Hello shopaholics! I hope everyone is having an awesome money saving January! Just a quick announcement before we get to this week’s article: If anyone is still trying to learn how to play the coupon game, I am teaching a class January 31 at Friendship Church from 5-7pm. It is open to men or women and I will be covering topics on where to find coupons, how to organize them, where to shop, how to use your store’s coupon policy to your advantage, and more. Hope to see some of you there!
It’s funny how this couponing journey has led to our family trying out so many new things - from different brands and products to eat, to different stores to shop in, different methods of shopping (I was NEVER an online shopper before but now I LOVE it!), and now, I’m starting to try out different ways of saving (earning, really) money. There’s this thing I’ve been hearing about in the blogosphere over the past year that I have been hesitant to try out - mainly because I just didn’t know what it really was or how it worked. A few weeks back, I decided to dig into it a little bit because I kept hearing people talk about it and rave about how easy it was...wow its one more of the things I am wishing I’d known about years ago! So, what am I talking about, you ask???
Swagbucks. Funny sounding isn’t it? Well, its funny alright - funny how you can earn and use Swagbucks to get just about whatever you want without any effort! Several bloggers bragged over Christmas how they’d gotten all of their gifts by using their Swagbucks to pay for them...once again, I was skeptical and once again I was proved wrong!! Now, granted they must have been doing this for a while, but since I joined I can see what they are saying! Let me tell you what Swagbucks is and how easily you can start earning them too!
According to their bio, Swagbucks.com is an online portal dedicated to helping you earn digital dollars called Swag Bucks, which can be redeemed for 1000’s of awesome prizes. It is basically a website that you sign up to join (its free of course-y’all know me and free are like peas and carrots) and then you use their toolbar to search the internet (powered by google!), and occasionally they award you points for your searches. It’s as simple as that! I’ve earned as much as 4 points for doing a search (get this - I searched poopie diaper - my child had one and I so didn’t want to go change her so I just typed it in the search bar - anything to procrastinate from doing the dreaded task!). Typically its 1 point...the points add up and you can use them for many different things...the most popular is an Amazon gift card. 45 swagbucks = a $5 gift card!!!
There are a few additional ways to earn points - these are strictly voluntary on your part if you want to earn more - you can do what’s called "special offers" where you complete offers to be awarded points. I recently earned 3 points for signing up for Home Depot’s Do-it-herself club. There are many of these offers that don’t require you spend any money, but beware, some of the offers do require a purchase - if it’s something you were going to be purchasing anyway, why not get the points as well! Each week they offer one "no obligation" offer code - you just click on there and scroll through a few offers choosing "skip" and at the end you are given a code which you can enter on the home page for a free point. You can also trade in old electronic devices for points. I haven’t tried this yet because if I get a new electronic device, its because the old one is trashed and not worth trading in! Shopping online can earn you points - but in my opinion the return wasn’t as good as some of the other sites (I’ll be doing an article about those next time).
Another VERY easy way to earn is to refer friends! When you invite someone to join, you can earn points on what they earn (just on their online searches, not the other ways to earn) up to a certain amount (kind of reminds me of an Amway or something huh? hahaha). So, if any of you are interested in trying it out, email me at mistifill@gmail.com and I will send you a referral…and once you have signed up you can send referrals to all your friends and family and we’ll all start earning together! In the few weeks that I’ve been doing this, I’ve earned 182 Swagbucks! I’m saving up to go on a spending spree on Amazon!
I do want to point out that this article is definitely not all-inclusive on how Swagbucks works since I am still learning myself...and please do be careful about completing any offers - NEVER give your credit card or bank information to any site you are unsure of!!
