How to Earn Free Gift Cards Using Swagbucks

One of my favorite parts about running a tech company is trying out online services to see if they meet my expectations. One such service that I have been using now for about a month is Swagbucks.

Swagbucks is a free-to-join service that allows you to collect a virtual currency called (who would have guessed?) Swagbucks (hereby referred to as SB). Once you have accumulated enough SB, you can redeem them at the Rewards Store for gift cards from popular merchants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Starbucks and more. You could also choose gas cards or to donate your SB cash value to a charity.

There’s not an exact 1:1 ratio of SB to cash due to occasional gift card sales and other promotions but as a general rule, 1 SB = 1 cent. So it would take about 500 SB to earn a $5 gift card or 2,500 SB to earn a $25 gift card.

How to earn SB

There are dozens of ways to earn SB—some take a few seconds and others take a lot longer. There are simply too many ways to earn SB to list them all in this article so let’s concentrate on a few of the more popular ways.

Daily Poll

This has to be one of the easiest ways to earn a SB. Simply visit the Swagbucks website every day and answer their daily poll. Your answer will earn you one SB each day and it literally only takes a few seconds to complete.

Surveys

If you have more time on your hands and want to earn more than just one SB for your answers, check out the Swagbucks surveys. They range from a few minutes of your time to a half hour or more depending on the survey and the payouts can be anything from a few SB to hundreds of SB. Just be prepared to give out a lot of your personal information in exchange for the SB.

Also, not every person qualifies for every survey. So just because your neighbor took a 10-minute survey and earned 50 SB doesn’t mean you can too. Some surveys will even disqualify you in the middle of the survey based on your responses. Luckily, Swagbucks still gives you one SB for your effort so you don’t walk away completely empty-handed.

Oh, and don’t try answering their surveys with fake information just to get through the survey. Some surveys will purposely ask random questions and then repeat that same question later to see if your answers compare. Other surveys will time how long it takes you to answer. Answer too quickly and you’ll be disqualified. Do too many crooked things too many times and Swagbucks will put you on the banned from surveys list.

Watch videos

This is another relatively easy way to earn SB but it’s also a bit time consuming because you have to sit through all of the videos in a series, including any advertisements played between videos. Swagbucks will let you know how many videos you’ll have to watch up front as well as how many SB you’ll earn from watching the videos. For example, one time you may be asked to watch 6 videos to earn 2 SB. Another time, you may only have to watch 1 video to earn 1 SB.

Crave

Similar to watching videos, Crave tasks ask you to consume web content to earn your SB. They may ask you to read through a top 10 list or watch the first few minutes of a video. Usually you’ll earn around 1-2 SB for consuming Crave content.

Shopping

This is by far the quickest way to earn a ton of SB. Click the Shop link in Swagbucks, choose a merchant and click through to their store. When you do this, you’ll be rewarded with a percentage of your purchase back in SB. For example, as of this writing, you can earn up to 8 SB per dollar spent at Hotels.com, 6 SB per dollar spent at Macy’s and 9 SB per dollar spent at Old Navy. There are hundreds are merchants to choose from. You have nothing to lose by doing this and everything to gain.

Just by using Swagbucks to click through to GoDaddy and do something I had to do anyway—renew a bunch of domains—I earned 742 SB in one purchase, 479 SB in another and 52 SB in a third purchase. That adds up to 1,273 SB buying things I was going to buy anyway. So in a sense, by clicking through to GoDaddy from Swagbucks, I received $12.73 in cash back bonuses on my purchases.

Discover

Somewhat related to shopping, Swagbucks has a Discover section where you can sign up for regular and trial offers to earn SB. For example, right now if you sign up for DollarShaveClub.com, you can earn 800 SB. Or if you sign up to be an Uber driver, you can earn 4,750 SB!

Search

If you can live without Google as your search engine, you can earn SB just by doing web searches from the Swagbucks website. Or make the Swagbucks search engine your default search in your browser and earn SB without even thinking about it. You’ll get Yahoo-based search results instead of Google but you’ll also be accumulating those precious SB along the way.

I was never able to find a definitive answer as to how many SB a Swagbucks search (or searches) will net you, just that Swagbucks will reward you for doing legitimate searches via their search engine.

Swag Codes

To make sure you never lose interest in earning SB, Swagbucks periodically announces Swag Codes. These are just like coupon codes except you don’t have to buy anything. Instead, you just type the Swag Code in on the Swagbucks website and click the Redeem button. That’s it. Nothing more to it.

Swagbucks likes to mix up where they release their Swagbucks code so you’ll want to follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Or, for an even easier way to make sure you never miss a new Swag Code, install the Google Chrome SwagButton extension or the Firefox SwagButton extension. With the extension installed, you’ll see a popup in your browser appear every time a new Swag Code is released along with instructions on how to find and redeem it.

Refer friends

Have friends that might be interested in earning SB like you? Send them your referral link (easily found in your account settings) and you’ll earn 10% of everything your friends earn in their Swagbucks account. The best part is that Swagbucks doesn’t take away 10% of your friends’ earnings. Instead they match it. So if your friend earns 100 SB, you get 10 SB and your friend still gets their full 100.

Games

I intentionally left this one for last since it is my least favorite. But it may end up being your favorite. Swagbucks rewards you for playing online games. My problem is that many of these online games require real money to play. For example, one game requires that you sign up for an account and deposit $9.99 or more into your account. After you do this and play 5 spins in the game, you’ll earn 1,500 SB. Technically you come out ahead by doing this but I’m just not a fan of the whole deposit money to earn SB approach.

Swagbucks mobile apps

Almost everything mentioned above can be accomplished on your smartphone or tablet using the Swagbucks app. You can find out more about the Swagbucks app here.

Speaking of apps, you can use the Swagbucks app to look for opportunities to earn SB just by downloading and trying other apps. If you don’t like the app, uninstall it. You’ll still earn the SB (for the apps that just require you do download and start).

Other ways to earn

As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are dozens of ways to earn SB and they’re not all mentioned here. Once you join, explore the Swagbucks website and look for bonuses, challenges and more. There’s also a running “To Do List” that rewards you additional SB every day if you complete 5 of the 6 items on the list.

Recommendation

So did my one month trial of Swagbucks live up to my expectations? Yes! Specifically, I love how I can choose to interact as much or as little with Swagbucks as I want. Plus, they don’t seem to bother me or interrupt me (unless I want them to). And I see no reason not to do my online shopping through Swagbucks to earn SB for all of my purchases.

Swagbucks won’t make you a ton of money. But if you earn enough SB for a free gift card here and there throughout the year, it’s like getting a birthday present when it’s not even your birthday. I’ve been on Swagbucks for just over one month and I’ve already earned 2,095 SB. Happy birthday to me!

Click this link to start earning your free gift cards with Swagbucks