"Swagbucks"... dost my eyes decieve me, or is that free money headed our way?? Oh yes, it totally is.

A blogger buddy emailed me today asking me if I'd played around with swagbucks at all, and if so whether I'd recommend it...  I replied, why yes I do!  And it's pretty much free money, and fabulous.  

Then I started trying to remember why I hadn't posted about Swagbucks over here yet, and realized, oh right, it's because I've barely posted at all in the last two months.  Oops.  I guess I've been busy or something.  Which reminds me, two months ago today was my wedding day...  Happy two-monthiversary hottie hubbie!

So yeah, swagbucks is a search engine that pays you -- you'll never guess -- "swagbucks" for making searches.  Basically, it looks a lot like google, only with more sponsored links on top.  Those advertised sponsors = money for you.  Which is kind of fair when you think about it... google, bing, yahoo and everybody are all making money off of advertising while you search the web, and are all gathering information about you to sell to market researchers -- why shouldn't you get a cut of the cash?

Besides the search engine, which periodically "awards" you with swagbucks of varying amounts, you can do other things to earn "extra" swagbucks too -- taking surveys, hunting for codes on their blog, recycling your old electronics through them -- but generally I don't bother with any of that, I just use it for searches.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I use it more for navigation then I do actual searches.  I'll use swagbucks to get around to my email, favorite blogs, news sites, stuff like that.  If I'm doing any searching more complicated than "yogi organic tea" or "Atlanta library" or "my stonyfield rewards" or whatever I just switch back to google.  I installed a swagbucks plugin on the search drop-box in the top corner of my browser, so its super easy to switch back and forth if swagbucks gets annoying.

Anyway, your swagbucks can later be cashed-in for giftcards, prizes, paypal, Mp3 downloads, and lots of other stuff, but the best bang for your swagbuck is to trade them in for Amazon $5 giftcodes once you hit 450.  I've cashed in for almost $100 worth of Amazon money over the course of a year, so it definitely adds up!  And its more or less effortless cash. 

Then, once you're hooked, the way to REALLY start racking up the points is to start referring people.  Like if I were to refer you, my beloved reader, I would get extra credit for the first 1000 swagbucks you "won" from searches.  Which is to say, if you feel like playing with swagbucks, you should totally use my referral link muahahahaha.   ;P

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/misseliza123

Give it a go!  It's an easy way to wind up with a bit more spending money.  :)