validate and gain the points. Earnings from the offers are not immediate and require some patience, but they are worth it.

Payment is in gift cards

Being paid in gift cards is a personal pet peeve, simply because I can’t access all of my balance, once I’ve reached the minimum, often leaving a small amount of points behind. However, this could be a good thing if you prefer gift cards and like using the money you have earned to fund specific areas of your budget, such as on Starbucks. SwagBucks offers a range of gift cards like Caffe Nero, M&S, Tesco, iTunes and my personal favourite PayPal.

Top Tip: If you are in the UK you can get more out of your points if you redeem a $10 PayPal gift card for 1000 SB and exchange the currency in PayPal. Rather than having to wait till you earn 1400 SB to redeem a £10 PayPal gift card! You will see the money faster and your points will be worth more if the exchange rate is in your favour (e.g. over 71p to a $1).

Overall, I quite enjoy using SwagBucks, especially playing SwagBucks Live! I find that it is only really worth it if you are taking offers rather than just using it as a survey provider. Definitely a site I recommend if you take advantage of everything on offer! Join SwagBucks now!

Have you used SwagBucks? How do you get on with it?

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