GOOD MORNING SWAGGERNAUTS!
Yesterday the final piece of the new swagbucks puzzle was rolled out.
Swagbucks TV! For now the toolbar (Ways To Earn) doesn't have it, but, if you go to
the homepage and click the EARN tab at the top, you will see the new Swagbucks TV listed.
When you click that, it takes you to a page with several category tabs, and a top 10 list of daily videos. All you have to do is watch, and win!
It is done kind of like searching. You don't win every time you watch a video, its a random chance. When you DO win, it could be anywhere from 1 to 5 swagbucks. It *seems* like the average win is 3 times a day, but its definately possible to get more. Some folks won 6 times yesterday! This might change as they tweak it, I will let you know if I discover any more. (I won 3 times at 5 swagbucks a pop yesterday, once so far today.)
GOOD LUCK, and Enjoy!
I wrote yesterday that I would start laying out some tips for doing special offers. At the moment, this is a bit of a sore subject for me. I had no problem getting the offer companies to credit me for the first couple of months. Now, I have to chase down quite a few of my swagbucks through inquiries. It's not just me, it seems to be happening to a lot of swaggers. I think its a rough patch on the offer companies part that is partly a result of special promotions Swag Bucks has run to get people to do more special offers. I suspect the offer companies business volume went way up, and their ability to respond went down. I HOPE that within a week or two it will settle back down to something more normal. At any rate, special offers are still a GREAT way to earn major swagbucks!
Let's start with simple free offers. There are a total of SIX different offer companies that work with Swag Bucks. Most offer companies have several of the same offers available, but each one pays at a different rate. It is a good idea if you want to do, say, the netflix free trial, that you look around the different offer companies and find the one with the best pay out. I did my netflix trial from PaymentWall and got 965 swagbucks. Some folks do it from gwallet or gambit, and get 540 or so. So you see, it DOES PAY to dig deep!
When you load up the special offers page, the first thing you see is PaymentWall, aka OfferWall. They are the new kids on the block. At first they were really good with crediting- now they are about on par with the other companies.
Below the offer wall is a set of 5 tabs. Gambit, TapJoy (formerly OfferPal), TrialPay, Gwallet, and SuperRewards. Also, on the swagbucks homepage, about halfway down, is a "Slider" bar. If you click the yellow, it slides away and shows a list of icons for special offers. That list slides and slides and slides all the way through. This is from GWallet, and Most of the offers can also be found on the special offers page under their tab.
Each company has its own layout and set of tabs. I tend to go straight for the "free" or "video" tabs.
Videos are a great way to earn swagbucks. They seem to come in waves- sometimes there will be videos on several walls, sometimes there will be none. Just watch the video, and if there are any other things you need to do, like share the link, the description will tell you before you watch the video.
Free offers are, in my mind, broken up into two categories, even though they are all listed together. There's Free Trials, and Truly Free.
The truly free ones range from signing up for an ArcaMax newsletter for 9 or 10 swagbucks, to filling out insurance quotes and getting calls from agents, for anywhere from 50 - 400 swagbucks. There are also programs you can download but beware, sometimes those will set off virus alarms. The offer companies say they check their offers but three times in the last month I have had to start an inquiry reporting a bad link, a bad download, or what have you. The up side is when you report a bad offer, if it is a valid problem offer, they tend to credit you some swagbucks for being diligent and letting them know.
Companies like ArcaMax and EverSave are ALL OVER the boards. They are so tempting! But there is a catch. Each one you do must be done with a different email address. You only get credit for any ArcaMax or EverSave offer ONCE for an email address. I have done ArcaMax 5 times- with 5 different email addresses. (And yes, I use all those emails so they are valid!) You can kind of tell if an offer is going to be one of those two companies, because they are almost always 9, 10, 11, or 12 swagbuck offers.
A LOT of the free offers can be VERY confusing, until you learn their sneaky tricks. Most often you will have your initial sign up form to fill out. Or if it's a "quiz" offer, you do their quiz first. Then you have to go through page after page after page of stuff they want you to sign up for. Always look for the SKIP, NO THANKS, NEXT OFFER type buttons. You don't have to sign up for ANY of the junk they throw at you.
A lot of the offers try to switch it up with "radial button" offer pages. Where you have a long long list of YES / NO buttons to click. Oh my gosh this used to be a pain in my butt until I learned a trick. Click NO on the first one, then just keep pressing Tab & Down Arrow all the way through. No NO NO No no nO NO! lol
If you click NO on all, and a pop up tells you that you need to press YES to at least 1, or 2 offers, no worries. Go ahead and click a couple random ones to say YES. After you finish filling out the rest of the page, it will open up the offer you chose YES for- Just Skip It! Pass, No Thanks, whatever the button says. They are tricksy, but you just be tricksier!
When you finally get to the end, you will know because you either see your quiz results, or a page will load up from the original offer company. Check your email, make sure you confirm if they sent you a confirmation email.
