Ky C.

I've tried quite a few of those "click-to-earn" and survey sites, and most end up being a joke. High cash-out minimums, constantly changing "terms of service" or rewards that never arrive. Swagbucks is actually one of the few that does pay out.

However, there are a few caveats:

1) This site is not for everyone. You will not get rich, and you do need the time and patience if you "work the surveys", and the time and patience to keep track of qualified purchases. It helps to treat it as a job, and keep purchase records, etc and set aside a dedicated time to work the site.

On average, I earn enough for a $25 Amazon eCard a month, but when I sit down and dedicate a few hours a day to it, I've been able to earn $50-75 in a single month, which I have redeemed to my PayPal account as cash.

2) Not all purchases from sites listed as being affiliated with Swagbucks will qualify. For example, Amazon has a small handful of categories you can earn swagbucks from (clothing, jewelry, toys, grooming & beauty, tools and Amazon Home Services), and many other sites also have exclusions or restriction.

Also, to earn the promised swagbucks, you need to click through to the site from the Swagbucks shopping page for that store, or click to activate the "Shop and Earn" feature from the banner on top of the site if you have the Swagbucks browser app installed.

3) Surveys are placed and operated by the various marketing companies, not Swagbucks. Unfortunately, most marketing research companies have a rather narrow "target demographic", and are simply looking for people within that narrow group to validate the sales campaigns they've already committed to. Each product has a particular "demographic" that they want to target: baby products to young urban on-the-go moms, beer to the 21-35 year old "hip" crowd, movies and video games to 14-30 year old males who go to movie theaters at least once a month. Basically, if you don't fit the mold: you're a female gamer, or you don't drink beer or you are older than 40 or make less than $70k a year (which is stupid, because people who make more money don't have the time or desire to spend hours on surveys!), you won't qualify most of the time.

Pro tip: Try the Peanut Labs surveys. They seem to have a better qualifying rate, and the surveys tend to be better organized and run, in general.

4) Disable or whitelist the site to all Ad blockers, trackers (Ghostery, etc) and VPN changers (Hola, ZenMate, your own ISP or browser-provided VPN changer, etc). Using these apps may trigger Swagbucks to disable your account. If you don't want to be tracked, then reward sites like this aren't for you.

5) If your account gets disabled, fight it. Email them, and be polite but persistent. About 10 months ago, I had this happen to me, and I disputed it. They made me send in my ID to prove who I was, and I was reactivated within 7 days of sending a scanned copy to them. I can't prove it, and they won't reveal their reason, but I was disabled the day after I got back from traveling to another state, and I'd been wifi-hopping during my travels. Apparently the "one account per person" excuse is a catch-all reason, and logging in from too many IP addresses in a short amount of time may trigger as suspicious activity.

I had to apply for their credit before I could even access the site. Once inside, I knew right away that I wouldn't be ordering from them, ever -subpar quality products, severe lack of choices, and high interest rates and payments. Honestly, Fingerhut is better for people who need this sort of purchasing option. There is NO way to close the account, and now they keep calling AND texting me several times a day. I refuse to respond. When I tried to change what communications they can send me, all I get is some stupid error code and instructions to call them.