Let's face it every company has good points and bad points. Anyone that tells you that their company is perfect is smoking that stuff! We all have room for improvement. That's what this article is going to be about. Actually this may be an ongoing segment I use for other companies as well. I'm hoping that my “whining” aka constructive criticism will make some of these companies change for our benefit. So feel free to chime in as well!
Today my focus is on how to make SwagBucks.com better. It's actually a very popular company among my visitors and across the web. It has a lot of fun ways to make EXTRA money. But most people know it as a place to earn money for searching on the web. You can read my SwagBucks.com review here. It will give you the pros and cons of the company. So you'll have a better appreciation for this particular article after reading it.
Ok so let's imagine I had a magic wand and could change Swagbucks.com instantly to make it better for its users. Here's what I do.
1. Drop it like it's hot!
The biggest gripe that folks have with extra opportunities like Swag Bucks is that it takes a lot of time before you can see your first dime with the company. Currently the lowest cash amount you can withdraw via Paypal is $5. That can take a while to reach especially if you aren't involved in the higher paying activities such as offers, Daily Deals, Shop and Earn, etc. Obviously that's by design because SB makes more money off you when you engage in those activities. But I would think folks would be more inclined to try the other things if they could quickly see the fruits of doing the easier activities sooner. So ideally I would like to see the lowest PayPal withdrawal amount DROP down to $1 or $2. This way folks can earn money within a week or two rather than the weeks it can take to reach the $5 (if you only do the easier and lower paying activities). Psychologically once people see their first real cash payment, they get very excited and want to do more and share the joy with their friends. In the long term it would probably actually help SB make even more money.
2. Stop making surveys into damn S.A.T questions!
When SB first introduced surveys I was very excited because the other ways to earn were pretty fun and easy. So I assumed the surveys would be too. Well I was wrong! The surveys ended up being very long and anything but fun! Taking SB surveys literally feels like you're taking a standardized test that will determine if you get into college or not. My next gripe about the surveys is that SB should credit users for screener survey questions. Screener questions are basically used to determine if you qualify for a survey. They really should be very quick. But too often survey sites take advantage of users by making surveys screener questions damn near as long as the surveys themselves!
For instance, one of the first screener questions is usually gender related. Are you a male or female? If I've already told you that I'm a male then why would you need to ask me an additional 10-20 questions to determine that your feminine product survey isn't right for me? Do you think somewhere along the line my gender is going to change and I'll actually be able to give useful input on sanitary “paper towels”, napkins or whatever the hell you call them. You would think common sense would prevail. Well It's been argued that some survey companies are collecting additional data for free using these so-called “screener” surveys. I'm sure that's probably the case with some of these companies. I don't know for certain if is purposely guilty of this practice. Either way, I think companies like SB should provide you some type of compensation for screener questions and make them significantly shorter. Web sites like PaidViewPoint and FusionCash get this and it's why I prefer doing surveys with them versus websites like Swagbucks.
3. More Polls Please!
One of my favorite sections on Swagbucks is their Daily Poll area. It's a one question survey with 4-5 multiple choice answers. They're a quick and easy way to earn a swag buck every day. My question is, why limit them to one a day? Why not follow the model of Instant Cash Sweepstakes and have multiple polls per day where folks get a chance to randomly win various swag bucks denominations as they answer many polls? Users can submit polls and win additional swag bucks if their polls are chosen and used. I think this would be a better alternative to the current survey section and a lot more fun.
4. No More Monopoly Money.
I know this will probably never change, because after all, the site's name is Swagbucks.com. But I'm starting to find that a lot of the sites that use virtual currency are set up in a way to really jerk the users. The fluidity of the virtual money is as annoying as the hiccups. For instance with Amazon gift cards, there is no taxes or shipping cost to buy or send virtual Amazon gift card codes. So why isn't the ratio 1:1 for swag bucks to Amazon gift card? I'm sure in certain situations it makes sense the way Swagbucks handles this because of the cost involved for certain gift cards or prizes. But honestly I'd prefer just straight cash for my activities like InboxDollars and FusionCash handle their activities. It's just more transparent. There is nothing worse when you discover your virtual currency has now lost more buying power because of some changes the parent company makes without warning. SuperPoints users know this all too well.
