Swagbucks Review: Earn Rewards in Your Spare Time

If you’ve ever read any articles about how to make money online, you may have heard of Swagbucks. Swagbucks is a reward site that will pay you for doing various tasks. This Swagbucks review will help you find out if the company is right for you.

Let’s face it; not all companies that say you can earn money online are legit. We want you to have all the facts about Swagbucks so you can decide whether it’s worth your time.

We’ll talk about whether Swagbucks is legit, how you earn and how much you can make. Also, we’ll share the Better Business Bureau review as well as others. This total review of Swagbucks should answer most (if not all) of your questions about the company.

What is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is a rewards program site that pays you for completing surveys and other tasks. In fact, it’s one of the most popular surveys sites online today.

They’ll give you money just for doing things like watching videos and playing games, too. Why would they do that? Well, basically, they partner with businesses.

When you complete the required tasks, those businesses are getting exposure through Swagbucks. They pay Swagbucks for advertising and getting clients for them. Or, they pay for getting client feedback, such as through surveys.

Swagbucks then passes some of that income on to members in the form of cash and gift cards.  

Is Swagbucks Legit?

So, you might be asking if Swagbucks really pays you money for doing these short tasks. Yes, they do. Swagbucks has paid members over 300 million dollars to-date.

However, there’s more you need to know about Swagbucks before you sign up.

How Do I Earn Money Through Swagbucks?

As I mentioned earlier, you get paid from Swagbucks for completing tasks. For each task you finish, you get awarded points that are called SB. Each SB is typically worth one cent.

Sometimes there are bonus deals where SB are worth more than one cent, so be on the lookout for those if you join.

Once you earn enough SB to get a reward, you can cash out. There are a variety of ways you can make money on Swagbucks. Here is a summary of each of the ways you can earn SB.

Answer Surveys

As with many rewards sites, Swagbucks will give you points for taking surveys. One of the nice things about taking surveys on Swagbucks is their level of transparency.

On the Swagbucks home page, there are boxes that summarize the earning opportunity. Each survey box will tell you how long the survey should take and how many SB you’ll earn from the survey.

Here are some examples of survey earning options at the time of this writing.

• 175 SB for a 30-minute survey (plus 35 bonus points)
• 75 SB for a 15-minute survey (plus 15 bonus points)
• 96 SB for a 20-minute survey (plus 19 bonus points)

If you completed all three surveys mentioned above, you’d earn 415 SB ($4.15) for 1 hour and 5 minutes worth of work.

This is not life-changing money, but it’s better than the $0 you’d earn sitting in front of the TV doing nothing.  

Watch Videos

Another way you can earn SB through Swagbucks is by watching videos. As with the surveys, the boxes for the videos show you how long each video is.

In addition, they show you the number of SB you’ll earn for watching each video. There’s also a brief summary of the content of each video.

These are nice features because you can choose which videos you want to watch based on length, earnings or content.

The videos often contain interesting content. Some videos have sports clips, while others interview celebrities. And some of them have news clips or other human interest stories.

Honestly, the videos don’t pay that much. I scoured through the videos for Swagbucks today. And I found that most paid 1 SB for videos that were between 18 and 30 minutes in length.

It’s nice to earn some cash if you’re going to be watching videos anyway or if there’s a video subject you are interested in. However, if you’re watching just to earn cash, this is not the most lucrative way to earn SB – or cash in general.

Search the Internet

You can earn SB by searching the internet too. Note that you have to use the Swagbucks search app to earn SB for searching the net. This is an app you can add right to your Chrome browser.

That way it’s your default search engine, and this makes earning SB via internet searches easier. Note that there doesn’t seem to be clear information on how much you’ll earn for searching the net with your Swagbucks browser.

From random reviews I’ve read, it seems that there may be additional SB earnings the longer you use the app. You’d have to try it yourself and see if that’s the case.

I’ve used the Swagbucks search bar myself, but couldn’t determine any pattern to SB payoff for doing so.

I suggest keeping it on as your default and watching as the SB add up. If you’re going to be searching anyway, there’s no reason not to earn a little cash while you’re doing it.

Shop

One of the most lucrative ways to earn money with Swagbucks is by shopping through the Swagbucks portal. As with sites like Rakuten, Swagbucks will give you cash back if you shop at certain stores through their portal.

When I checked the Swagbucks site for this article, they were giving shopping cash back offers such as:

• Up to 10 percent cash back at Amazon
• Three percent cash back at Lowe’s
• Up to eight percent cash back at Expedia and Hotels.com

And many other cash back shopping offers as well. Remember that all you have to do is go to the site you want to shop at by accessing through the Swagbucks site.

