SwagMelt

One Swaggers Frustration is All Our Frustration!

2010-12-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

Good Morning Swaggernauts!

Now now, put down those rotten tomatoes and heads of raunchy lettuce please! I know I have been away a while. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I STILL LOVE SWAGBUCKS AND SWAGMELT lol! However, I get in these.. ruts. best way to describe them. Being Bipolar and ADHD means that sometimes I pull back and take a break from things that I don't have to clock in for *laugh*. I know, it's not terribly funny, but if I'm laughing at myself you can laugh at me too :P

I have to get back in the swing here! To start, today is going to be a very very short post. I had a really good question from Faithful Swaggernaut Lorraine. So for this morning, I'm going to answer it, and today do some real homework again so I can get a Good, Thick post to you tomorrow.

Thanks for sticking with me, this week off I've done a lot of Thinking about the blog. I can't do special offer posts every day, but I *DO* so love to answer questions. I also have ideas for HOW to do the redesign of the site, I'm excited about them, now the problem is sitting on my lazy butt to do them :P

So for now, on to the question, and a real SwagMelt post is in the works for the morning!

I can tell you truly LOVE Swagbucks, and I can say that I'm happy I found them and have already received Amazon cards and a couple Pay Pal ones, and I just started in November. But I have had very iffy results when I don't get credited for surveys or special offers. I know I've complained about this before, sorry to sound repetitive. I find that sometimes this is taken care of after a lot of effort on my part, and sometimes not. Currently I applied for a credit card under Paymentwall and I am owed over 1800 SB's that I have not received. Now I know I was approved for the card, got the email from them letting me know, but Paymentwall just keeps asking for the email, then tells me I didn't put a code in they asked (which I did) and now have just left me hanging. If I don't get these points, I don't know how I'm going to feel about Swagbucks anymore. It's one thing not to get 26 SB's for a survey a few times, which bugs me anyway, but to not credit over 1800? How does one get over that?--Lorraine

I tell you what, special offers is the Only thing about SwagBucks that I don't love- and sometimes HATE *chuckle*

The thing that keeps me from getting mad at SwagBucks about it is that I have done these same offers from the same companies on other search & reward / get paid to sites. They have the same track record everywhere you go. The difference is in how SwagBucks responds to our needs, and how reliable they are with their payouts.

In this case, I would take all the information you submitted to PaymentWall, and go to the Contact SwagBucks link on the homepage to submit a ticket to SwagBucks. Choose Special Offer from the drop down menu, fill in the company name (PaymentWall) and the offer name, and get the ticket ID for your inquiry. Tell them when you did the offer, what proofs you have submitted, submit those same proofs to SwagBucks. Give them every detail you think matters to the case. It may take a little bit but SwagBucks has Always had my back. PaymentWall had me chasing my tail over 576 sbs for almost a month a little while back. The moment I got in touch with SwagBucks, they paid up. I submitted one request to SwagBucks covering 5 offers from TapJoy spanning over a months time. It took a couple of weeks, but out of the blue all five of the offers credited, with emails from SwagBucks and TapJoy both apologizing.

This is why no matter how bad the offers may Suck, how shoddy the offer companies treat you, I don't get mad at SwagBucks about it. They don't place the offers or list the advertisers. They do however do their part to make the companies pay up when payment is due. And unlike other similar sites that shall for now remain nameless *laugh* you get your Amazon cards, etc, in a couple of weeks, versus a couple of months. (41 days and counting waiting for a $5 AGC from the Zoo.... LOL)

<3 Thanks for asking Lorraine, I hope this helps a bit!

Until Tomorrow Swagfriends...

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

SBTV, NOSO, Elf Me Not, & a $250,000 Giveaway!

2010-12-12T13:04:00.003-05:00

Happy Sunday Swaggernauts!

I know, I know, I am a SLACKER!! I told you several days ago I was taking the day off.. and took three instead! Despite the nagging feelings of guilt, I just needed a break. This time it wasn't due to illness (though Isaac and I are pretty sick with a cold, it's not enough to stop me!) it was a simple case of minor burn out. Special offers did me in, and sometimes I just need to step back and let things go for a while. I'm sorry if any of you missed me, but there wasn't TOO much to post about- the good news is I did manage to snag a couple of screenshots during that time for today's blog. It's all helter skelter, and I didn't take good notes like I usually do, so today's blog may read a bit erm... scatterbrained (LOL) but I gotta flex my fingers, and my brain, and get back in the groove!

