Bcause I don't have much to say right now

**The following is basically a reprint of an email I sent to a friend. She encouraged me to post it here, and since I don't have anything else to talk about right now, I thought this might be beneficial to someone. At least more beneficial than my usual drivel about nothing. I've seen a few posts about Swagbucks recently, and thought I'd give you a bit of a different perspective.**

Swagbucks.com is a search engine, like Google or Yahoo. The major difference is that when you search using the swagbucks website, you earn, well, swagbucks. These SBs, once accrued, can be traded in for various merchandise, with the most popular items being gift cards to places like Amazon or iTunes.

I spent a LOT of time thinking swagbucks were a waste of time, but I've slowly come around to the idea that it can work for me, if not to the extent that it works for bloggers with more readership (not that you have to be a blogger to use SBs, but I'll get to that in a minute). There are bloggers that I read who claim to have bought ALL their Christmas presents with SBs. I probably won't get to that point, but $30-$40 in Amazon gift cards is nice enough to make it worth it, in my opinion.

Once you've signed up for SBs, there are 3 things you need to do EVERY DAY to get 3 SBs. It might not sound like much, but 3X365= 1095, so it's worth it in the long run. 900 SBs gets you $10 at Amazon, which is basically a free book or CD, so why not? Here's what you do:

1) Install the toolbar. I almost always get 1 SB each morning just for opening my browser b/c I have the toolbar installed.

2) Under "Ways to Earn" on the SB homepage, go to the daily poll. You answer the daily poll and get 1 SB.

3) Under "Ways to Earn" on the SB homepage, go to "Special Offers." You can click on the link on the right that says something about "no obligation offers" and skip through all of those. No personally identifiable information is required, so just click "skip" on all of them and you get 1 SB at the end. Sometimes there are 6 or 7 and sometimes there's only 1 or 2, but just click away until you get to the end. You'll get 1 SB.

A few other tricks/tips I've learned:

1) You'll usually get SBs when you search in the AM, then again in the PM. I get 7-10 SBs when I win, sometimes higher (14-15). This morning I got 8 on my 2nd search. However, I probably won't get anymore until later today. It's generally a few hours before I'll get anymore from searching. I always use SB as my default search engine just for the possibility that I'll get some SBs, but I usually only get them in the AM, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening.

2) I've found that going to "page 2" of my search results often nets me SBs. If I search and don't get SBs the first time, I ALWAYS click to the 2nd page of search results and often get them then. I've also found that if I click a link from the SB search results and then click "back" to get back to the search results, I will get SBs.

3) I frequently check a blog called we-love-swag-bucks.com and they often post when a swag code is released. Follow them on Twitter, b/c they generally (but not always) tweet when they post a blog, too. But I still check their blog several times a day. Sometimes there will be codes on the SB Facebook page or on Twitter, and WLSBs posts to let you know so you don't have to try and follow SB all over the social media sites. I also check the "swidget" on my own blog b/c sometimes there will be swag codes available that WLSBs doesn't catch or post about. I always try to get the swag codes (at least one, sometimes 2 or 3 per day). I've heard that if you sign up for the SB email newsletter, you will get a code when it comes, but I haven't received a SB newsletter in my inbox yet (I think they come monthly?).

4) IF you get referrals (people who sign up for SBs under you) you get however many SBs they get, one for one, up to 1000. This is where having a large blog readership comes in handy. I think this is the most profitable, yet most difficult, way to get SBs. If you have a ton of readers and you post about SBs, you can include a link for ppl to click to sign up under you and when they start searching and winning, you win, too. I am of the opinion that those who win hundreds or thousands of dollars of merchandise/GCs are those who get tons of referrals. So far, I have 2 referrals (one is my mom) and neither one of them has won a single SB yet, so that's not exactly working out for me.

5) You can also win SBs by purchasing through their links (kind of like ebates, if you are familiar with that). Obviously, though, it can take awhile to get those credited to your account (30 days, maybe?) b/c I bought some stuff on iTunes through SB a couple of weeks ago and I still haven't rec'd credit. So we'll see about that...

6) One drawback is that the search engine isn't that great. You have to be careful what you click b/c there are usually 4-5 "sponsored by" links that come up as legitimate search results. You always have to look at the url before you click the result to see if it says "sponsored by" b/c those usually aren't what you are looking for. Sometimes I revert to google after I've tried SB, which adds time to your search, but it's negligible. I always search SB first, ALWAYS, and sometimes I make up searches to win SBs. OK, I USUALLY make up searches if I think it's a time when I can win SBs.

The moral of this epic tale, is that, not counting referrals, it can be worth it over time to use SBs. I've tried to be faithful to using it (having the toolbar installed helps tremendously) and, since I'm a huge nerd and started keeping track of how many I get each day, I discovered I average about 30 SBs daily.

Yes, it takes a few extra minutes (seconds, really, but those seconds definitely turn into minutes), and the search engine doesn't yield perfectly accurate results, but slow and steady wins the race. Or at least wins the Amazon GCs.

**This post contains referral links for Swagbucks.**