"Swagbucks:" a review.

A while back, in the course of a couple of weeks three different bloggers I read mentioned the Swagbucks online-rewards program. I decided to check it out. I signed up about a month ago, and in that time I've earned a few $5 Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks. At this point I feel as though I know enough about the program to review it.

What it is: The main way Swagbucks works is by selling your search results. They have a search page and a search toolbar, and the idea is that you are supposed to use these tools in your normal Internet browsing. Their promotional material assures you that your search results come from Google, and they do. But the Google results are mixed into a list of "sponsored" results. They're all labeled as such, but for a given search 4-6 of the top ten results will probably be ads. They claim not to sell your name or your search history. I haven't seen any increase in spam.

What you get in return: "Swagbucks," a made-up currency which can be traded for gift cards, sweepstakes entries, or prizes in their online store. Searches are quasi-randomly chosen to receive Swagbucks rewards, usually in denominations of 10 or 20. Reportedly their software detects, and penalizes, non-naturalistic search behavior. I haven't tested that out.

You can also earn Swagbucks by using their online shopping portal (which includes sites like Barnes & Noble and Target), by pursuing "special offers" like credit card applications (I've stayed the hell away from these), by referring people (although it's not technically MLM; you don't get points from your referrals' referrals), and by hyping them via Twitter. They also run little promos designed to get you to visit their site a lot, by, for example, randomly offering a Swagbucks reward on their blog which is only good if you happen to visit within a brief window.

You can only use the service from the US, Canada, and the UK.

My evaluation:

• It isn't a scam. They do actually deliver gift card codes, and the codes do work on Amazon.



• Their search results are adequate for simple searches but almost always inadequate for anything subtle or involved. I tend to use their search for things like finding an author's home page, a particular blog, or the answer to a straightforward question, but not, for example, for trying to find a blog that discusses certain topics. I often use the Swagbucks search page as a replacement for bookmarks - i.e., to get to known sites I visit often - and go with Google for searches that are actually searches.



• There is a massive amount of Swagbucks-related hype, largely designed to get people disproportionately excited about earning or winning small quantities of Swagbucks. If you read the blog or follow Swagbucks on Facebook/Twitter, it becomes hard to focus on Swagbucks' actual value and whether various offers are a good deal or not, and it starts to seem more reasonable that one might do things in exchange for Swagbucks. That seems to be the basis of their business model.
  
  Given that a $5 Amazon gift card costs 450 Swagbucks, I find it helpful to keep in mind that one Swagbuck is worth approximately one penny. If typing the name of a blog into the Swagbuck search page potentially rewards me with 10 Swagbucks, that's a dime. Minimal effort, tiny reward, probably worth it. On the other hand, they have a "special offers" page where (for example) you might be invited to complete an online task estimated to take half an hour and thereby earn 18 Swagbucks. No thanks, my time is worth more than 36 cents an hour. Or you can agree to be contacted by phone by insurance sales agents in exchange for 200 Swagbucks. No, freedom from telemarketing is definitely worth more than $2 to me.



• Similarly, some of their prizes are craptastically bad deals. Like a five-pack of off-brand crayons for 359 Swagbucks, which works out to roughly $3.59 in Amazon gift card equivalence. Or a portable DVD player for 22,600 ($226 in gift card equivalence) which appears to retail for less than $100. An Amazon card worth $25 is 7 times the price of a $5 card. I suppose that there may also be disproportionately good deals, but I'm not really interested in putting in the research necessary to search them out. I'm sticking to $5 gift cards.



• The shopping portal has quite a range of stores. The payback rate is 2 Swagbucks for every dollar spent, which works out to roughly 2% if you're using Amazon cards to figure the exchange rate. It wouldn't be worthwhile to change your shopping behavior just for the sake of rewards, but there doesn't seem to be a down side to going through the portal for stuff you were going to buy online anyway. For example, we usually get groceries delivered from Safeway a couple of times a month, and I can do that through the portal and get the equivalent of $3 or so each time. It's a trivial amount of money in an absolute sense, but it's $3 more than I would get by going straight to safeway.com. Airline tickets (through Expedia) or computers (Dell, Best Buy) would produce rewards pretty quickly.
  
  I have found that it takes a long time - they say to allow up to 30 days, I think so that you can't manipulate the system by buying pricy things and then returning them - for shopping rewards to be added to your account. So it's not instant gratification, by any means.

My bottom line: Swagbucks is worthwhile if you don't get caught up in the hype and change your online behavior trying to chase rewards. Modest use of the search page and shopping portal = modest, incremental payoffs. For me it's worked out to about $15 at Amazon in a month, which is a nice treat albeit not a life-changing one.

If you decide to give it a try, you can use my referral code and I'll get extra stuff. Or, you know, don't.