Swagbucks Review: Legit or Scam. Plus our earnings after 10 years!

Swagbucks Review: What is Swagbucks? Is Swagbucks legit or is Swagbucks a scam. We will answer these questions, along with other common questions about Swagbucks.

We have 10 years of experience with using Swagbucks and we share below in this Swagbucks review just how much we have earned over the years using Swagbucks to help inspire and encourage you to join the Swagbucks train. But let us answer these important questions for you first!

Okay – it has happened….. sound the alarm, alert the press …. The Thrifty Couple is finally swaggin’.

So if your first response is “what is swaggin’ and who really cares?” Then you have come to the right place! Why?  Because that is what us, The Thrifty Couple, have been thinking for so long!

I have had many friends telling me about Swagbucks for quite some time now – I always thought, “Wow, is this really worth anything? Who cares, why should I care, and what on earth are you going to do with all of those Swagbucks?”

Here’s what we will be talking about in this Swagbucks Review. Click on any of the topics to be taken right to that section! 

• What is Swagbucks?
• Is Swagbucks Legit or a Scam?
• How do I earn Swagbucks?
• What is the cash value of Swagbucks?
• How many Swagbucks can I earn?
• Do I have to do surveys to earn Swagbucks?
• How do I redeem Swagbucks for cash or gift cards?
• What are the best ways to maximize earning Swagbucks?
• What are the best ways to redeem Swagbucks for best value?
• How can I sign up to start earning Swagbucks too?

Before we learned about the ins and outs of Swagbucks, we have to be honest and say that we were quite skeptical of the idea. There are a lot of spammy and scammy ways to earn cash or gift cards online. We’ve found those and we’ve warned about them. But then there are some actual legit ways to earn gift cards and cash online, passively, while not giving much thought to it.

“Before we learned about the ins and outs of Swagbucks, we have to be honest and say that we were quite skeptical of the idea.”

Swagbucks is one of the rare cases in which you can earn some very rewarding cash, rewards or gift cards by doing some simple online tasks.

Once we truly learned about it and saw the legit earnings some of our friends were making, we thought… here we are, The Thrifty Couple, and we are not taking advantage of this? The real questions should have been “What is this about, why are you so excited, and HOW can WE do this too?”

What is Swagbucks?

Before you can start earning Swagbucks, you first need to understand what it is!

In a nutshell – it is a rewarding way to search the web! You can earn these Swagbucks (points) that you can then redeem for prizes. I wasn’t super impressed, until I saw them for myself! A lot of the prizes I don’t care a lot about, but the Amazon.com gift cards, Delta, and the Southwest Airlines gift cards are awesome! Which ultimately equate to FREE shopping and FREE travel! Some of our 2 favorite things and for FREE! For example: you only need 45 Swagbucks to redeem for a $5 Amazon.com gift card. 

Is Swagbucks Legit or a Scam?

This is a BIG question, especially when there are hundreds (actually probably thousands) of websites and “earn cash and gift cards” scams out there. We get that.

That’s part of the reason it took us quite a while to jump on board because we were legitimately skeptical of Swagbucks. We probably waited about a year from the first time we heard about it to when we signed up with Swagbucks and started earning.

And we kick ourselves for it! But this was 10 years ago when these things had less credibility at the beginning!

“We probably waited about a year from the first time we heard about it to when we signed up with Swagbucks and started earning. And we kick ourselves for it!”

And now..10 years later…we are STILL using Swagbucks. Each calendar year, we set a goal of what we want to use our Swagbucks for.

• One year, we ate out for free all year because of Swagbucks
• Three years (including this past one where we earned $1,000 of Amazon gift cards for the year), we paid for Christmas anywhere from $500 – $1,000 earned in one year for Christmas!
• We’ve decided in 2020, we want to save for a Carnival Cruise for Christmas in December 2020. So we will be saving our Swagbucks for Carnival Cruise Lines gift cards to pay for our family of 8 to cruise!
• Other years, we have randomly grabbed gift cards to pay for whatever the immediate need was (airline tickets, hotels, Walmart, eating out, Amazon, etc.)

How do I earn Swagbucks?

Swagbucks has changed a lot over the last 10 years that we have been using it to provide even more ways to earn Swagbucks and make it even more rewarding.