Free Trial Offers are an AMAZING way to earn swagbucks. They credit with the most regularity, for one thing *chuckle*. The best paying ones are for the credit reporting companies. It does not harm your credit when YOU check it. However, some folks don't want to use their credit cards for these things- Totally understandable! Here is a solution many swaggernauts use - get a prepaid, reloadable card, like the one I use- Visa Go-Tag from 7-11 is the one I chose, because it's cheap to get, and no monthly fee as long as it "stays active' every month. You have to call an 800 number to register it, if you want to be able to reload it. Also some companies won't accept them if they aren't associated with your name. SOME companies won't accept them at all, but they are few and far between.
Usually what happens when you use one of those cards is, you sign up, fill out your CC information (cause it works like a credit card), and a $1 or $1.50 charge appears on your card, with a PENDING status. After about a week that pending charge goes away.
I have done three different credit reporting companies, sirius radio, superpass, netflix, an 8 week subscription to TIME and PEOPLE magazines, etc- all with my prepaid card that now has only $5 on it and generally Still works for these offers.
Here's the catch- if you are going to do the free trial offers, you MUST be diligent about keeping track of when you started, when it ends, your log in info, and HOW to cancel. Most of them require you to call an 800# to cancel. So far I have had no problems. Be sure to keep the free trial a few days, a week. If you cancel too soon your swagbucks will be revoked. If its a 30 day offer, keep it a couple weeks. If it's a week offer, keep it 4-5 days.
Netflix I kept because it turns out you can use PayPal to fund that.. and you can use Swagbucks to fund PayPal! :D WIN WIN WIN! (I got 2 $5 amazon cards and a free month of rentals from this trial offer- Too Cool!)
There are also offers which require you to spend money, or purchase something. I have never done one of these but have observed the chatter about them on the
Swagbucks Facebook page. It seems that swagbucks can be credited instantly for those- or take up to to a month. ALso, if you cancel or return whatever it is you bought, they WILL revoke the swagbucks. Sometimes folks have cancelled or returned a product before they got their swagbucks int he first place. Then the amount gets removed from your totals and its just a big mess contacting swagbucks to straighten it out. MY ADVICE: Don't do these offers unless its something you actually want and think you will keep, like the VistaPrint photo printing offer.
Shop & Earn through the swagstore is different from the special offers purchases but works generally the same. Each company listed has different payouts- some are 1 swagbuck per dollar spent for example. Those can take up to 32 days to credit, and have the same danger of losing the swagbucks if returned.
Now, there's something Very Important to learn, to make a habit. I mentioned at the beginning about "chasing down" the swagbucks for some offers. Make it a habit of taking screenshots of what you are doing. (Press PRTSC or Print Screen, open a graphics program like Paint, Photoshop, GIMP, and paste it, save it.) If you have an offer that doesn't credit, you can start a ticket, or inquiry, with the offer company. Each one has something like "Missing Swagbucks?" or "Offer Status" buttons / tabs. Click it, and it will either load in the same page, or open another tab, or another window. You will see all the offers you have tried, all that have completed, and all that are "waiting for offer to report". (TapJoy lists the open / initiated offers at the END so you have to go past all the completed ones to find what you are looking for. The rest are generally listed by date.)
Let's say I did a quiz offer for 41 swagbucks. I entered my email, took the quiz, went through a couple dozen offer pages before I got to my result. I would take a screenshot of the quiz results, save it, then wait to see if the offer credits. If it didn't, I would open the offer status, find it, and once it changes from "Waiting to report" to "initiated" or "viewed" I would click Contact or Start Inquiry, they are all labeled differently.
You will always have to enter the email used for the offer. Sometimes you have to add more information such as address and phone number used, if the offer required such information. If you have screenshots, load them to photobucket, tinypic.com, imageshack.us or other free image hosting site. If you received a confirmation email, open it up, clicc FORWARD as if you are gonna send it on somewhere, then COPY every bit of it, and paste it in the inquiry box. (You have to do it this way so that what you are copying includes the email header, which shows when the mail was originally sent to you.) Send/submit the inquiry and wait for them to reply. Sometimes they will request more information. Keep an eye on your email, or just check back on the inquiry page to see what more you need to do.
Don't try to scam the offer companies. Use valid information. Even though I have had to add my street address to a lot of offers, I haven't gotten too much snail mail. Mostly email, so I would recommend using a junk email account for stuff you don't want to have to wade through every day. The phone number thing is a big if- a lot of folks don't want anyone calling htem at home. If thats the case, forget the auto health life insurance quote offers. They won't credit if you don't use a valid number, and they won't credit if you never answer the phone to talk to an agent. For other offers, I use my magic jack number. Straight to voicemail :P
Theres so much more information to give you about special offers. However the toddler needs mommy, so I will post this, read back over it again and make another blog post to fill out the gaps of information I know are missing. I hope this wasn't too confusing. I hope it wasn't too much info at once! If you have ANY questions, please leave me a comment below so I can answer them for you!