Before I start, let me share the fun I had while I was away. Yesterday was my son's second birthday. Though we were sick, and I *almost* thought I was going to have to postpone his "party" until today, we still managed to have a lot of fun. I was able to get him presents via SwagBucks, and a gift my Dad sent over, but this is the first time I felt the challenge of having a birthday so close to Christmas. Fortunately, I GOT this! I've got Swag Bucks on my side this year! I've gotten all my Christmas shopping done except for Isaac, but I have $50 PayPal and $22 left in Amazon that says this won't be a problem! I know, I know, SLACKING again, I have to order it by tomorrow, but last night I stayed up until 1 am wrapping, wrapping, wrapping. I was even able to get my husband a gift this year, something I haven't been able to do for Christmas in 2 years!

The last 3 items for my stepdaughter! YAY!

So, if anyone from Swag Bucks reads this, Thank You for running such an Awesome service. I know you make money, but we ALL make money, it's the first WIN - WIN - WIN business I've ever seen. *gets all teary eyed* I couldn't have done Christmas, or my kids 3 birthdays, without you. *sobers up!* Seriously, though, I'm sure you all believe in your business, enjoy your jobs (for the most part?). I'm sure you've heard it before, how much of a help Swag Bucks has been to folks, but you may not know the extent of the difference it has made in some of our lives.

Thank you not only for the chance to earn all this free swag, but for being so ON TOP with customer service, for fixing issues, listening to our feedback and making changes that work for the community. For going to bat for us with the offer companies! Thank you for adding and tweaking features all the time (also for giving me so much to blog about with all these new features LOL). Just, Thank you all!

Also, I wanna thank the folks that frequent the Swagbucks Facebook wall. This is at least half of the reason I prefer Swag Bucks to any other search and reward, or GPT, Get Paid To, site. The other major 2, ZoomBucks and iRazoo, have Facebook walls also, but there's no sense of community, or family, there. Most of the people who do talk are also active lurkers / posters on the Swagbucks wall. *chuckle*

And as we all know...

Thanks for making me laugh, a Lot. Thanks for helping new members, and there are Always new members, with patience. The more people that stick with the Swag, the bigger Swagbucks can grow. Which can only mean more opportunities for Us All.

Ok, enough sappy sweet toothache love fest :P

Where to start? *rifles through her GIMP files for screenshots*

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Swag Bucks TV, Captchas, and Autoplay Control.

Many swaggernauts have been taking full advantage of the autoplay features on SBTV, letting it run nonstop for many hours. All day. All night. *laugh* (they must have far better systems than mine LOL) There have been many reports of 15 SBTV wins a day. TSG tells us Team Swag Bucks is all for us winning that many times a day. If we are dedicated enough, hey, Go for it! However, the spirit of the agreement is that we actually Watch the videos. Partly because they make their money - and earn the money to fund Our swag snagging, from the advertisers, and I'm guessing, the companies that compile the videos we are watching. If we aren't watching, those people aren't getting what they paid for, and SwagBucks stands to lose out on money. Which in turn would lessen the wins for us all. Or raise the prices of the swagloot.

This is why they brought back the CAPTCHA system. CAPTCHAs are three letters you have to enter within a certain amount of time to be able to claim your Swagbucks. The point is to prove you are really there, and that you aren't a "bot" program set to run things automatically without the need of your presence.

I AM NOT A ROBOT in robot :P

Ok this is not an SBTV CAPTCHA, but the principal is the same. 3 letters, limited time. So far I haven't seen any captchas, but these past few days since this has rolled out, I haven't been using the computer nearly as much or in the way that I usually do. I didn't spend much time on SBTV, I don't think I even got a single win yesterday. But I only watched about 8 videos before I moved on to other things. The times I have won however have not had the captchas. I'm guessing it's random like the win itself.

They've received a lot of feedback asking that Autoplay be something we could turn on or off. Now that the captchas are back , we'd like to have a moment to enter the captcha before the video switches, and we lose our chance. They heard our wishes and brought in Autoplay Control.

All you have to do is click the ON button, and it changes to OFF. Easy! Now if they could weed out more of the videos that consistently hang and freeze for users (Half Rickshaw vid, anyone? anyone) I'd be much more likely to use SBTV consistently again.

Swag Bucks has also implemented a new "featured offer" on the home page and special offers page. This will change at intervals, and once you've completed the offer, it will be removed from your special offer wall.

When it first rolled out, it was an at&t video / vote offer. Watch the video, vote, receive 8 swagbucks. Its currently the GE Wind, Water, and Lights offer. If you didn't complete it when they ran it in November (on the homepage rotating slideshow) you simply upload a picture that describes to you one or all of Wind, Water, or Lights. This gets you 7 swagbucks.

I like it, as long as it keeps changing with enough frequency for me to get use out of it :P

Also the appearance of the NOSO page has changed. It explains in 3 easy graphical steps how to complete the NOSO swagbuck quest.

