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How To Get Gems With a PayPal Account and Some Free Time

Note that this is somewhat out of date! I haven’t had the time to update the guide, but I will if enough people are interested (and if this one doesn’t include enough relevant information.)

Allow me to start by saying that I have never in my life written a practical how-to guide. I may have explained how to use a toaster once for a class project, but that’s about it. So with that disclaimer in mind, if you have any questions at all by the end of this, please feel free to ask! The goal is to help, and I’m a pretty firm believer that I’ll never learn how to do something better without feedback.

If this post seems to go alright, I’m planning to continue the series with other services I’ve had good experiences with – feel free to send me recommendations for any you think are worth checking out! (At least one person already has and I’ll definitely be looking into it!)

First up… Swagbucks!

I first joined this site back in 2012 and used it daily for about two months before forgetting all about it. I came back two weeks ago when I started planning care packages to send my boyfriend while he’s away in Arizona for the next year. I’ve been using it every day since, and I’ve earned five $5 gift cards since (six including the one I’d accumulated points for back in 2012!) That’s $30 for something I do while sitting around and watching tv.

This guide is meant to help people starting out – if you want a guide for earning the most possible points, I suggest searching around for a more in-depth guide.

I also highly recommend creating a separate email to use for offers – the site itself hasn't given me any problems, but the moment you start registering your email for offers you’re going to get a whole lot of unwelcome messages!

If you do join, please use my link. I would really appreciate it!

How it works

You do stuff – watch videos, search the web, fill out surveys, participate in rewards offers, even shop online – and you accumulate Swagbucks. Every day, there are two goals: one daily goal and one stretch goal. Meeting one or both gets you a small reward when you get to the next month, but even small amounts add up! Meeting the first goal for a week or more gets you increasing rewards for the next month. These bonus points are awarded on the 5th.

The $5 gift cards are each about 500 Swagbucks, though some are a little less. I typically earn one gift card every three days or so if I don't put any particular effort into accumulating points. However, the minimum value for a PayPal gift card is $25, which puts its cost at 2,500 Swagbucks.

Toolbar/Extension

I highly recommend installing the extension for your browser for a few reasons. First, you get one Swagbuck every day just for having it installed. Second, it makes it easy to use their search engine when you think of it. Another bonus that I haven’t personally taken much advantage of is that it recognizes when you’re on a site that gives you Swagbucks for buying things and gives you the option to turn on “Shop and Earn” without navigating through the main Swagbucks site. It also alerts you when there is a new swag code available, tells you when your balance has increased, and makes it very easy to have the video player open in a small window of its own.

To-Do List

When I sign on each day, the first thing I do is click through the daily to-do list. The daily poll is a simple question, and often you can get offers for 1 or 2 Swagbucks after you’ve answered. The NOSO (No Obligation Special Offers) are a few pages you click through – just hit “skip” or “continue” for everything and you’ll get 2 Swagbucks at the end! The “Daily Crave” just has you look at pages or possibly watch a couple of videos to get credit. Just from doing these things and having the toolbar installed, you’ll be getting 5 Swagbucks per day.

Videos

As far as I’ve found, the best, most consistent way to reach the daily goal on this site is to open up the video player from the extension, click on a video, then wait for the bar to advance and click the next one. You get 3 SB for watching 10 videos and if you’re only waiting for the bar each takes about 30 seconds. This is the one I typically do while watching TV – it isn’t the fastest way, but it’s consistent and it doesn’t take much effort at all.

Swagbucks TV Mobile/EntertaiNOW

These are the mobile TV aps. If your phone can run them, I highly recommend using these! SBTV Mobile gives you 2 Swagbucks for every five videos watched, while EntertaiNOW gives 2 Swagbucks for every 10 videos watched.

My recommendations for these are simple: in the SBTV app, go to Home & Garden and favorite (swipe from right to left) the two “10 Second How-To” videos, and in EntertaiNOW favorite the Touch trailer. For each app, go to your favorites and watch the videos. The ones I’ve recommended are very short and the apps automatically play the next video when one is done, repeating when they reach the end of the current playlist. Make sure you’re on wifi because this will eat up your data! Every so often, check on the progress. Sometimes they freeze, and I’ve occasionally gotten static ads that need closing before they continue playing. But I’ve earned 100 Swagbucks today at time of writing, just from letting the apps run.

