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Swagbucks is once again offering the ability to buy Swagbucks at cost, making this a great way of generating some credit card spend.
The Deal
- Buy 2,000 Swagbucks for $20.
- Direct link to offer.
- Greg’s Swagbucks referral link.
Key Terms
- Limit 2-3 purchases of Swagbucks per day.
Quick Thoughts
Swagbucks ran this promotion for about a month recently. It ended a week ago or so but has made another return, so hopefully it’ll stick around for a month once again.
That’s because it’s a great way to generate some credit card spend each day at no cost. You buy 2,000 Swagbucks for $20, with 2,000 Swagbucks being worth $20. You can buy Swagbucks at least twice per day (sometimes three times), although you need to wait an hour between purchases. That means you can generate at least $40 of spend per day with no fees which might not sound a lot, but if it lasts all of December that’s $1,240 of simple couch spend that only takes a couple of minutes to do each day.
In addition to needing to wait an hour between purchases, there are a few others quirks to be aware of when both buying and redeeming Swagbucks. They offer a few Swagbucks (worth a few pennies) whenever you earn x amount of Swagbucks in a day which includes purchases such as these. There are two tiers – one low one that you should always hit with this promotion and a higher one that you’ll sometimes be able to hit when buying a total of 4,000 Swagbucks in a day. Sometimes that target is something like 4,304, so also buying a 500 point package for $5.99 can be worth it if the bonus points you earn are worth in excess of $0.99. n.b. I’ve found I can only buy two sets of 2,000 points per day, but can sometimes add a 500 point package which is why I suggested that package rather than a third 2,000 points package.
They offer further bonuses when you complete streaks of earning Swagbucks for 7, 14, 21, 28 and 30/31 days in a row. I think I earned an additional ~$20 worth of bonus points last month thanks to the streaks and by earning enough points to hit the second tier of earning offers on several different days.
Another quirk is that while the points you buy are immediately credited to your Swagbucks account, the bonus points you earn from Daily Goals and streaks have to be claimed. That can be done from the 5th of the month after you earned them and Doctor of Credit helpfully republishes this post each month as a reminder.
On the redemption side, you can redeem Swagbucks via PayPal, with 2,000 points being worth $20. Every month you can save 12% on one $25 gift card. That means you only have to redeem 2,200 Swagbucks rather than 2,500 which is a good deal on brands like Amazon seeing as it’s rare to get discounts that large on Amazon.
Something very important to be aware of – don’t redeem Swagbucks while using a VPN. They’re very sensitive to that and it’ll lock your account. You can reach out to them via a contact form and get it unlocked, but it often takes a few days which means you’ll miss out on a few days of this promotion and will break your streak.
Swagbucks also has a member recognition program which I only learned about recently – you can read more about it here. This has various levels with different benefits, but it’s worth registering because the program is completely free. If you’ve ever bought gift cards from MyGiftCardsPlus and earned Swagbucks that way, you could be at a higher tier than you’d expect.
Be sure to set up a reminder to buy these Swagbucks every day for as long as it lasts because there’s potentially a decent amount of credit card spend and bonus cashback available.
In case you’re wondering, purchases don’t seem to code as Shop Small on Amex cards earning 10x or 15x. That’s something I tested last month but didn’t earn anything extra unfortunately. However, it will earn the +4 bonus points from referrals if you’ve got that attached to any of your cards seeing as that’s valid on any spend. Purchases show up as coming from Prodege (the company that owns Swagbucks, Upromise, MyGiftCardsPlus and more).
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Has anyone seen this deal come around lately?
They’ve been offering this deal on $5 amounts the last month or two, but not the $20s.
hello, do you know a another site like swagbucks to buy points?
Have you redeemed Swagbucks for a PayPal Cash card and then withdrawn the money from PP? Years ago PP might close your account for this. Is that no longer the case?
Another option is to get a third party involved which I guess should work. I thought buying crypto with the balance would work, but that is blocked.
I’ve only redeemed for PayPal recently and haven’t had any issue.
Seems dead. 2000 SB for $21.99 now.
I’m seeing the same. Looks dead.
seeing the same as well, looks like this just changed overnight.
Thanks – I’ll mark this as expired.
I actually had my purchases code the extra 14x from Resy Plat offer. I have 280 bonus points from a solo $20 purchase in a day, as well as a 1595 (~$54 restaurant spend + $60 swagbucks across 2 accounts charged to my plat -> 755+840) in a day
see below image for the 1595 MR point bonus along with associated restaurant and prodege charges
https://imgur.com/a/QRjhceh
Dont you get a tax form for paypal cashouts? If so, seems like this could be a hassle.
