One way I fill time

As we all know I do not do very much just yet.  15 minutes outside can be enough to totally wear me out.  Today's major goal was to make 2 phone calls.  I actually did this.

Because I don't feel well enough to do much and I can't read a lot or do so many things to fill time I spend a lot of time wandering from random site to random site online.  That was how I found swagbucks.  One of the things I never want this blog to be is commercial.  You can see I have no ads and what with the whole no income thing if I felt they were appropriate to this page they'd be here.

Swagbucks is pretty neat, so I thought I'd share.  I've hesitated because I'm not sure how some
one with less time on their hands than I would fare, but for all I know I have a reader who needs to fill time.  So, anyway, Swagbucks.

It's essentially a way to earn points, generally through commercial effort and as you earn them you can purchase things in the "store".  I think most people get gift certificates which is where I'm headed.  If you put a little time in you can accumulate points quickly.  I've done this for a month and am just below my goal which will give me $25 through paypal.  Amazon is generally considered the best deal but since this is my yarn money paypal was better for me.  You kind of have to look at different values and see what the best deal is; for example $25 of paypal was point for point much cheaper than $10.

The easy ways to earn points are daily occurences.  If you have the toolbar downloaded and open for a few seconds you get a swagbuck (SB).  If you take 2 minutes to click through a series of ads (NOSO-No obligation special offers) you get 2 SB.  There's a daily poll and answering it gets you 1 SB.  Every day they email you about a video you can watch, click on the advertisement to be sure it matches the webpage that comes us, and then after the video answer whether they matched.

Other ways to earn are surveys which can be frustrating as you don't qualify for them all but when you do it's a lot of SB.  Searching gets a lot of SB.  If you search with their search engine (which is powered by a combination of google and ask.com and is a good search engine) then several times per day you can be awarded random numbers of points for what they call "natural searches", which means you need to seem to be searching.  I don't even think about using it anymore.  I generally get 15-25 points per day just searching. Someone gets 50 every so often (once an hour?  I think more frequently) but I've not been that person.  You can "watch" videos (ie let the video play with the sound off) and each of those accumulates 10% until at 99% you earn 3 SB (ie, every 9 or 10 videos).  I run them frequently and get a lot of points with this.  You can also do "special offers" which can be frustrating as some are as simple as watching a video or allowing a facebook app and others are essentially signing up for junk email that I cancel as fast as I sign up.  It's a bit annoying but I have time. These aren't always very honest but can be worth a lot of SB.  There are other ways I don't know much about; there are various purchases and services.   I know a first time enrollment in  in Netflix is about 1000 SB, for example.  There are hidden special codes that I don't ever remember to look for, some projects you can do, etc.

Now the self-serving part.  If this sounds interesting let me know and if you sign up through me I get points.  I'm going to try to install a widget on the blog which helps me monitor some things as well.

I promise, this is not a bid to get you to sign up.  It's just something I've found to be a way to earn a little fun and not have to think.  And I don't know what else to post tonight.  The biggest news around here is that I'm going to quit COBRA and use Medicaid because COBRA is financially impossible.  I can't do the application for a few weeks but in May I should be able to do it.  And that's just not much news.



Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com