Disclosure: Witty edutainment is a side hustle.
I write to indulge in boba milk tea, feed a family, and the perspective of hustles told.
In this series of posts, I’ll teach you how to best maximize your time on Swagbucks by establishing a routine instead of seeing the Swagbucks daily goal as a grind. So if you’re spending hours* to get to the first goal, keep reading!
*The rate of return on Swagbucks is pennies. Please don’t grind so hard where you are spending hours.
Contents
- 1 Intro
- 2 The Swagbucks Daily Goal
- 3 The First Swagbucks Goal
- 4 How do you make the Swagbucks Daily Goal?
Intro
Swagbucks was a primary source of income for me when I couldn’t work for medical reasons and paid bills that were stacking up. By creating into an established routine, you can maximize your Swagbucks earning considerably and waste less time earning pennies*. As a hustler, I consistently grind towards a 500sb “daily goal” (or $5/day or $1825/year)! From 2015-2016, I earned almost $6000 (or $16.43/day) and tripled with the combination of tips I’ll be sharing.
The Swagbucks Daily Goal
Swagbucks has a Daily Goal for all their users. If you’re an established active member, everyone’s first goals are the same (new or infrequent users have a lower amount) and second goals based on your performance on the site. In this blog, I’ll help you establish a routine so you’ll make your first goal easy.
All bonuses are awarded by the 5th of the following month (ie. January’s bonuses are awarded on February 5th), but usually posted earlier on the 2nd! You go onto the Home Page on the Daily Goal tab’s drop down to collect them. You have two weeks to claim the bonus manually. This is also where you see your streaks and goal amounts.
The First Swagbucks Goal
This first goal sets you up for their streaks and bonuses, you can either make:
- 7 days (1 week)
- 14 days (2 weeks)
- 21 days (3 weeks)
- Monthly Master (every day of the month)
- OR a combination of any shorter streaks, like (7+14) or (7+21), etc.
Clicking on the little calendar icon on the Daily Goal Tab shows you goals made on specific days and total earns (use this to backtrack your past goals). Clicking on “Show My Winning Streaks” will show your streaks performances.
If you’re like me and a little compulsive, you’d aim for the monthly anyway. The shorter streaks are still worthwhile because, life gets in the way. Do not stress if you miss a day, it is what it is. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
Tip! I like to start bright and early. On the West Coast, this means 12am midnight during resets. I crank for about an hour if I’m having trouble sleeping. Works like a dream those with insomnia!
A typical goal is 75sb to 150sb. Numbers are higher on weekdays, special code days and lower on the weekends and holidays in consideration.
How do you make the Swagbucks Daily Goal?
1. Games
There are 3 free games: Swag Memory, Swag Jump, Swagasaurus Run that you earn 2sb every other game.
No need to focus on the score, you can run that sucker/ dinosaur off the cliff. The memory game is good if you want to challenge your memory. Swag Jump resembles Doodle Jump, but you need to minimally collect a swag symbol and fall. Swagasaurus Run ends when you to run off the landscape. Space out each game by 30 seconds, going faster than that won’t record properly.
Tip! Don’t focus on the score, just play and space out your games!
2. Mobile Apps (60sb + potential bonus rounds)
Mobile apps requires you to have either iOS or Android smartphones. Sorry Microsoft! Most people run apps on their main phones, but I don’t recommend this. Mobile apps put extra usage on your battery. One quickly learns Swagbucks apps are crappy and that’s probably why you need 6 of them that play eerily similar playlists! Swagbucks also does this to pad their download numbers in the App Stores. Use this to your advantage! Dig out your old smartphones!
This is where it makes sense to have 1 or 2 extra “burner phones”. I purchase these on Ebay or local stores with prepaid phones, like Best Buy or Walmart. Inexpensive Android prepaid phones go for under $30, which you can earn back within a month or two (gotta account for those electricity bills, but it’s not bad). Iphones and ipods are also viable devices, but more expensive upfront unless you already have them. Most of my burners are near 3 years old.