Looks different, works the same :) Click "Start Earning Now" and skip through the offers (unless it's something you are genuinely interested in!) to get your swagbuck. There are usually between 1-3, occasionally as many as 6, to go through.

One special offer warning, and one special offer funny. Funny first.

Is it just me, or does the mere mention of Pirate Hats and Songs raise a red flag about the company? I dunno why, but this made me chuckle.

Now the warning. On the SuperRewards wall is an offer to "Turn your friends into Elf's with Elf Me". It says you must install the plugin to get your swagbucks. 1st off, be careful installing plug ins. B: This offer doesn't work. There is no plugin to install, therefore you can go through the whole photo process and you won't receive your swagbucks. There have been other offers like this, it varies with the holiday. At Halloween it was zombies and vampires. Tapjoy has 2 versions of these, one being the plugin that FAILS, the other being a toolbar that has a virus in it. YAY! Just don't do them. Bad Juju.

And now, on to something completely different! I have to add this to the Freebie Spotlight tab! I got a free 1 year subscription to REDBOOK magazine, thanks to a link posted by the ladies who run Freebies R Us on Facebook. I've discovered a ton of holiday giveaways you should go enter! First there's a sweepstakes for $250,000!!

Just go to win250k.redbookmag.com to enter. This first page you see tells you that by using this form, you are signing up for a 1 year subscription, with the first month as a free trial. Note the yellow box! You don't have to sign up to the free trial to enter, simly click the link in that area to reach the truely free entry form.

Once you have entered that, you are registered for the redbook.com website, which enables you to go enter other sweepstakes. The link for the other giveaways is http://www.redbookmag.com/freebies or redbookmag.com/online-sweepstakes/ .

The giveaway I've highlighted is the "Giveaway a Day" sweepstakes.

Each day they give away a different prize, but the same prizes are rotated throughout the weeks. You can enter each type of prize giveaway once a day. The Jane Marvel bags all count as different items so you can enter each of those once a day.

The rest of the giveaways on the main sweepstakes page are for items like Fragrance sets, or gift cards. There are a LOT of neat gift card giveaways! They range from $50 at Payless Shoes to $1000 at Harry & David gourmet gifts & food. My FAVORITE giveaway is a 1 year, 3 DVD at a time Netflix membership. /swoon!

I'd LOVE to win that one. Of course, my preference would be to win the $250,000 prize. Then I could have all the Netflix I want, and the home theatre system to really enjoy it! *laugh!* These giveaways are one time only entries.

That's it for today, Swag Friends! See, I may not have been posting, but I was thinkin' of ya the whole time! Go enter those sweepstakes, and let me know if you win!!

Until Tomorrow...

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!

I beg your pardon, Swag Friends!

2010-12-09T10:32:00.000-05:00

Good Morning Swaggernauts!

Do you ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? I've been having one of those since last night. None of the offers I've tried credit. Some won't even send confirmation emails. There's very little food in the house (thank God its payday) and my son refuses to eat the same things he's been eating for a week. I'm getting sick, or I'm just so stressed and tired I *feel* sick? I dunno. I stubbed my toe, burnt my wrist on the toaster oven, broke my favorite coffee cup in a spastic moment (it just flew out of my hands, how does that happen? LOL) and I can't focus long enough to get anything done for the blog .*chuckle* That might have something to do with getting less than 3 hours of sleep last night, bringing my total sleep hours for the last week to somewhere close to 28. Not. Nearly. Enough!

I'm pretty wore out on special offers posts, since so many of them are bad offers. (there are tons of good ones too but I've done them all hahaha!)

I have to take a break from offers because I'm starting to get mad about them, and that's never a good thing. I wish I had something new and exciting for you, but I just don't. *laugh* I'm sorry, I really don't have anything to post for you today.

So I've decided instead of a blog post, I'm going to retool the Beginner Tips tab over the course of the day, add a couple of things that are lacking from those tabs up top. For now though, I have to get away from this computer. It's cold as snowballs but my kids and I need some fresh air, so we are going to walk to the library. A good mile there and back in the brisk cold should wear them out, should energize me, and I will tackle it again later.

One thing I do wanna mention though- I have had a lot of people writing PMs to me on Facebook, or chatting with me in Instant Message there, asking a lot of questions. Just so you know, I LOVE THAT! Don't ever say sorry for asking questions. I'm weird I guess, but I really enjoy it. So if there is something you came here today hoping to read, or if you just can't manage to sift through old posts for your answer (I get it, I do!), please drop me a line on Facebook. If I don't answer right away, I'm taking that needed (and I hope deserved lol) break, but I will be on later!

