Jenny B.

I joined in 2011. It used to be fun. Sometimes things wouldn't credit but once you learned to screenshot your offers it was easy to get them to credit. But then more and more offers (most of which are not run directly through swagbucks but through 3rd party pay-per-click providers) stopped crediting. Then it got to the point where you were lucky if 1-2 out of 10 would credit without having to "chase down" your swagbucks first through the different offer companies support - then through swagbucks support if the 3rd party company wouldn't credit you.

Surveys are similarly not actually run through swagbucks - but they do Nothing to ensure that users aren't spending 15,30 mins, an hour of their time answering questions just to get "survey is full" or "you do not qualify". Surveys are a Maddening waste of time.

They've removed the 5 ways to earn a free swagbuck every day - now it's down to 2.

Used to be you could watch a few videos and earn a couple swagbucks - now you have to watch 20+ videos (WITH ads in front of them) that are all 1 - 6 minutes each just to earn 6 swagbucks. Yep, that's right, you are going to spend a MINIMUM of 30 minutes, but more like an Hour at least - to earn 6 cents.

That's just insane.

Oh they have half a dozen mobile apps so you can destroy your phone batteries life watching videos so you aren't shackled to your computer - but you are going to be shackled to something because you will need to remain plugged in to power and be next to the phone to click things to "verify" you are there. So - if that's the route you wanna go, well I guess you are also the kind of person that Literally likes to watch paint dry.

They have shifted the emphasis on the site to Shop and earn - spend money to "make" money. Constantly barraged with ads and offers to go spend money you probably don't even have anyway if you are bothering with a site like this (unless you have a big allowance and nothing better to do I guess?)

Search wins used to be a Minimum of 7 swagbucks at the low end - and you could easily win 3, occasionaly 4 times a day just doing normal search activity. Now you are lucky if you get 1 win a day, and most of the time it's 4 swagbucks.

They have constant "team events' and those Used to be easy to participate in. But they've changed how you contribute points to your team - emphasizing surveys (see above), videos (see above), and shopping (see above). I don't even bother with those anymore.

They do "collector bills" which are special graphics for the swagbucks wins - and if you collect them all you get a bonus - but see above. You rarely win anymore.

They are Constantly telling you to refer your friends so you can earn profits from their activities. This used to be easy to do - because it USED to be a site you wanted to tell people about. Now a-days the only people getting a lot of swagbucks are pulling in from websites they run, or paid advertising on sites like Google AdSense.

In my first year with Swagbucks I earned nearly $600. Two years ago my earnings had dropped to about $300. Immediately in January 2015 they started tanking the ways to earn - all the while literally raking in RECORD profits (and being written up in business mags and journals for their incredible profit model) - and my earnings have dropped to about $100 in 2015 and - let me go look - just a hair more than $50 - at least $40 of which was directly from shopping - and only because I was already going to buy those things so I used Swagbucks.

In other words - if you want to have a rewards site for paying you small amounts of cash back for money you were going to spend anyway, go with Swagbucks. Combine those purchases (that they are earning FAR MORE in affiliate commissions on than you are earning cash back) with rewards from your credit cards.

But don't expect miracles, or fun - those are long gone and swagbucks has simply become a profit machine for them - a frustrating grind for the majority of their users.