5. Referral Program
At one point Swagbucks had a great referral program where you could earn unlimited swag bucks on your referrals. It was great for folks like me that are pretty decent at getting people to sign up for stuff like this. But then they flipped it on us and now limit us to 1000 swag bucks per person (or whatever it happens to be now.) I understand from a business perspective why unlimited referrals aren't sustainable for them. But nonetheless it sucks.
I also feel they need to revamp their referral tracking system so you can set up campaigns and track your efforts. With most affiliate programs it gives you the option of adding little customizable sub ids to your referral link so you can determine which of your marketing efforts are working best. So for instance if I have a swag bucks link on my blog homepage it would be nice to have the ability to set up my referral link as such:
www.swagbucks.com/refer/workathomenoscam/subid=homepage ”
Then I can compare to see how many referrals I got from the link on my homepage versus another part of my site or whatever other subid I entered. Right now, all the stats provide you is how many people you have referred and how much swag bucks they have earned you. We need more information so we can improve our promotional efforts. I would also love the ability to contact your referrals so you can encourage them to make more use of the site because so many users are “deadbeats”. I think a good portion of these users have forgotten about the program or just need more guidance on how to make it work for them. Being able to communicate with them would be great and make the company and all of us more money!
Mind Your Business…
As a business owner I understand there are certain considerations and decisions we make from a business point of view that may not always be popular with users or employees. But for the sake of “sustainability” or quite honestly for higher profits, you make them! So I'm sure some of the stuff I've complained about above falls into this. That's all cool and dandy, but as a user I still feel that there should be a way to resolve some of these gripes that balances the needs of the users and the business. It should also be noted that SwagBucks.com isn't the only company in town guilty of some of these complaints. I'll be coming after some other websites guilty of stuff like this too. Don't think you're safe. LOL
At the end of the day, I don't think any of the things I've mentioned above are deal breakers. You're still earning extra money for something you already do unpaid. So earning any type of compensation is an added bonus! But like I said at the start of the article, there is always room for improvement. SwagBucks is a great legitimate company that continues to grow and add various ways to make more money. So I highly recommend them for those that appreciate smaller extra money opportunities. But I think if they made some of the changes listed above, especially the lower payouts, it would make them even better.
So how would you make SwagBucks.com Better?
Ok, you've heard some of the ways I would improve SwagBucks.com, now it's your turn. How would you fix their website if you were in control? Chime in below, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you like what you've read and want more please become a subscriber here. If Swagbucks isn't your thing and would prefer a traditional work at home job, click here. If you want some alternatives to Swagbucks, consider the following companies which address some of the things I discussed above. Fusion Cash, ICS, PVP and InboxDollars. You can also check out our extra money section here.
Thanks for reading as always!
I think Swagbucks is awesome! Their referral program is better than ever at this moment. If I could recommend one thing to Swagbucks it would be to vamp up their referral program, maybe make it possible to message referrals about ways you are making money with Swagbucks. They should also offer a second level to the referral program of maybe 5% or something so we can encourage more and more people to sign up.
I think you have some great suggestion Joshua!
Personally, I think they need to improve their search engine. As it is, it doesn’t support anything beyond English (other users of Latin derived alphabets will probably have issues with accents or special characters, I’m not sure though). This is really annoying for when I’m searching in Japanese, since it won’t even accept my search (since it gets turned into all kinds of mess) and even if I could manage to find a Japanese site, I wouldn’t know if it was what I was searching for since the characters won’t display. I end up having to go to Google (which has a better search engine anyway) if I want to search anything other than English. It throws me off balance to need to switch sites while I’m trying to find something.
But really, in this day and age, there isn’t any reason to provide a service like this without the full availability of Unicode. It just doesn’t make sense for a search engine to have such a dumb limit on it’s searching.
I’ve used Swagbucks enough to earn (possibly more than) fifty dollars worth of $5 Amazon cards, but Amazon gift cards aren’t the most liquid form of money (though I do shop on Amazon a lot so it doesn’t bother me too much). I think they should try to work out something to lower the cost for Paypal payouts. I realize Paypal has a lot of fees, but when $5 requires almost $7.50 to retrieve, it gets a bit ridiculous.