The 6 video apps (please note that video counts may not be accurate):
- SBTV, blue or yellow app – 6 videos for 2sb
- Entertainow, pink app – 6 videos for 2 sb
- Moviecli.ps TV, darker pink app – 10 videos for 2sb
- Lifestylz TV, green app – 10 videos for 2sb
- Sportly TV, orange app – 10 videos for 2sb
- IndyMusic TV, dark orange app – 10 videos for 2sb
Each app runs minimally up to 10sb each (60sb) and bonus rounds awards more.
After 5 rounds, the app notifies you whether there are bonus rounds or that you have reached your limit for the day. Based on the number of videos required per round, it might make sense to switch apps. Sometimes it’s swift and other times might require 45 or 98! Each round is different and the transition between each video counts down. If it doesn’t show, bringing up the main menu (3 bars icon) and clicking on your username brings up the countdown.
Apps are fairly passive, there are times Swagbucks tries your patience by introducing ads or screens you need to manually close out of. Swagbucks is paid for running ads, not the apps videos they serve you, so you have to deal with this annoyance.
You aren’t paid for the videos within their apps. Not even if you willingly watch the same ten second clip for hiding your savings in tennis balls. The odd thing about apps is that an individual app will crap on different days. You have one app that does well one day and all of a sudden is complete stuff the next. Other days you end up babysitting all of them and want to chunk that phone (this is why it shouldn’t be your main phone!). This isn’t something Swagbucks will fix (well, they can) without making circumstances worse for the end-user. It goes to say there’s always a new low and #blissfullyignorant.
SBTV is typically the most stable and Entertainow/ Lifestylz alternate in usefulness for me. Your miles vary here, it could be any combination based on your OS, phone and model (in that order). It could even be the phone itself (same models).
On occasion, Swagbucks also run double promotions on specific apps, this is great for cutting your work in half! Still run the usual rounds but you’ll reach your goal sooner! Typically you want to be aware when SBTV will be included in these promos as SBTV needs the fewest videos per round.
Tip! Use a burner phone(s) to run apps to limit the permissions and data it collects. Don’t use your main phone as battery degrades faster from draining and charging the battery frequently. Some of us have really nice phones and it’s a shame to use them for this purpose 😉
Tip#2! Start with SBTV, my next favorites are Entertainow and Lifestylz, followed by Sportly, IndyMusic and MovieClips
3. To-Do List (average 7-15sb)
On the Home Page, on the far left column, there’s a To-Do List with up to 8 greyed out check marks.
Each mark nets you 1sb, whereas completing 6 nets you a “1 step bonus” and completing all 8 nets you a bigger “2 step bonus”. The bonuses on average net you additionally 2-7sb.
Tip! The Daily Crave may allow you to keep going earning multiple rounds. Keep clicking the green button within the completion bubble that appears on the top right. I usually get 2-3 rounds out of this.
Tip #2! Don’t worry about the 7th or 8th checkmark unless you are able to complete a Gold Survey or Peanut Lab survey.
4. Daily Swag codes (2-5sb)
Swagbucks also give out at least one daily Swag code sometime during the day with an hour window to claim them. It’s usually small change, so don’t get overly excited. This is their usual schedule:
- Tuesday – 1 code + 4 iSpy codes starting at 10:00am PST every 2 hours (10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm) with about a 3minute window to claim a limited amount of codes.
- Some Wednesdays- Swagbucks will run a Codes-vaganza. It works similarly to Tuesday, running every other hour with one hour to claim each code. This also artificially raises the Swag code that day.
- Saturday/Sunday – 2sb, usually announced 10am-12pm and needs to be claimed by 12pm.
- Holidays will have a more generous claim window, usually to about 2pm.
- Stealth codes are more common now. Swagbucks will direct traffic to whatever deal they want to highlight by having you claim a unique code that isn’t shareable. The claiming window is longer (2hrs) for this reason.