So until later, or tomorrow, I bid you a Happy Thursday, and as always,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes! (SuperRewards) & Offer Alerts!

2010-12-08T13:19:00.002-05:00

Good Afternoon Swag Friends :)

Today's post is pretty late. It's been hard to focus this morning! My stepkids mom pulled her out of preschool, now she's with us again. It's a shame. She was learning SO MUCH at school! This house is so Boring! *laugh*

I love having her around but I hate to see such a good brain go to waste. I've been trying to work and play with her at the same time, but I'm going to have to find a balance, or the blog will never get done. My 2 year old has finally gotten the routine down. Wake, play with mommy, eat, a little more mommy time, then play by himself / watch Sesame Street, mug mommy for hugs now and then, until I'm done. My daughter though, has a hard time understanding that it's hard to get stuff done if she is constantly stopping me to ask about trees at the North Pole or to see if we can have macaroni and cheese for dinner on Friday *chuckle!*

Good thing for Christmas I got her a LeapFrog Tag system from Amazon and a bundle of Tag books from eBay, courtesy of Swag Bucks! After Christmas I'm going to start saving for the phonics bundles that go with the Tag system. That way she can read / entertain herself while I post, and we can play / color / read together with Isaac after I'm done! (Sound like a good plan?)

I tried very hard to find good offers last night for today's blog post. All I ran into were problem offers. Well, at least I can help you to avoid Those! This morning SuperRewards loaded up some new free offers, but I haven't had a chance to test any of them besides the CityVille Zynga Facebook application. 20 minutes ago, still no credit.. maybe by the time I'm done posting this!

Before I start though, here's a quick tip for newer swaggernauts. I always say "search naturally". Use the search instead of your bookmarks. Here's a screenshot to show that it works- I even use the search to go to the Swagbucks Blog, SBTV, and the special offers page.

If you use the search naturally, to get to where you need to go instead of trying to come up with searches all day, you will get at least 3 search wins a day, 98% of the time. Spread out those searches too!

Oh, and real quick, before you read further, have you looked at gWallet and Gambit today? gWallet has a Degree video that pays out 5 times for 10 swagbucks total, and Gambit has videos too- but some users are having problems with the Gambit videos today. Some are getting mega swagbucks for them though!

Before I get to the special offer alerts, did you see SuperRewards' new View Offer Status screen? Check it out..

It sure LOOKS slick. *laugh* It's a lot easier to read, and I like how the right side shows an envelope with a red number to indicate you have a response waiting on open inquiries. I wonder though... Up top it says to create an account or log in to view full activity, play mini games, and more.

I don't want to sign up. I have a feeling if I sign up with one email address, then any time I use a different email for an offer, I will get refused swagbucks due to "fraudulent information" or some such nonsense. I could be wrong, I could be paranoid, but think about it.. and it seems plausible. I'm really curious about those mini games though. Are they FOR anything? I mean it would be pretty neat if you could win SuperRewards currency that you could redeem for whichever site you chose, whether it be for Swagbucks, or Embee points, or currency on your favorite Facebook game. I'm not going to sign up to find out though- Too Paranoid! hehehe

If you do try the games out, let me know what the scoop is, please? Thanks!

Back to the View Offer Status screen. If you have an offer that hasn't credited, click on the question mark circle for that offer at the right of the list. Before you can input your inquiry information, it will show you a long list of reasons why you may not get your currency despite your best efforts, and why Super Rewards may not be responsible for crediting you. Gotta love it.

Take a closer look at the last one. This one alarms the Heck out of me!

This section tells you basically to ignore your anti-virus software. !!! For real, look! "These programs not only flag viruses but also third-party cookies which the advertisers use to track your completion of the offers. Review the message from your anti-virus software and you will see that it is simply a warning. You do not need to be alarmed. We assure you that none of the offers displayed by Super Rewards contain viruses."

If this were the case, then every download I ever did through an offer company would set off a flag, because of the tracking cookies. And I would never get credit for any of them without the alerts. Also, my virus software is very good, and gives details about what the problem is. Now, I could see when it pops up saying "AdWare", that might be the tracking cookies for some offers.

However, when a virus alert pops up and screams TROJAN being installed into the Win32 section of my system, that is no innocent tracking cookie!

People will tell you anything, sell you anything, promise you anything.

Forget what they say and be VIGILANT if you are going to risk downloading anything. Do not ignore Malware or Trojan or "silent applications that try to take over your system by creating invisible subroutine" messages!

Unbelievable *shakes her head*. I can't believe they said that. So many people simply do not know better, and would trust SuperRewards at face value. Please, BE CAREFUL! And sad to say this but, be Cynical when it comes to these offer companies and their promises of safety. At least when it comes to downloads.

