Just what the heck is a Swagbuck?

If you've taken a tour of my blog - and, hey, who hasn't:) You might have noticed that there's a banner at the bottom for Swagbucks - the "premier digital dollar". If you haven't started doing your searches through Swagbucks I highly recommend signing up and giving it a try. 

First of all, let me explain what Swagbucks is. Swagbucks is a search engine. Sort of. That's what you're going to notice first. It's powered by Google and Ask.com and you're going to get the same quality of information that you would get if you just did your search through the Google or Yahoo home page. The difference is that you will randomly get rewarded with Swagbucks in random denominations. The more searches you do the more opportunities you have for earning Swagbucks.

Secondly, You can get Swagbucks for shopping through the Swagbucks stores. You get 1 Swagbuck for every $5 spent. If you're going to spend the money anyway through these online retailers this is another way for you to get some extra credit.

Thirdly, you can "Go Green" by recycling your old cell phones. I just looked up the cell phone I just replaced and it appears I could get 47 Swagbucks for it. Sweet!

Fourthly, there are occasionally free Swagcodes sent out on Facebook, the Swag Guy blog, and Twitter that you can snag and add to your account that will net you some extra 'bucks. Oh, and if you sign up through my banner at the bottom of the page I can benefit by telling a friend. Just spreading the word gives you some Swagbucks.

Oh, there's more - and there's less - if you want. There's an IE toolbar if you want your Swagbucks search at your finger tips. There's also a plugin for Firefox. If you're using Safari you'll need to just manually put in on the toolbar and make sure to do searches from there.

So, why would searching through Swagbucks be a Cool Idea? If you do nothing but a few searches a day, like I do, in a few months you could have around 100 Swagbucks. For this I could get 2 - $5 gift cards to Amazon and have a bit left still in my account. Or I could get 2-$5 Starbucks cards or a $10 Barnes and Noble Card. It's not going to make me rich but I'm already doing the searches so why can't I get something extra for it if it's being offered. 

I'm not talking about expectation here. No one owes me for the things I look up online. No ones me free Swagbucks when I go to the fan site on Facebook. I'm talking about being thankful that I can take advantage of the opportunity that exists for as long as it's able to exist. 

So, check out Swagbucks. Pick up some Stuff We All Get. Pass it along and help out some friends, too. We're all out there Googling - see, it's a verb already! Swagbucks is just helping us with a bit on the side and making it a Very Cool Idea.