Let me ask you a question: how many times a week do you get on Google or Yahoo! and use the search bar? It seems that I am always searching for something! Until a few months ago, I thought there was nothing more to conducting an internet search than just to type in a few words and get the results. But, as it turns out, there's a search engine company called Swagbucks that allows you to get rewards every time you conduct an internet search through them! How cool is that?!
I stumbled onto Swagbucks through Facebook, actually. A couple of my FB friends posted statuses about it, and I finally got curious enough to check it out myself.
Basically, you sign up for an account at Swagbucks, and you have an option to install a search bar (that's connected directly to your Swagbucks account) into your internet browser. Any time you use Swagbucks, you have a chance of earning reward points.
I don't earn reward points every single time I use Swagbucks to conduct an internet search, but I figure if I'm going to be searching anyway, I might as well give myself a chance to get some rewards while I'm at it! There are other ways to earn reward points other than just conducting internet searches: you can take part in their daily polls, you can take surveys, or you can purchase their daily deals. Basically all I do is conduct internet searches (which earn me anywhere from 0-16 reward points) and participate in daily polls (1 point for every answer). I think the surveys are a hoax -- I don't want the companies to get my personal information, and I'm not interested in sitting through 20- and 40-minute long surveys. But you can earn some pretty hefty points through participating in them (I think I saw one survey that would give you 250 points if you completed it!).
The rewards can be pretty cool, depending on how many points you've earned. I think the rewards that interest me the most are the gift cards, but there are rewards in virtually every category: books, movies, clothing, jewelry, electronics, school supplies... you get the picture. You do have to earn a fairly substantial amount of points to earn a nice reward, but isn't that to be expected?
As a teacher with a couple years of experience under my belt, I can personally attest to the fact that teachers can spend a lot of their own paycheck on their classroom. I think it's because we care so much and want our students to have the best of everything. I think you could use Swagbucks to help you get things for your classroom -- all it costs you is a little bit of internet searching or poll-answering!
You could use Swagbucks to purchase supplies for your classroom or for individual students:
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| A 26- or 39-week subscription to the Wall Street Journal currently costs 3,400 SB |
You could also use your SB reward points to purchase things for your classroom store or for a school raffle to earn money:
And I've noticed that
Swagbucks runs sales on select items at random times. I've seen gift cards on sale before, but they're basically the only thing I keep my eye on at this point, so I'm not sure about the other items. In any case,
Swagbucks seems like a great way to earn some things for your classroom or school without spending more of your own money!
I recently redeemed my first prize -- a $5 Amazon gift card -- and am pretty pleased with the results. It takes about 10 business days to receive your gift card code, but it's free, so I really can't complain!
I won't say that searches conducted through
Swagbucks get you the same results as a
Google search -- they don't -- but if you're searching for something that's fairly popular, you'll find it with a
Swagbucks search, no problem. I keep the search bar installed on my browser window so that I'm not tempted to use
Google, instead. As far I know, you can download the search bar to any browser window an unlimited number of times, so you could install it onto all your home computers and, if your IT crew will let you, install it at work, as well. If you have computers in your classroom, you may consider installing the
Swagbucks toolbar onto those computers, as well (so long as students aren't tempted to redeem prizes for you!).
Swagbucks has a strict policy against searching just to earn points, but if you're going to be searching anyway, you might as well make it a
Swagbucks search!
Have you heard of (or do you currently use) Swagbucks? What are your thoughts on this service?
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