Anyone else having issues getting this to work a 2nd time in a day? First one went through w/ out issue 2 hours ago, since then I just get some general error when trying to buy again.
Today got it twice anyway probably more like 3+hrs apart though… not sure what the real timeframe is on this or why the limit 2 noted exists @stephen @Nick Reyes?
I’m still able to get them about an hour apart. I’m not sure why they put a limit on how many times you can do this – I guess they just don’t want to have people hitting this too hard due to the credit card processing fees.
Weird…. Did you find waiting “longer” after the 2nd would allow a 3rd or did that not matter? I was going to try for a 3rd $20 tonight after say 6hrs to see what might happen.
To your point I’m sure they are trying to limit their cost. I just like the trivial effort to boost spend – Got that new Capital One Venture X to fill up 🙂
Thanks for this tip. At first l was able to do them a few minutes apart, but then I had some failures. 1 hour apart gets me 2 everyday repeatably. Pro tip: if you have an Amex business card you can create virtual cards with Extend for free, so a lot of potential of doing 2x per virtual card per account per day. Love the podcast.
Yeah, I have been getting the error message for the 2nd charge, even after 6 hours. Is your account new?
No I’ve had a SB account for several years
Is it treated as a manufactured spending by Amex? Any risks in attempting this for a portion of initial bonus spend?
It seems to be fine so far for me.
Anyone know how Prodege.com codes with the various banks (AMEX, Chase, Citi, etc.)? That’s the company that charges your card. It could have some positive implications in terms of which credit card to put the daily spend on to maximize the point earning.
I imagine no network codes it as anything that falls into a bonus category.
I have never used Swagbucks. Where is the profit in this transaction?
Buy $40 Swagbucks redeemed for $40 Amazon gift card.
Earn points for streaks
12% on one $20 Amazon card/ month
What am I missing?
I see. You can redeem via PayPal
If you’re talking about the profit to you personally, then there’s not a ton. It’s just an easy way to manufacture spend on a credit card if you want a few extra points or if you’re close to hitting a spend bonus on a card.
If you are talking about profit to Swagbucks, they make money by collecting and selling your purchase data.
Still not getting the point of this. You can generate the same spend by just buying Amazon GC, why would you need to go through SWAG? 12% of $25 per month? That is $3 per month.
Yes, but then your money is stuck in Amazon. You can completely cash Swagbucks out. It’s free points, albeit at an extremely low cap.
From Oct into Nov, they had this same deal: $20 for 2000 SB, limit 2 or 3 per day. I was doing this for P1 and P2 each day for ~30 days and burned through ~$2400 of sign-up-bonus minimum spend. Because P2 is a referral from P1, I also earn back 10% in SB (“free” $2 per transaction) from P2’s orders, so that is ~$120 in extra return on top of the CC earnings. And there are a few SB bonuses earned along the way as well, maybe $10 or $20.
Even when the price rose in Nov to $21.99 for 2000, I kept doing it for P2 since I was earning 2200 total SB and it helped work through SUB minimum spend.
Of course there could be a risk of devaluation, locking an account, or SB going bankrupt. Proceed at your own risk (though recognize you could cash out to Paypal the entire amount purchased each day, if desired).
It’s MS. The point is to produce spend, and liquidate via Paypal. The gain is in the points you earn for the spend.
I can redeem Swagbucks for a PayPal Cash card. However in the past, PP scolded me for loading PP Cash and then depositing to a bank account, even though I waited more than a week before doing so.
Is PP no longer sensitive to this? I don’t want a PP ban.
Traveling internationally, normally use a VPN, guess I’ll turn it off and give it a shot.
I use a VPN when buying these and it’s fine – it only seems to be the redemption side they have issues with when a VPN is turned on.
I had no issues with VPN until I redeemed. I would advise ensuring the VPN is off for redemptions.
Another tip – if there’s an unenthused P2 in your household, sign them up FIRST, and then have them refer you. Reason for this is that you get 10% of the earnings of your referrals – so your P2 can earn 10% doing absolutely nothing.
“This feature is currently unavailable for you.”
Edit: had to set my mailing address. Some states are banned from buying Swagbucks
However, residents of AZ, CT, MD, and ND are not allowed to make SB purchases due to applicable state law.
Unfortunately, I’m in one of those.
Are there referral links/signup bonuses for Swagbucks?
Greg’s referral link is in the post.