Just to show you an example of an actual virus in a download, (on TapJoy, not SuperRewards, though I *have* encountered this on SR as well in the past!) let's look at one of the TapJoy free offers that have popped up this week.

As I've said before, I like to test things out so I can blog for you. If it's good, you need to know. If it's bad, you Really need to know! So I took a stab at this, an offer for 27 on TapJoy's free tab.

Instant Alarm Bells in my head, which made me that much more curious, from a research standpoint. Screensavers from the web are OFTEN virus ridden. Who knows though, maybe I would get lucky.. *laugh!*

This link takes you to HappyScreensavers.com, and the first thing I saw, I wanted. (How very clever of them LOL. Conspiracies Everywhere! haha!)

That "Through the Looking Glass" one looks.. Nice! Maybe, just Maybe I will be able to get it without having to put my laptop in the hospital..

NOPE!!! Trojan alert, trying to install to Win32! YUCK, I KNEW IT! This is no darn tracking cookie.

Obviously, avoid this one like the plague. Plague for PC!

A lot of people say they Never, Ever download for swagbucks. Now, some things are NOT harmful! Take the Weather Channel app- I actually liked that! No virus, no harmful side effects. But without really good virus protection, it's definately better to be safe than sorry. Even with my software, stuff still slips through now and then (though usually from sites like Yahoo video or YouTube.)

Before I go on, while I'm on downloads, remember yesterdays post I mentioned the Fiesta download on Gambit? It's still something I consider a good offer, and a good download. TapJoy has it also- but for only 68 versus Gambits 84. For larger SB offers, shop around for the best price- it pays off!

Lets see *shuffles through her Windows notepad* what else have I got for you today?

2 more bad offers, and one good one. That's not a great ratio... Sorry! I tried!

First is just a mention, no screenshots. Ah and it's from TapJoy, big surprise *laugh!* "Submit your model resume to appear on a world-wide TV commercial!" for 47. This offer is from EliteMate, and I have tried it 3 different times with no credit, no response to inquiry. They want hottie girls because EliteMate is one of those sketchy dating services that covers the range from normal people, to cheating husbands and wives. *sigh* (what is wrong with this world??)

Don't bother. I didn't get credit, not because I'm not a hottie- the requirements say submit your photo not
"be gorgeous" LOL. Just because it's a bad offer that doesn't credit. Don't waste your time.

Next on the naughty list is an offer from gWallet. Technically it's not a bad offer, it's just one where you have to give out your financial information to get your swagbucks.

If you are seriously looking for a service that tracks your financial information, with the purpose of protecting you from Identity Theft, you might want to try it. Personally, I am very wary of such offers, and never finish them once I find out they want bank account or credit card numbers and information. Many services are real, many are frauds themselves.

Finally, I can get to a good offer that credits! I don't know how long this one will be around though.

This is a gift application through Facebook. You are supposed to send the "crazy turkey" gift to one friend. For 34 swagbucks, nice!

By the way, this screenshot and the rest show me having 0 gift tokens- I didn't take pics until the offer credited. Just plum forgot to! However, you start with 20 tokens. The gift you are supposed to send to get your credit is for 22 tokens. You have to do special offers to get the last 2. Fortunately this is Easy! They have videos from gWallet and PaymentWall!

The payout is 1 token per video, so just watch 2 videos and you are good to go! By the way, before I looked for videos, I tried three offers from SuperRewards on the gift app. None of them credited. Just go straight to the videos to avoid annoyance!

After you earn your two tokens, go back to the main page and choose the Crazy Turkey gift. Then choose a recipient.

Again, this says I have 0 tokens. I already sent it to myself, from my alternate SwagMelt Swaggernaut account. I didn't want to trash up anyones gift requests with an old Thanksgiving gift :P I didn't actually send this to Katie as I'd already completed the offer. You're welcome, Katie!

Press Buy This Gift, and after it sends, check your balance. The swagbucks showed up for me pretty much instantly, but others have reported it taking longer. As always, it varies, and no one knows why.

And there you have it! Managed to end on a high note, that's always good! Tonight I will go surfing through the new offers that loaded up today and see if I can't dig something up for you. Oh, by the way, my SuperRewards CityVille swagbucks (8) JUST arrived. Took almost an hour. But they came! Good Enough!

I'm off to make lunch and PLAY! YAY! Until tomorrow swag friends,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

Code breakdown + 2 Bad & 3 Good Offers

2010-12-07T08:33:00.000-05:00

Good Morning Swag Friends!

I'm back! Things at the house have settled down some, and I've got an offer loaded SwagMelt for you today. Some good, Some bad, as usual!

First I wanna show you a couple of codes from Sunday and Monday.