5. Bills & Collector Bills (>16sb if at least 4 searches/daily)
If you haven’t already defaulted your Search Browser to Swagbucks, it is beneficial to do so. Swagbucks has a Yahoo! backend, upgraded from AOL backend. For insignificant searches, I’ll go ahead and have Swagbucks reel in the search, else I use Google or Bing!.
Each win is at least 4sb to 100sb or even 250sb! Don’t count on the higher search wins, just treat them as a nice surprise when it happens. I usually assume the lowest when I land one.
There is no trick to getting a win, search organically and not “too fast” (you’ll get a warning) and space your search wins at least an hour apart. Given that there are 24hrs in a day, you can either do like a 6hr window in between or try for one every couple hours. I might get one before bed (again I’m up at midnight), one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The average user reports getting about 4 “wins” a day.
Collector Bills
Collector Bills are wonderful, usually, this means the wins are higher than the usual amounts. A full set net you an additional bonus. The bills are randomized when they are awarded and very likely get repeats than not, but better than consistently hitting the lowest bill!
Tip! I use my Swagbucks search as a calculator but also use it for usual searches. If I have specific domains in mind, I’ll type in the address minus the .com ending as it’ll usually pop up as one of the first search results. Ex. ‘facebook’ vs. instead of ‘facebook.com’.
This activity is listed last as it is semi-passive. You can open a separate window (pop up) to the side of your desktop or laptop screen and watch the status bar advance 5% at a time. There are 4 videos shown on the bottom, so I like to use this to keep track of every 20% of my progress.
It’s best to mute your videos (or entire device) as sometimes they can be really loud, screaming and repetitive. I have an extension that mostly takes care of muting specific tabs, but it’s not completely fail-safe so I mute the machine completely. I set it on mute by default and I only opt in if I want audio from On occasion, ads run in between each video. It’s safe to auto-advance them by clicking on the next video about 40secs in, check the bar and make sure it’s 5% more. By default, the player auto-advances but some videos are very long, so you’ll want to speed up that process. This is not my favorite way to earn, but decent in a pinch.
Tip! Start early as it’ll take several hours to run 400 videos to maximize this. And mute it. The entertainment videos are trash, but I do enjoy a good Sailor Moon clip.
Just by doing these 6 activities:
- 10sb (games) +
- 60sb (mobile) +
- 7sb (to do) +
- 2sb (weekend swagcode) +
- 16sb (Search Win) +
- 60sb (Swagbutton Watch) = 155sb, which is well above the typical Swagbucks daily goal!
As an experienced Swagbucker, you’ll find that it’s actually quite easy to make that first Swagbucks daily goal! If you don’t, don’t despair and learn from this routine. 🙂
These are the guaranteed payouts that should sufficiently bring you very close to your daily goals. Anything you do more to pad this is gravy!
Consider signing up using my link if you’re not on Swagbucks yet. There’s nothing more I would love to do as to giving some extra tips to my readers if you found this post helpful! If you’re already on Swagbucks, feel free to share what’s worked for you to completing your daily goal!
Related Posts (Stay tuned!):
- Swagbucks: 16 Ways to Maximize Free Activities towards Second Goal
- Swagbucks: Maximizing The Value of Paid Offers
- Swagbucks: Redeeming Swagbucks
- Swagbucks: As a Job
- Subscribe for: Unpublished Swagbucks Hacks to Maximize Earnings!
This is such a fun idea! I use swagbucks, but I am super lazy and only use the search engine lol. Now you got me thinking it may be time to optimize my swagbucks earnings!
Oh that’s fine! The search engine is a great way to occasionally rack up swagbucks! I have it defaulted as my main search engine but as I don’t like the Yahoo! backend, I’ll use Google for an immediate hit.
Let me know if you do go back in to optimize your earnings. The goal of this series (aside from ripping apart the business model) is to create a system so you’re not spending all your time grinding on Swagbucks. Good luck!