Swagbucks - September In Review

For the past month, I have been writing about Swagbucks, a site where you earn Swag Bucks (SB) which you then redeem for gift cards and other prizes. As a follow up to the Swagbucks 101 Series, I am going to put my money where my mouth is and show you my results. In the month of September, I earned 16,341 Swag Bucks. This equals $163.41. From these earnings I bought 5 $5.00 Amazon gift cards at 450 SB each - there is a limit of 5 per month - (2250 SB), and 5 $25.00 Paypal payments at 2500 SB each (12,500 SB). This left 1591 SB in my Swagbucks account. Here is my ledger:

The biggest earnings chunk (47%) came from running the mobile apps as discussed in the Swagbucks 101 Series. I earned 7800 SB ($78.00) from them. If you only run the apps each day you can see you will get a solid payout each month.

Next came Special Offers at 3589 SB (21%). There are many ways to earn in this category. Some include Cafe Mom (on the Swagbucks Mobile app), offers from the Wall (your "Home Page" in Swagbucks), Jun Group Videos (AKA Laptop Guy), and  most things found in the "Discover" tab.

The third biggest payout was Surveys (called Answers in the ledger) at 21%. Surveys are completely hit or miss, but if you try to do the ones with the best payout for the least amount of time you can maximize your time and effort. Be prepared to get disqualified a lot. I actually stopped doing surveys because of the time involved and the failure rate. We will see how this affects my October earnings.

The next best earner was "Other" which paid 778 SB (4%).  The majority of this was 700 SB for Swagbucks Accelerator. I have since upgraded to Accelerator Plus and will write about this in a future post.

The remainder was split up among Encrave (216 SB), Bonus SB (120 SB), Swag Codes (110 SB), Searching (99 SB), Tasks (53 SB), Games (42 SB), Swagbucks TV - not the mobile app (24 SB), and Referrals (22 SB).
As you can see this is a pretty easy way to earn some extra cash with minimum work involved. Check out the Swagbucks 101 Series for more info.

Part 1 Swagbucks Basics
Part 2 Swagbucks TV app
Part 3 EntertaiNow app
Part 4 Moviecli.ps app
Part 5 Sportly.tv app

eBay - My Thoughts

I have been a full time seller on eBay since January of 2012. I got laid off from my job and needed to do something to make ends meet. eBay became the answer. I am my own boss, answer to no one (except an occasional unhappy buyer), and I enjoy the experiences that picking and thrifting offer. Since then a lot has changed, sometimes good, sometimes not.
When a change does occur, one thing I have noticed is that a lot of sellers will say how unfair it is, or they will never sell on eBay again, how it will put them out of business, or what have you. From uploading tracking, to Cassini, to the defect rate, to the coming spinoff of Paypal, there has always been a "sky is falling" mentality among certain sellers.
The bottom line is this: I have weathered all these changes and survived. Why? How? Because when something new is introduced instead of protesting and complaining, I adapt to it as quickly as possible. I find out as much as I can about it and do what I need to do to stay current. The defect rate is a good example of this. I was very concerned about this so much so that I actually called eBay about it. The rep I talked to basically said "you're doing a great job, just keep it up". And guess what? He was right. My defect rate is down to 0.81% (4 defects in close to 500 transactions). I have maintained Top Rated status through it all, and I have opened a second account that has become Top Rated also.
One thing I have found is when things start going sideways it is usually my fault (not listing new products, not adapting Best Practices, etc.), and not some eBay conspiracy to put me out of business.
The lesson here is do the right thing, and keep doing the right thing. And then do the right thing again. You know what will happen? You will usually come out okay.