Sunday I went to the Swagbucks Facebook wall as I do a hundred times a day, and I saw "Thanks, TSG!" all the way down. If you are a newer swaggernaut, when you see that, it means there is a code somewhere. The first thing I do when I see that is look up at the status message on the wall. It wasn't there! Checked the toolbar (and if you don't see a new message in there, click the blue word MESSAGES and it will take you to the latest post, just to be sure.) and the blog. Nope, and Nope! So I came here to SwagMelt and checked my swidget.

There's the code! Just click, hold the mouse button down and drag it over the code. Release, right click, choose Copy (or keyboard shortcut ctrl & C). Then go to the Swag Bucks home page, click the code box, right click and choose Paste! (or keyboard shortcut ctrl & V) Quick 7 swagbucks, YAY!

I got lucky! The code was just about expired, I wandered onto the Swagbucks Facebook wall just in time! Yet another reason to check back in there during the course of a day, whether you post or not.

Tonight, same scenario happened. I had been offline most of the day, dealing with my family stuff, and I just happened to mosey on into the Swagbucks Facebook wall at the right time. Thanks, TSG! as far as the eye could see! Same method.. Status? no. Toolbar? no. Blog? YES! Ooh and a fun code too!

Neato! We got to pick a code to "cast a vote" for who we thought would win last nights Pats / Jets game. (I voted Patriots! I was thinking, they were at home, 5-0 on their turf, and had revenge to seek for week two's loss!) If the majority of swaggernauts pick the winning team, we get a code for 14 on Friday!!

Now, we know the Patriots won! What we DON'T know is which code got the most votes. We probably won't know until Friday, when TSG pops up and surprises us with the code. *sings* Anticipation!

Speaking of anticipation! And indecision.... *chuckle* Check this out.

I should NOT be posting this. Because I WANT IT! But I'm having a crisis of decision.. Do I enter my usual 1 time? Or do I go all out and buy 250 entries? This is a very nice Worthington series acoustic electric guitar from Samick, designed by Greg Bennett. It sells for around $350!

I want this so bad my heart hurts! I haven't had a guitar since my sweet George (that's what I called him.. er.. it) met a tragic end, and I had to leave behind my electric when I came here to take care of my mom as she passed. My fingers ache to pluck strings, and I want to put the songs I've made up for my son to music!

SO DON'T YOU ENTER! ! (hahahah Just Kidding! I wouldn't post it if I didn't want you to know about it too! I mean, Wow, What a value!)

What do you think I should do? I'm kind of waiting to see if a 1000 swagbuck offer credits in inquiry without a huge fight. If it does, I think I will dump it straight into the swagstakes. I didn't think it would credit because I didn't get a confirmation email for 30 hours, (and had some strange message about needing to call to fix some unknown error) but now that it's there, I've submitted an inquiry. It feels kind of like a bonus, if it does credit.

Swag Bucks gave away one of these in February. It was won by Kyle J. of Milwaukee, WI. I wonder how many entries he put in??

Anyway, enough dreaming! I did a run of special offers last night. Usually, after I order all of my five $5 Amazon cards, I take 1 - 2 weeks off from offers, aside from videos. I'm running out of high paying free offers though, so I have to do more hunting for smaller ones.

The results were mixed as usual. 2 good offers, 2 fails, and one offer I saw posted again that I did a few months ago.

That offer is for the game Fiesta, by Outspark, found on the Gambit wall. It is a download, but if you like games, Everquest type magic and fighting games, it's worth it, because it's free to play. The download takes forever, but the graphics are very nice, gameplay is easy to learn, and though there is extra premium content, you can get by in the game without it. Plus, it's worth 84 swagbucks! I still have it installed, and play it once in a while when I have time- though for a while there I was staying up half of the night to play. Had to stop doing that.. old habits creep back in so quickly! Also, if you do play it, love it like I did, and want that premium content, you can pay for it with Ultimate Game Cards which you can order from the Swag Store.

Though right about now, I wish I could still do the offer :P I'm happy I did it in the first place, even happier that it credited for me with no hassle. You have to download, install it, create a character, and play the character to get your swagbucks.

The first offer I actually tried last night did not pan out for me, and I know why! It's another one of those where the requirements say one thing, but the advertiser actually expects another, so they never tell the offer company you completed it. It's a different version of the same type I have posted about several times.

This is on SuperRewards, "Get in the game with Sweet Daily Deals!" for 9 swagbucks. Usually these trick offers are for much more, so I was surprised when this one went down the same old path.

All you are supposed to have to do is fill out the first page with valid information, signing up for the Sweet Daily Deals site / newsletter.

Seems easy enough! Fill out that page, press continue, and TECHNICALLY that should be all you need.