When we started with Swagbucks back in 2010, the main way to earn earn these Swagbucks was by literally just search through the Swagbucks home page (like you would on Google or any other brower) and every once in a while, after you have submitted a search query, Swagbucks will pop up letting you know that you just won more Swagbucks.  When searching, you can earn 1-10 Swagbucks just at random. 

The first week that we used Swagbucks with this feature, we earned 1-5 Swagbucks for nearly every search. The first week we earned a nice handful of Swagbucks! The most we earned with one search was 5 Swagbucks.  Often, the best times to search to earn the most is either in the morning or evening when web surfing! You can earn approximately 2-5 Swagbucks a day just by conducting your web searches through Swagbucks instead of Google, and usually winning your first one within approximately 5 searches!

There are 7 main ways to earn Swagbucks 10 years later in 2020!

1. Answer questions for brands. Yes, these are surveys. But it’s one of the most legitimate ways to earn something from taking surveys. There are a few legitimate ways to earn taking surveys, and Swagbucks is at the top.
2. Shop online! If you do any shopping online, you can shop at most any online merchant through Swagbucks and earn Swagbucks. This is like when you use any cashback online site. But the benefit is that you can usually earn more valued Swagbucks that can often lead to better cash back earnings when you convert your earned Swagbucks into gift cards or cash (via PayPal).
3. Discover. This is one of the easiest ones for me. When I have a few spare moments, this is the one I generally turn to. It’s basically see ads, or opening emails from brands. It is a form of marketing that these brands are doing to get noticed and get their name out there. So they pay you for see/watching/reading these things. It’s a bit easier and less time commitment than surveys.
4. Watch. This one is like #3, except that it is in the form of commercials and video ads. After watching you provide feedback by rating the ads. This helps the brands hone in on their marketing. You earn for watching and helping out with market research!
5. Search. This is the original and it still exists! This is how Swagbucks started. So instead of searching for things online through Google, use Swagbucks instead to earn from it!
6. Play. This is one we haven’t ever done, but if you like online gaming like through apps or websites, you can get paid to download and play!
7. Refer friends! This is a BIG way to earn! Get your friends on board too and all of you can be earning at a bigger rate.

Bonus Swagbucks Earnings: Swagcodes, Swagups, etc.

Along with the 7 main ways listed above, there are bonus Swagbucks earning opportunities.

One of those ways are Swagcodes. You can find and enter Swagcodes in your email, from random searches, from the Swagbucks social media channels etc.

Plus, they have opportunities for Mega Swagbucks days and other promotions and bonuses. You will often receive notification of these bonus chances in your email but also check your account frequently as they will provide bonus opportunities there too!

What is the cash value of Swagbucks?

The cash value of Swagbucks is that every 100 Swagbucks is equivalent to $1.00 cash value of rewards. So 1,000 would be $10, 10,000 would be $100, etc.

This will give you an idea of any of the surveys, shop, discover or watch activities, what the cash value of that activity is worth to help you maximize your time.

Here are some examples:

These examples are from the Discover earning section. You can see that the activity can yield anywhere from 50 SB to 3900 SB. That means $0.50 – $3.90 for each activity.

How many Swagbucks can I earn?

Earning Swagbucks is easy. It may feel like a slow start at first, but once you start using it regularly, it picks up in a few months! So the biggest key is to stick with it! Start referring friends and even share the activities that you are doing to show how you are earning. You earn bonus Swagbucks based on your referrals earnings too!

The best fours ways to start earning Swagbucks are:

1. Start doing your searches through Swagbucks
2. Start doing your online shopping through Swagbucks
3. Take surveys
4. Refer friends

Before you know it, you will probably have your first $25 gift card by the end of the week!

“Before you know it, you will probably have your first $25 gift card by the end of the week!”

One really cool thing we would love to share with you is our lifetime earnings! In 10 years, we have earned 731,217 Swagbucks. This is equal to $7,312.17 in cash straight value. But because we always redeem for the gift cards that are 10-15% off, the value is that much higher!

“In 10 years, we have earned 731,217 Swagbucks. This is equal to $7,312.17 in cash straight value.”