Special Offers

These can be found both on the Swagbucks home page and under “Discover” on the top bar. These are usually only worth doing for 1-2 Swagbucks a pop, if you have the time to fiddle with them, but I only bother with these when I have time to spare. To get the “good” ones (free with an email signup at most – no real personal information required) takes more effort than I would suggest putting into them unless you really want to pad your balance. If you find one to watch videos and there is a “Watch Another” button, do it! These are often 2 Swagbucks a pop for watching videos, and since they require so little effort they are easily my favorite offers. [Note: On the front page, they're the ones under the heading "Take a Discovery Break" - the offers are from Jun Group.]

DO NOT DO ANY OFFERS THAT REQUIRE A DOWNLOAD! Even if you have an amazingly awesome virus scanner and it tells you there's nothing nasty in there, be careful. I won't even do the coupon offers because you have to install something. It's much better to be safe than sorry so please be safe!

For the various quizzes – ADD/ADHD, MS, etc. – make sure you go far enough that the URL in the address bar no longer shows any referral address (you can pretty easily find it by looking – it will say something along the lines of “refer=xxx” at the end.)

Surveys

These can be very big earners or very frustrating, depending on your demographic and a large amount of luck. If you don’t mind spending time on these, they can be beneficial, but the ones I tend to qualify for almost always take longer than they say they will and I’m usually pretty frustrated by the end. If you want to go for these, I don’t actually have much advice except that you should be prepared to be disqualified from more than you complete. The first five disqualifications for each type (Survey Dashboard and Gold Surveys) per day will give you 1 Swagbucks each.

Whether you plan to use the survey feature or not, I do highly recommend filling out your Survey Profile in your Account page. You get 2 Swagbucks for each section you fill out!

Search

I admit that I usually forget this one. You can get a decent amount of Swagbucks each day by searching regularly, and the toolbar makes this easier. However, since it’s pretty much random, I wouldn’t count on this method either. If you plan to do this, I would again suggest the extension, but setting their search page as your homepage could also work.

Their search is powered by Google and Bing, so the results I’ve gotten haven’t been bad at all. It isn’t a bad search engine and the potential for Swagbucks definitely improves it a bit!

Encrave

These can take a while, but they can be worth it if you really have nothing else to do. Each is worth 1-3 Swagbucks each, so if you're looking to pad your balance these are a little less effective than watching videos for the time involved.

Inbox, Swag Codes, Read, and Games

These three are, in my opinion, more inconsistent than the rest. I’ll describe each briefly, but I do not count on any of these for my daily earnings.

Inbox – Every so often, you will get a message in your inbox with an offer. Occasionally these offers are to watch a video for 2 Swagbucks – those are great! – but often they are advertisements for Swagstakes or for offers that require some type of purchase.

Swag Codes – This is another time when the extension comes in handy. Every so often, the staff will release a limited-time code for a few Swagbucks that you can redeem either through the extension or through the Swagbucks page.

Read - This updates about once a month. Hover over the book covers to find out what you need to do, then click on them and perform that action for a few quick Swagbucks.

Games – These can be really fun if you like games and don’t mind watching ads to get to them. But the winnings are very inconsistent, so unless you really want to play a particular game, this isn’t a good way to try to earn Swagbucks.

Rewards!

Yes, I’ve finally gotten to the important part: the payoff! As I mentioned earlier, most gift cards are about $5/500 Swagbucks. This scales up, so the $25 PayPal card is 2,500 Swagbucks – an intimidating amount, for sure, but not impossible. I’ve nearly earned enough for that in under two weeks without much effort. There are lots of options for gift cards though – Amazon and PayPal are my favorites, but they also have things like Barnes & Noble, Gamestop, Home Depot, Groupon, etc. I highly suggest looking for yourself because there's no way I can list everything. You now get 12% off your first $25 gift card every month, but PayPal sadly is not included in that promo.

For PayPal, you have to have your Swagbucks email associated with the account for it to work.

There are also charities and “Swagstakes” (basically raffles), but if your goal is to earn spending money you'll probably be focusing on the guaranteed payout from gift cards or PayPal.

Rewards take about ten business days to process. This varies a bit, but expect it to take a week or so for you to get anything you order.

Good luck!

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask.

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