Swagbucks / MyPoints Portals
My Experience
I’ve earned >$600 and counting on Swagbucks and MyPoints, so yeah, I’d recommend it.
Swagbucks and MyPoints are free shopping portals. They’re owned by the company and work the same way. You click a link to one of your favorite retailers from their website. Swagbucks then earns a referral reward for your purchase, and they pass some of that onto you in the form of Swagbucks points, which can be redeemed for gift cards or cash via Paypal. Generally speaking 100 Swagbucks Points = approx. 150 MyPoints = $1 USD. I use Swagbucks for two purposes:
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More Bank Bonuses! Banks/brokerages like Chime, SoFi, Upgrade, Discover, and more will offer Swagbucks points for opening accounts, just like normal bank bonuses. You can then redeem those points for cash and easily earn hundreds of dollars. Sometimes you can ‘stack’ multiple rewards so you receive money from Swagbucks in addition to what you receive from the bank!
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Large Purchases: If you’re making a purchase from a sponsored retailer, start out on the Swagbucks site and you’ll get some percentage back. This usually isn’t an enormous amount off – maybe 1-4% back. However, sometimes they run deals with 10-20% off.
I love Swagbucks and MyPoints. They’re extremely easy to use. They used to have a bad reputation for being unreliable – you would click through the Swagbucks link, buy something, and Swagbucks would just never credit your account with any points. Nowadays, Swagbucks and MyPoints are much better with ‘tracking’ offers. Plus, their customer service is pretty good! If you feel you’re missing cash back, they’ll usually award it to you if you can show them some kind of proof.
Rewards “pend” for some time. Typically, if a reward is “pending”, that means you earned it but you need to wait before you can redeem those points for cash or gift cards. They can claw the points back if, for example, you return whatever you purchased.
You can also earn money on Swagbucks for playing games and taking surveys, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I have some tips:
(1) Use a Screen Recorder like ScreenCapture.com. This way, you’ll have proof that you went through the Swagbucks link. (2) Always compare points across portals. An easy way to do that is by looking up the retailer on CashBackMonitor. There can sometimes be a meaningful difference! (3) In that vein, always check MyPoints first. Even though Swagbucks and MyPoints are run by the same company, MyPoints often offers more rewards but no monthly gift card discount (see below). (4) Once per month, Swagbucks (but not MyPoints) lets you redeem one $25 non-Paypal gift card for 12% off. Make use of that each month you can. (5) Some people are tempted to create multiple accounts and refer themselves. Don’t. You’ll get banned and you can even lose your Swagbucks/MyPoints balance.
Put cash back in your wallet! Swagbucks and MyPoints are free shopping portals. They’re owned by the company and work the same way. You click a link to one of your favorite retailers from their website. Swagbucks then earns a referral reward for your purchase, and they pass some of that onto you in the form of Swagbucks points, which can be redeemed for gift cards or cash via Paypal. Generally speaking 100 Swagbucks Points = approx. 150 MyPoints = $1 USD.