Now with these earnings, they were slow at first. The first couple of years, it was like $300 for the whole year! Now, we have been earning an average of $1k per year, passively. so it will increase over time when you compound the ways to earn on top of each other the more you use it!

Do I have to do surveys to earn Swagbucks?

We have had the question directly asked, “Do I have to do surveys to earn Swagbucks?” In this Swagbucks review we want to answer this important question!

We know that the issue of surveys can be a sensitive one. There are many legitimate ways to earn cash or gift cards through surveys, but there’s also a lot of spam out there. Although the surveys are legit through Swagbucks, you don’t have to do them to earn!

There are 6 other main ways, plus many other bonus opportunities that pop up that you can earn without doing surveys. So don’t stress about this if you don’t want to participate in this part!

How do I redeem Swagbucks for cash or gift cards?

The process to redeem your Swagbucks is super easy and done in a few clicks! When you have enough Swagbucks in your account to redeem (you can have as little as 4,500 to get a $5 gift card) then you can redeem!

• Just head to Swagbucks.com
• Click on Redeem Swagbucks on the left
• Then you will see gift cards listed and you can sort the gift cards by category
• Click on the one you want and you will receive an email that you will need to confirm in order to complete the free gift card purchase.
• Once you click on your confirmation email, you will receive your egift card in your email. Keep track of these so you don’t lose them. With Amazon gift cards, we can apply the balance to our Amazon account immediately.

This past year, I redeemed my Swagbucks that I saved all of 2019 for two $500 Amazon gift cards to use for Christmas. I redeemed $500 at time about 2 weeks apart. As soon as I got confirmation, I applied them to our Amazon account. We didn’t even use all $1,000. We had about $300 left over after buying nearly exclusively on Amazon for not only our 6 kids, but extended family members as well. Which was awesome because we needed about $225 worth of school books for the new semester (we homeschool) and Amazon had most of them and we got them for free and still have about a $37 balance left today from this initial $1k deposit!

What are the best ways to maximize earning Swagbucks?

We have a separate article that details all of the ways to maximize your earnings through Swagbucks. This article is more of a Swagbucks review, but we’ve got your covered to earn big time!

We would recommended getting signed up with Swagbucks HERE quickly and easily and then read the article on how to maximize after so you can put the tips into action.

• Sign up for Swagbucks and get a $10 bonus by using this link to join for FREE
• Then head to this article for the details on how to maximize your earnings!

What are the best ways to redeem Swagbucks for best value?

This is the BEST trick after earning Swagbucks. In this Swagbucks review, we want to show even the best ways to maximize the earnings!

The value of the gift cards is $1 for each 100 Swagbucks that you have. So a $5 gift card is 500 Swagbucks and a $25 gift card is 2,500 Swagbucks.

But Swagbucks will have “sales” on their gift cards. Pay attention to their sales so when the gift card pops up that you want, you can get it for 10-15% less Swagbucks. This is exactly what we do. For example, you can see the gift cards that are on sale at the time of the writing of this post. They always have a decent selection of gift cards for less at any given time.

How can I sign up to start earning Swagbucks too?

Well I am glad you asked! It is really very simple and quick! Now that you have read this Swagbucks review, it’s time to get started and don’t delay any longer because you can have another $10-$25 by the end of the week.

1. Go to the Swagbucks site and register.
2. Then you will see 3 Swagbucks automatically entered into your account, just for registering for FREE.
3. Start searching the web from the Swagbucks home page! Then, at random, you will be informed when you banked another Swagbuck for searching.
4. It’s that easy! Also, explore the Swagbucks site to see other ways to earn, see the Swag Store and more.
5. You can also download the Swagbucks toolbar so this search browser automatically comes up when you start searching.

PLUS, you can get a $10 sign-up bonus by completing the steps below after signup with the link provided.

• After signing up, you must “Activate” the Bonus in the Swag Ups section of your account.
• Bonus value is earned in the form of points, called SB. Get a 1000 SB bonus, which is equivalent to $10 in value, when you spend at least $25 at a store featured in Swagbucks.com/Shop.
• You must receive a minimum of 25 SB for this purchase, which you must complete within 30 days of registration.
• MyGiftCardsPlus.com and travel purchases do not qualify.

Enjoy, have fun, earn a ton and let us know your results and how swaggin’ is going for you!!