I don’t know if anything can actually be done about it, but other sites that have payed me through Paypal haven’t had to stack on nearly two dollars worth of fees.
Like others, I’ve noticed how I don’t get as many Swagbucks for searching anymore. I don’t even they do the bonus points on Fridays anymore. Now they have this counter that gives almost absurd goals for bonus Swagbucks (for example, my goal today is 90SB! In a day!). It’s pretty much impossible to reach these goals without cheating the system (like using Reload Every on SBTV). What do you get for your trouble? Ten percent of the goal. If you keep this going for seven straight days, you get a bonus 25SB; fourteen straight days gets you a bonus of 100SB; 21 = 200SB; and for the whole month, 400SB. (I’m pretty sure it’s reset on the month)
Sounds pretty awesome, except the goals are absurd for normal use. 90SB is a little below average. I’ve had goals of 120SB that day or higher and your goal changes daily. It would be a great way to get people to continue using the site, but they need to lower the goals a bit.
I have similar gripes about surveys, but a general one I have is that the surveys themselves (on most sites) are far too long for what you get paid. When I have to spend over ten minutes doing a survey for ten cent (arbitrary numbers), it feels like a rip off. I could search random crap on Swagbucks for a better return. This is why I generally don’t do surveys.
I agree with what you said about polls. ICS is really fun and all the pages you go through can earn a lot of ad revenue for the site. If Swagbucks took some tips from that site to expand their poll section a bit, both the company and the users would earn quite a bit more.
Oops, I pretty much wrote my own article… Well, whatever.
Wow, that was a mouthful! lol But I totally agree with a lot of your points and insight. It would be great if SB actually took some of this feedback and made changes. Sigh…
Thanks for chiming in as always!
Great suggestions! Did they ever respond back to you when you made your suggestions?
Always good to hear from you DF! Thanks for chiming in. I still have to reply to that email you sent me. Don’t think I forgot! =)
Yes, Yes and yes! I have actually written to them, often with some of my suggestions. One being, that before you do some of those “brand” activities, to get quick swagbucks, only to find out you have to do some hoop jumping. My suggestion is tell us up front, what the requirements are before, we start the activity, only to find you do not qualify, or ,do not want to deal with, on and on, take up your time for
one SB. As well they should up the amount for the SB TV. and all the ads, you are forced to watch and getting only 1 SB for ridiculously long Vids and Ads. As well I suggested some vids you might like to watch! LOL
Be Blessed Sir E.
DragonFlight
Eddy, Another thing I would like Swag bucks to do is give a better choice of charities to give your swag bucks to. What I mean is, say I give to this month’s charity and I like the charity. I would like sb to keep that charity giving active so I can continue to donate sbs to that charity for as long as I am on sb. Just a minor disappointment, I tithe 10% of my sbs to the charity of the month, however, I am not enamored of all of them. Just my thoughts.
That’s a great suggestion which is totally selfless. It’s a request that they should be able to accomodate easily. Thanks for chiming in.
You mean my company isn’t perfect?? GASP! LOL, when you get to mine, I would like to submit your suggestions to Corporate 🙂 I love my company, but you have some pretty good ideas so…..with that said, this is a great article. I never tried SB personally, but when I used to do surveys, the only site I really liked was Inbox Dollars.I did make almost $200 in a year and a half LOL. Am I understanding SB doesn’t pay cash like Inbox Dollars? Or can you convert Swag Bucks to real money? As far as the PayPal limit, is that a limit set by PayPal or SB? I have a PayPal account, but never tried to withdraw less than $5. However, I do agree 100% that even if it’s one dollar, people get excited when they see payout right away!
LOL. I don’t know what your company is but definitely feel free to send them the article if I do cover them. lol
In terms of your questions about SB, definitely read the original review since it covers everything you asked and how it works: https://www.workathomenoscams.com/2010/01/27/is-swagbucks-com-a-scam/
I agree lower payout amounts would really get people excited. Out of all my gripes I think that’s the easiest one for them change and would have the greatest impact. Thanks for chiming in.
