I started using Swagbucks on Nov. 4, 2013 thanks to a recommendation from a trusted blogger I follow (and here I am spreading the news on). She insisted you could earn cash from Swagbucks with very little work.

In my first week (5 days) of playing around with Swagbucks in my spare time, I had the following results:

• 50 Swagbucks by filling out registration and profile information on my account
• 75 Swagbucks for using the search engine
• 24 Swagbucks for viewing special offers, daily poll and using tool bar
• 10 Swagbucks for liking on Facebook
• 400 Swagbucks for signing up for Credit Sesame (a free monitoring service similar to Credit Karma)

My total after my first 5 days was 559 Swagbucks.

So, what could I do with 559 Swagbucks?

A $5 gift card to Amazon.com is only 450 Swagbucks. Most other $5 gift cards (including Starbucks, Target and Walmart) cost 500 Swagbucks. So one Swagbuck is essentially equal to one penny. That doesn’t sound like much, but they can really add up and just in your spare time.

What I chose to do with my 559 Swagbucks was save them up until I had 2,500 Swagbucks and could redeem them for a $25 PayPal deposit. That’s right — real cash!

Beyond the First Week

After my first 5 days I continued learning more about what I could do on Swagbucks. Here is how I continued to earn Swagbucks:

• 2000 Swagbucks for ordering a Wen shampoo kit for $29.95. Loved the shampoo! Waiting to reorder because it is so expensive though.
• 1400 Swagbucks for signing up for FreeCreditScore.com trial and later canceled.
• 1040 Swagbucks for another offer (I can’t tell from the description what offer this was)
• 1000 Swagbucks for signing up for ProtectMyID.com trial for $1 and later canceled.
• 750 Swagbucks for purchasing first set of Elmo’s Learning Adventure for $12.90 (including shipping) for my 2-year-old for Christmas and canceled future shipments.
• 578 Swagbucks for viewing special offers, games, daily polls, using tool bar, Facebook codes, daily bonuses, etc.
• 500 Swagbucks for downloading the MobileXpressions app on my phone, I think I could have earned more SwagBucks if I had kept it but I didn’t like having it on my phone and deleted it.
• 500 Swagbucks for joining Manilla.com and adding 3 bills. Haven’t done anything further with the site.
• 400 Swagbucks for signing up with Permission Research for Windows. I ended up canceling before I could earn more SwagBucks because I didn’t like having the program on my computer.
• 347 Swagbucks for using the search engine.
• 300 Swagbucks for registering to join a Neilson Consumer Panel.
• 200 Swagbucks for getting a car insurance quote from Esurance (it really was lower than what I am paying now so I really need to think about switching).
• 200 Swagbucks for free trial of eMusic and even got $10 worth of songs for free plus $5 more free when I tried to cancel my subscription. I still cancelled after using my free $15 in songs.
• 150 Swagbucks for free trial of Audible from Amazon and even got a free audio book before I canceled.
• 93 Swagbucks for shopping at Kohls to buy Christmas presents
• 69 Swagbucks for running Swag TV videos in the background while doing other work.

When you add all of these together, plus what I earned in my first five days, it comes to a total of 10,086 Swagbucks in the 10 weeks from Nov. 4, 2013 to Jan 13, 2014.

As you can see, I do several trial offers that I end up canceling and I have done some paid offers as well. I also use Swagbucks as my search engine and am surprised to see how much I have earned just by doing my internet searches from Swagbucks search.

What did I do with my Swagbucks?

• $25 (2,500 Swagbucks) in my PayPal account in December used for Christmas presents for kids
• $25 (2,250 Swagbucks) in Amazon gift cards in December for Christmas presents for kids
• $50 (5,000 Swagbucks) in my PayPal account in January

This is how I earned my first $100 cash from Swagbucks in 10 weeks. (I know Amazon gift cards really aren’t cash, but they saved me from spending cash at Christmas time.) Plus I ended up with a free digital CD from eMusic that I had been wanting before Christmas but never bought for myself. This leaves 336 Swagbucks to put me on my way to my next reward.

Create your own profile and start earning SwagBucks like I did.