I thought I would make a Swagbucks for beginners tutorial for my referrals and anyone else who needs it.

First, if you have not signed up, you can do so here: Swagbucks Sign Up

You will get 30 SwagBucks (SBs) just for signing up, or more if I have a promo code listed here : No Active Code

Once you have signed up, there are several ways to win:

• Searching
• Codes
• Daily points (Toolbar use, Vote on Daily Poll, Check Trusted Surveys Page, NOSOs page)
• Special Offers & Tasks
• Matching referral points (when you refer someone, you get matching bucks for their searches up to 1000SBs)
• Shop & Earn (2SBs for every $1 you spend on a list of stores)
• Random promos TSG runs, like points for tweeting about Swagbucks etc
• SBTV – win just watching videos like you would on youtube!
• Games – still in beta so you may not have access to them but you play games and win up to 10SBs a day just for playing plus you can enter tournaments for more.

See my post about earning SwagBucks searching and using dailies here

The Toolbar

The toolbar has been virus free for me and helps me remember to search using SwagBucks.  I usually get 3-4 search wins a day, for 7-12 SBs each.  Redemptions for swagbucks are limited at 2 per day and a maximum of 5 of each prize per month (so you can redeem five $5 Amazon cards and a $50 one or five $5 paypal payments etc).  The best deal, if you will buy stuff from Amazon, is the $5 Amazon gift cards at 450SBs each.  I easily get five of these cards a month.

Enter Codes in Gimme Box

Codes can be found in many places:

• Swagbucks’ facebook page
• Swagbucks’ twitterfeed
• Swagbucks’ homepage
• Swagbucks’ blog
• The Swidget (which you can see to the right of this post, you are free to use mine but you can get referrals using your own)
• Messages from The Swag Guy (TSG) either on your toolbar or in your messages on Swagbucks

Once you find a code, you enter it in the ‘Gimme Box’ shown here

Do connect your facebook account to Swagbucks, every time you win, it will post a link to your account with your referral link to help you get more referrals.  The SB facebook page is also a wealth of information, and if there is a code out you will see lots of people saying Thanks TSG.  You can check your Swidget to see where the code is but don’t ask on the wall, you are not allowed to give out the code, just hints to help people find it.  Beware of people who say they will give you the code on facebook as you can get your account deactivated for using their sites.

FAQs

How much can I win on Swagbucks? It really differs depending on the amount of time you are willing to put into it and whether you do special offers.  Living in Canada, many of the special offers are not available to me but I still make $25+ a month from it. I usually get 3-4 search wins per day and an average of 1 code win per day as well as the daily points and any special offers I do.

What is the code? As mentioned above, people can’t give you the code, but they can help you find it.  If you are found sharing an active code, you can be deactivated and its not unheard of for the code to be ended early as a result of code sharing.  If you see people posting 8SBs for gmail (or whatever word) that is a search win, not a code.  Generally we find wins are grouped so if a few people posted they have a search win, the ’swag gates are open’ and its a good time to search.  Not all searches win and you can get your account locked if you are found to search unnaturally or too much in a short amount of time.

Prizes: As already mentioned, you can redeem your swagbucks for 2 prizes a day, with a maximum of 5 of each prize (for the giftcards, different denominations are classed as different prizes and you can redeem for five each of $5, $25 and $50 in a month if you have enough swagbucks).  You must verify prize orders by clicking on the email they send you and after verification, they will take some time to be applied.  The delivery time is noted on the prize pages.  For Amazon gift cards it is 10-14 days and they appear under ‘My Giftcards’ in ‘My Account’, others are physical prizes and shipped to you.

Amazon gift cards are stackable and once put into your Amazon account, do not expire.

Special Offers: The special offers are third party software and each of the ‘walls’ with different offers are run by a different company.  Sometimes they do not credit you with your swagbucks properly, so after doing any special offer, task or survey, take a screenshot of the completion screen so you have proof that you completed it if you need it.  You can contact them by clicking the missing swagbucks link on that wall.  If you are not sure how to take a screenshot, find out how here and you can save it to the internet using any photo hosting software like tinypic.com and send the offer company the link.

Beware of special offers that require downloads, some do have spyware in them so make sure your virus software is up to date.

Searching: You should use swagbucks for natural searching, searching too much or for random strings of letters etc can get your account deactivated.  Not all searches will win, it doesn’t change according to what you search for but search wins seem to happen in bunches so if your friends are winning its a good time to search.  I usually get 3-4 search wins per day (some days just 2 wins and very occasionally, 5 wins).  On Fridays, we have Mega SwagBuck Days (MSBD) where you can win huge amounts for search wins, it is not guaranteed, in just under 5 months I have won 30+ on a search 3 times.

Codes: are gifts from TSG, sometimes we get 3 a day, sometimes no codes.   The places you can find them are above and codes can be any amount of swagbucks.  They are usually timed, and are dynamic codes so you have to cut and paste them quickly once you find them & refresh the page if it doesn’t work for you and you know its still active.  The Facebook page will fill with Thanks TSG when there is an active code, the swidget (on the right on this page) will tell you where to look for it.  Sometimes it is a code hunt and you have to find it, others it is just typed out for you.  Codes usually look like this:  IamACode863H98 and the random letters and numbers at the end will change.  Code times (and all times posted by TSG) are posted in Pacific local time which is 3 hours behind Eastern and 8 hours behind UK time.  There is a great blog by a swaggernaut that will help you know what codes look like and where to find them, TattooAstronomy breaks down each code after they expire to show people how they can be found etc.