Swagbucks

As I've mentioned before, Swagbucks is a site where you earn points for conducting Internet searches. Since I joined in September, I've cashed out $20 in Amazon gift cards and $5 in Alice.com gift cards. Currently I have points worth another $10 in gift cards sitting in my account. Why have I left them there? You can only cash in your gift cards on the 15th and 30th of each month. Last month, with the holidays, I forgot to cash out. And a funny thing happened. I seemed to earn more points. It usually takes me 3 weeks to earn 45 points. This month, it took 2 weeks.

So I'm experimenting. This morning, I had 104 bucks. Today is Friday, Mega Swag Bucks Day, when points are given out in 5-100 increments. I'd never earned more than 3 Swag Bucks for any given search. (I tend to get 3s first thing in the morning, at the top of the hour.) Most of the time I get 1 buck twice a day, sometimes three times. Technically you can earn bucks for buying items through their Shop & Earn store, but the only purchase I've made using that site did not result in bucks. You have to wait 32 days for it to post, and then when it doesn't post, you have to wait another 30 days for an inquiry. That's just not worth it for the 18 bucks I was supposed to earn.

This afternoon I got a 10 Swag Bucks mega-bill.

So here's my theory. In addition to searching at the top of the hour and early in the day, so far I seem to earn more bucks by not cashing out. I'll continue to the end of the month and then I'll cash out. I'm curious if the rest of the month will bear out my theory.  Regardless, $35 for 4 months of doing the same searches I would do otherwise? I'll take that. To facilitate it, I do keep the swagbucks homepage open at work, where I do a lot of searches. At home, I have the toolbar installed. And sometimes I'll use the search engine to find a book rather than just opening up Amazon. Other than that, I don't do extra searching.