there’s a lot of crazy ass ways to get free stuff/make money out there on the interweb (that is if you’re the kind of guy/gal who listens to banner ads), but is any of it actually worthwhile? in my new feature “i try it”, i um… try it. and see if it’s worth bothering with.
almost all of my favorite blogs are always gum flapping about swagbucks and how awesome they are, so i finally broke down and signed on up. the good news is that it’s easy to sign up, free, and they don’t ask you for any information that you haven’t already been giving out to every tom, dick, and coupon-o-matic in town.
but what the hell is it? most basically, it’s a search engine. install the toolbar, or just go to swagbucks.com and search for stuff like you would search on google or whatever (does anyone use anything other than google?). i didn’t bother with the faq because i’m lazy like that, but basically, as you’re searching for stuff- occasionally a swagbuck will pop up and tell you that you’ve been credited. as you search more, you earn more, and then when you’ve earned a certain amount- you can get some prizes. you can also earn them in other ways… referrals… shopping through their preferred sites… pimping them on your blog …
for funzos, i tried a list of 10 random search terms:
peanut allergy
kobe bryant
spanky pants buy
rolex
symptom checker
dairy blog (totally sweet dairy queen blog came up)
keanu reeves
commemorative plate
disney cinderella
yeast infection
and came up with all of bunk. not surprisingly, my impressions so far: not that cool.
1. the prizes kind of suck. itunes downloads of tv and music… used video games… posters for movies i’ve never heard of… swagbucks t-shirts… sure, if you get like a million swagbucks, you can get an ipod (new?), but the only people who are getting those are the people with the high-traffic blogs who are pimping the virtues of swagbucks and getting all that referral action.
2. the search engine SUCKS BALLS. google is awesome. multi-functional, precise, simple… this one just spits out a bunch of “sponsored links”, and you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the link you’re probably looking for (if they even came up with it). the image search never comes up with more than 5-10 images (usually not related), and the comparison shopping only seems to give you their sponsored stores. like hell i’m using this as my primary search engine.
3. the earning process is slooow. as previously stated, the only people getting to the good prizes are the super-bloggers who are getting all the referrals. they start you off with $3, and after a full 24 hours of using it for searching both at work and at home (i work in front of a computer all damn day), i’m up to $7. almost half way to a single mp3 download!
on a more positive note, i do enjoy the gambling aspect of things- and there is a certain flush of excitement when their dollar bills pop up on the screen. but it’s just so goddamn anti-functional, that i can see the charm wearing off real fast. sorry swagbucks- more like suckbucks.
broke 207 
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