Once you’ve shopped and checked out, Swagbucks will credit your account with the cash back amount. For instance, if you shop online at Lowe’s and spend $100, you’d get $3 in Swagbucks money if the offer is still available.  

Note that you can get cash back for gift cards you purchase through Swagbucks too. This would be one way to earn SB on money you might spend offline at stores.

Discover Deals

The Discover section of Swagbucks lets you earn SB for discovering and taking advantage of offers. For instance, when I went on Swagbucks to write this article, they were awarding SB for using Coupons.com.

Personally, I love Coupons.com. It’s a very easy way to find and use money-saving coupons. And Swagbucks was awarding 1 SB for every coupon printed and 25 SB for every coupon redeemed from the site at the time of this writing.

With this offer, you could earn up to 50 SB. So, not only do you get the money savings from the Coupons.com site, you earn SB too.

Another offer Swagbucks had when I was searching for this article was a chance to earn 15,000 SB. If you signed up to be a DoorDash deliverer and completed your first delivery, you’d earn 15,000 SB. That’s equal to $150.

Not all offers will suit every member. However, they do have a nice variety of offers that can earn you varying SB amounts.

Play Games

And finally, you can earn SB by playing games on the site. In some cases, you can get money just for installing a game.

In other cases, you need to play and reach a certain level at the game to get your SB. You should also note that some of the SB for games come in the form of bonuses for in-game purchases.

As with the other areas of earning, the little boxes in the Play Games section of Swagbucks will tell you what you need to do to earn the SB points offered.  

Next, let’s talk about what professional organizations are saying about Swagbucks.

Swagbucks BBB Rating

Swagbucks is a site that is run by a company called Prodege, LLC. Prodege, LLC has been accredited with the BBB (Better Business Bureau) since 2010.

Prodege’s current BBB rating is an A-. Their average star rating is just over four out of five stars. Most of the complaints I read centered around three issues:

• Not getting rewarded SB after completing an offer
• Trouble when working to complete surveys, such as getting denied halfway through
• The company making it increasingly difficult to earn points

The large majority of the reviews were positive. However, many of the people who had complaints were very unhappy.

They cited poor customer service and a waste of time as being very frustrating.

Swagbucks Trustpilot Rating

Swagbucks also has a rating on Trustpilot. Trustpilot is a consumer-driven platform for reviews about companies.

Swagbucks has a four-star (out of five available) rating on Trustpilot. Sixty-two percent of reviewers rated the site as “excellent,” and 21 percent rated it as “great.”

As I read through the reviews, I found similar complaints as those listed on the BBB website. While most people were happy, those who complained were frustrated by not getting rewarded SBs after completing an offer or activity.

In addition, customer service issues and difficulty in earning were issues as well with those who did complain.

However, Swagbucks got positive ratings overall on both the BBB site and on Trustpilot.

Pros and Cons of Swagbucks

As with everything, Swagbucks has its pros and cons. Here is a short list of pros and cons to give you more summarized information on the site.

Swagbucks Pros

Swagbucks has a nice list of pros for joining the site. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Swagbucks is free to join. Often you can get sign up bonuses to join too.
• It’s easy to earn SB. You can earn in your spare time and not have to set aside any more than 15 minutes or so.
• Another pro of the site is that you can use your SB to get cash via PayPal or to get gift cards to popular retailers.
• The cash back for shopping feature is great, especially if you shop online anyway.
• There’s a wide variety of ways you can earn with Swagbucks, appealing to all types of users.

 As you can see, there’s a lot to love about Swagbucks. Now onto the cons.

Swagbucks Cons

There are two sides to every story, and Swagbucks is no different. Here are the cons of using the site.

• The pay for some tasks is minute. As in, not worth your time minute.
• There are some glitches with the system. In some cases, I didn’t get paid for completed tasks.

The glitches in the system can be frustrating. It’s annoying to complete a task and not get rewarded for it.

And watch a 30-minute video for one cent? Not worth your time. But overall, the pros outweigh the cons for most people.

What Else Should I Know About Swagbucks?

You’re not going to earn a living with Swagbucks. Don’t plan on using it to replace your income. However, it’s a good site for earning a few extra bucks here and there.

Plus, you can make that money in your spare time. You can earn while you’re watching TV, waiting for an appointment or just sitting with nothing to do.

If you’re looking to take up spare time and earn a bit of cash in the process, this could be a good site for you. But if you’re looking to earn some serious money, you’d be better off checking out other legit side hustle options.

Summary

You can earn money with Swagbucks, but it won’t be life-changing cash. Instead, it’s a way to make a few (literally) extra bucks in the spare minutes during your day.

Have you ever tried Swagbucks? If so, what was your experience? Did you find it worth your time? Feel free to share in the comments section on our Facebook page.