Several months ago I had an entry about other ways of making money. After that post, I kept up on trying to earn extra cash for a good month before giving up. Some of the sites netted me no money after a couple of months of effort. Some offered some money but not enough to warrant the effort. Recently though in an effort to pay for Christmas presents without going broke, I got back into a few of them and learned some tricks as well.
First are the sites I don’t bother with. Paid Viewpoints and ICS just didn’t really go anywhere and weren’t worth the effort. Paid Viewpoints had guaranteed money but only one survey a day and a high payout which made it difficult to get anything from. ICS being a lottery based system just didn’t work at all for realistic money making.
Next… the sites I use somewhat but not much. Mypoints I really only use for the daily email that I get that I click on to get 5 free points. The limitation of points here means I don’t think I’ll ever really get cards from them much again. They used to send between 2-4 emails a day each for 5. They have lost favor from me which is too bad considering they came out far before many of the newer alternatives.
Bing lowered their daily link click from 3 to 1 point a day, but increased searching from 10 for 20 to 15 for 30 searches. Because of this you can earn more overall every day but it takes longer. They still haven’t really gotten better prizes but the Groupon is still nice. I will generally go there every day for the one point and then use it as a search engine once swagbucks (below) has been used up for the day. At best I have figured that I can get one groupon gift card per month which isn’t great but worth it slightly.
eBates is hard to use consistently. However, whenever I buy something on the internet, i try to look to see if it will get me some extra cash from eBates first. Generally speaking i use it to combine with Groupon, it’s my most reliable vendor, but there are some other gems. For instance, when I moved to my house, I ordered my charter connection through eBates. This gave me a $61 bonus (This essentially paid for 2 months of service). And when it came time to pay up, they gave me an additional $1 for taking it as an Amazon gift card instead of cash. So this was a great deal.
Finally, the grand daddy of them all Swagbucks. Early in the year, I was averaging about $5 per month in Amazon Gift Cards, I think I am currently up to $25 a month but still learning some tricks and may end up slightly better.
One trick I’ve learned is that they have a swagbuck TV mobile app. I tend to leave this app on all day long, it moves from one video to the next on its own. [1. It does sometimes require a clicky or two. Some days it is bad where it is between every video, very annoying, but sometimes I can let it go for hours without touching it.] You get 2 swagbucks for every 5 videos your phone plays, and there does seem to be a limit of about 50 points per day.
The second trick I learned is that of the daily goals. Each day swagbucks gives you a goal, if you achieve said goal, they will give you bonus points. For instance, today the goal is 90 swagbucks, if I achieve it (which I did), I get 9 bonus points. In addition, if you get the bonus days in a row, you will get an additional bonus from 25 bucks for 7 days in a row to 300 for the full month. These are only awarded at the beginning of the month, not daily, but the first month I started paying attention to them, I got about 300 bonus swagbucks (it was a fun day). Next month my goal is to get 450 from only the bonus bucks which would mean I get $5 of Amazon for just the bonus!
My next trick was actually found out over the last few days. Everyone knows that daily you should do the NOSOs (2 points), the swagbar (1 point), and the daily poll (1 point). However, after you submit the daily poll you get the option to play a video. You can play the video and then at the end get the option to play another. Play as many as you can, they are worth 2 a piece. This morning I played about 6 and it still didn’t finish them all. This is easily one of the most efficient video watching methods.
Other things that work… I do search to get points, this early was the primary way to get points and still is one of the better. I get points 2 to 4 times a day, each between 7 and 29 points each. When I get the points from search I generally move to bing for a couple hours because you won’t get any more right away. I also have found on occasion special offer videos on the home page worth between 1 and 6 points. I only use these on days with 80+ point goals (weekends are always 40-50 points per day so I don’t do them on those days). On days where I am busy and/or have big goals, I will do the special offers. I have a a separate email made just for this type of spam. Swagcodes are good, I got tired of finding them on my own and just go to sbcodez.com. I find that there is generally a code put out sometime in the afternoon, but this site is vital when there are several codes in a day.
Things that don’t work… games.. I played some, I got 2 points out of hours of play. I hear the tourneys can get you a lot, but I never have joined a tourney to know. Some people say they get a lot of points from surveys, I’ve not gotten much. It is worth doing the survey profiles, you get 2 points per. These are supposed to help you qualify for real surveys that can get 10s to 100s of points. But the real surveys ask you the same questions and more and tend to disqualify you after doing 15 minutes and 33% of the survey without even a point. I find them frustrating.
I have done coupons, but I cannot confirm they’ve actually been credited. I’m still testing these, I may go back to MyPoints with them if they don’t ever credit, but the payoff is better here. I don’t do swagbuck TV (Non-mobile), I don’t find 3 points for 10 videos a very good deal, but I will do this if I am in a pinch for bucks for the day. Also their daily contsets… meh you go through effort to make posts in various places with small chance… see ICS above.
By and large, like everyone says, Swagbucks is the best way to make some regular cash. It’s just the tricks aren’t published often. I hope this helps people (if you aren’t a member, please sign up using my link, this is the other big way to earn bucks!!!)