The first warning sign was when no confirmation email showed up. I'd stayed on this page for a bit, but I figured I must have to get to the "end of the offer path" before they would send that email. So I went ahead and started in on the radial buttons!

Here's a tip for getting through those annoying buttons. Click NO on the first one, then press ALT & Down Arrow over and over and over until it's selected NO all the way down the page. Saves SO much time!

After 6 pages of buttons, 10 pages of "complete the survey below" pages (which you press SKIP to get through), I hit the dead end (and I didn't see it coming this time!)

SCREEEEEEECH! Halt! What? Complete silver, gold, and platinum offers? I'm confused!?! I thought this was for a website or a newsletter, not an offer to get a "free iPad" or Macbook or whatever!

Needless to say I stopped right there and checked my email. No confirmation, and no swagbucks. Time to write an inquiry! Ugh! I have to write them to tell them exactly what the offer requirements are, note that there is nothing which says a confirmation email is actually needed, and they need to get in touch with the advertiser about the actual payout terms for the offer.

The last part won't get anywhere, I'm sure. Hopefully, there's a 50 / 50 chance they will credit me. I'm not even sure I want to bother, for 9, but it's my duty (or so I seem to feel) to report these bad requirement offers, as well as any viruses or malware / adware I encounter.

Next is an offer that credits from the TapJoy wall. Well, ok given it is TapJoy, it Might credit- good chance of it but if it doesn't, all you can do is blame TapJoy for being unpredictable, and do an inquiry. However I had no problems with this one.

Enter to Win Free Prizes & More from Despicable Me! for 51 swagbucks. The requirements say you have to sign up for minionmadness.com with a valid email.

When you click Register, a new tab opens with your typical sign up information. Name, user name, password, email. When you submit it, you can log right in, then click Enter The Site. That's it! No confirmation email needed. I did this, looked around the site for about 5 minutes, which is how long it took for my credit to arrive.

On to the last bad offer of today's post. This one isn't necessarily bad. I'd say theres a 50 / 50 chance of it working without having to open an inquiry. Some people have done this offer on every wall and gotten credit every time. Some never get credit the first time. I went ahead and gave it a try...

This offer is for Dailies contact lenses, for 53. You sign up and fill out your address etc, then print out a coupon for a free trial box of Dailies contact lenses. I did all of this, got to the coupon print screen, pressed Print, but never actually sent it to the printer. Left it open about 30 minutes. No credit. As of this morning, Still no credit. *sigh* Wasn't my day to roll the dice with this offer I guess! No confirmation email, and I forgot to take screenshots. DOH! I won't get credit for it without proof, so I am just gonna.. let it slide. Try again later.

I want to end the blog today on a good note. So let's look at an offer for 150 that credited! I really hope this offer is still on the wall for you to try. Last night there were reports that the offer had gone missing, but I found it with no problem. Sometimes an offer is not on the wall for everyone at the same time. I'm not sure if this is on the wall for our Canadian swaggernauts at all :( I wish there was more stuff we could ALL do!

Join MarsterCard Mareketplace for Free! for 150 swagbucks. This is on the SuperRewards wall, Free tab. The requirements say simply to register, and agree to the terms & conditions.

When you first land on the page, a pop up window opens- Ignore it, close it out. Then choose "No, I'm new to MasterCard Marketplace" and enter your sign up information.

Check both boxes and click Continue. Technically, after this point, that's all you have to do to get your credit. I asked on the Swagbucks Facebook wall what others had done- did they stop here? Did they move through to the main site, like I did? I got a variety of answers, but it seems the majority did what I did, skipped the first step .....

and did the second step (shown below) then let the page sit open on the main site until it credited.

Drag & Drop at least 3 merchants into Like and Don't Like

However, a few just stopped after agreeing to the terms, and for the most part, we all got credit without having to start an inquiry. My swagbucks came in after about 30 minutes. This gave me time to look around the site a bit- it's actually an interesting shopping site, with "Overwhelming Offers" - every 24 hours, at 1pm Eastern time, they list a new offer. You have to click "Reserve" and enter a captcha. These offers can be pretty deep discounts and they can go in seconds depending on how good the deal is. Once you've reserved your deal, you go to the merchant site and pay full price. The difference is applied to your MasterCard statement as a credit within 1 to 2 billing cycles. Kinda neat if you have disposable income and a MasterCard, neither of which I have *laugh!*

Again, I hope the offer is still up today. So many of us jumped on it last night, they might pull it for a little bit. But like I said, everyone was panicking that the offer was gone last night, but I still found it.

(Of course its Far easier for me to find an offer on the free tab, since I've done so many offers I have only 1 page to look through! Dig Deep!)