I love Swagbucks and have made a check from them. I am totally in the bandwagon about the surveys, Eddie. Not just with Swagbucks but I just got off of a survey with Quick Pay and they asked me all these questions and I thought I was doing the survey and then they came back and said I didn’t qualify for the rest of the survey and I had already answered those questions to the best of my ability. These survey companies want you to do free surveys and not pay you for them. Their slick and sly tactics are screwing people out of their exchange. And the surveys are as long as the Judgement Day Questionaire. Please jump on these guys. Their are cheating and I know it and you know and so does all the other people taking the surveys. And yes pay people for trying to qualify. Boy, am I hot under the collar about that.
Yes, more polls and more chances for seniors to get money. Take care of us seniors because you might have ask our advice one day! And it is coming!
“Long as a Judgement Day Questionnaire”, I love it! lol But you’re right so many of these survey companies are guilty of this. It wasn’t always like this but it seems to have gotten worst over the years. It’s no wonder why people are running around calling surveys scams or a waste of time.
I can relate to your anger. It would be great if Swagbucks heard our complaints and made these changes for all their members not just seniors. 😉 Everyone would benefit from these improvements. Thanks for chiming in!
Oh I know not just for Seniors Eddy, I’ve got my mind on Seniors because I am one and a lot of them are trying and enjoy the internet for extra money. I am just mad. I hope everybody gets a fair shake.
Understood!
Eddy, I’ve used Swag bucks from time to time, but there is a lot I don’t like about it. I don’t like the surveys for the same reason you stated, it feels like I’m back in school doing SAT’s again. I hated taking those tests! The swag currency is annoying. If I just use it like other search engines then it’s very limited. So outside of it being a very, very slow way to gather bits of money, it doesn’t have enough to keep me going there constantly. It ends up being months between visits, so I have to do a password retrieval. There isn’t anything about it that keeps me going back. In the whole time I’ve swag bucks I’ve never reached the payout limit, so it’s another one of those sites that I joined in the hopes of being able to actually work with, but like all those other sites sitting in my internet closet, it’s got nothing that keeps me going back. If they lowered the pay out to say .50 cents or a dollar, it might be better. If it didn’t take so long to get to that amount it would be better too. I’d probably put it on a daily visit routine. Until then, it’s in the closet so to speak.
Hey Wendy, Obviously I agree with all your points. Thanks for chiming in as always!
I loved Swagbucks when I first joined…got my nephew’s first bday gift for free via amazon. I love Amazon but I just hate the offers that make me fill out forms for credit cards, insurance quotes, etc. I don’t want to download games for 8 SBs. The surveys are a pain in the..well you know as you posted. I haven’t even been going on to get the daily free points (poll, NOSO). Unless you are home 24/7 and on SB FB page you miss out on the codes they give out. I am not in HS anymore so that is a reason I stay off the SB FB page. So I miss out on a lot of codes. I know anything we do is going to be work but SB just isn’t doing anything for me anymore. I see others saying they are getting lower SB for searching now…I’ll take that because it seems like I’m having trouble even getting 7 or 11 SB. Love seeing all my friends on SB that have joined after I put my referral link up but yet they don’t show up for me. Oh well..thanks for all you share for us.
Hi Dawn, There are actually sites that email you when new swagcodes are available. So you might want to try that. But I agree with your observations!
Eddy, I share your pain on the shortcomings of SwagBucks and I avoid those “SAT” surveys like the plaque! One other gripe I have is that I’ve noticed in recent months they do not award as many SB for doing search like they used to. Is it my imagination or am I seeing on a consistent basis I am only awarded 6 or 7 SB for search, whereas I used to get 15, 20, and some cases 29 SB for search. It seems like the company is getting quite stingy, so the way I’d change SB is that I would definitely bring back the generous awards on search. It’s quick, its easy and best of all you get rewarded on the spot. If they ever removed that benefit from SB, I’d probably stop visiting 🙂
Samantha, I’ve noticed the same thing. I thought it was my imagination. LOL But I guess I’m not alone. I totally agree with your observations. I know since they make more money on the harder activities they’re probably purposely trying to steer folks towards that stuff by decreasing the payouts on the easy stuff. I even stopped using the search as much because I find it harder to win of late and it’s definitely less than what we use to get when they first started. Thanks for chiming in.