That's it for today folks! I hope the offers I mentioned work out for you! Thank you for sticking with me yesterday when I was unable to post. I looked at my traffic stats and saw that many of you were still visiting and having a look around- Awesome! I know some day most of you won't need this blog anymore *sniffle* and that's Good. That means you know all I can help you with, and are getting to the point where you can teach me a thing or two! (Yes, I'm still learning every day!) I suppose the great news for me is that there are always new swaggernauts to help! (Go get some referalls! LOL)

Until tomorrow Swag Friends, have a great Tuesday, and..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!!

Family Emergency - Links Post

2010-12-06T10:16:00.000-05:00

Dearest Swag Friends,

Please forgive me, but there will be no regular SwagMelt post today. I have a family emergency and won't be able to post until later. To relieve a speck of my stress today I have to give you another links post and come back tomorrow. Until then, newer swaggernauts, take a look through these links for previous helpful SwagMelt posts. Thanks for sticking with me, see you back here tomorrow, have a GREAT SWAG DAY!

Check out the new Offers That FAIL Tab for a quick look at some of the offers I've covered that fail for one reason or another. (rough draft cut&paste job, will fine tune it soon)

Beginner Tips!

Daily Four Breakdown (120 swagbucks a month!) and Swagbucks Facebook Guide

SBTV and Special Offers Quick Tips

Survey Quick Tips

Snagging Your Swag Loot

Refunds, Referrals, and Other Issues

Get Alerts for Swag Codes (Feedburner, Twitter, Etc)

Swago, Swagstakes, and Partner Codes

Referrals and Questions Answered

More Questions Answered (plus How to enter the Amazon Universal Wishlist Giveaway)

A Couple More Questions Answered (yes, I love answering questions!)

And Now For Something Completely Different!

2010-12-05T13:58:00.012-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

I'm excited today! I have something really interesting to share with you. It is something outside of Swag Bucks, but wait & see how Swag Bucks can be used with it!

Last night swaggernaut Swaggin Brandon sent me an invite to a neat Facebook application, Embee Mobile.This app is an offer and survey site, somewhat like Swag Bucks, but with a very specific purpose. The points that you earn can be redeemed for "top ups" or balance reloads on your prepaid cellular phone. They cover 80 different carriers in 23 countries, including Cricket, Metro PCS, Tracfone, Boost, and Virgin Mobile.

The Embee points you earn are redeemed for air time minutes. My carrier is Virgin Mobile. This is what the conversion rates look like for me, but each company has it's own rates.

For Virgin Mobile, 100 Embee points = $10.00 Top Up money. To pay for a monthly plan on my carrier, I would need to earn 300 Embee points a month.

There are three ways to earn Embee points. The earn tab has all three options; purchase, offer companies, and surveys.

First let's look at the methods of purchasing Embee points. This is where Swag Bucks comes in!

Options for payment are rixty coins, which are a virtual currency you can choose as payment options from Coinstar machines. (Kinda neat!) There's also credit card, Google checkout, pay with Mobile (um.. why would I buy mobile points from a mobile - wouldn't I just do it directly? Oh - maybe to buy top up money for someone elses phone.. yah!) and last but not least, PayPal!

The cost of Embee points through PayPal is $10.00 for every 100 points. That would be 1400 Swag Bucks for $10 in PayPal deposits. Since Virgin Mobile redemption is 100 Embee points for every $10.00 Top Up, that's a straight conversion of 1400 Swag Bucks for every $10 on my phone. That would be 4200 swagbucks a month if I wanted to pay my phone bill that way. (I NEED MORE REFERRALS!!! rolfmao)

1400 SB = $10 PayPal
          $10.00 PayPal = 100 Embee Points
                    100 Embee Points = $10.00 Top Up

There's one small snag with that plan. You can only redeem 5 PayPal deposits a month, and there is only the $5 deposit option. Team Swag Bucks, if any of you are reading this, (wishful thinking? lol) please consider adding at least a $10 PayPal deposit option. That would be AWESOME and could help some of us pay our bills better... We know you love us and want us to thrive! :-D

There are also special offers to do for Embee points. This works pretty much exactly the same as it does on Swag Bucks.

SuperRewards, gWallet, TapJoy, and Crowd Flower are already familiar to us. Peanut Labs and SponsorPay are new to me, but seem to work exactly like the other offer companies. The payouts tend to be far lower than swag bucks payouts, but the conversion rate of points to dollars is higher.

Under the Peanut Labs tab is a bar for earning Embee points through surveys. If you click Enable More Surveys, a pop up appears that takes you through 12 questions that supposedly refine the surveys you are offered.

Also under Peanut Labs is the EmbeePay Bonus bar. If you complete 5 surveys or offers on the Peanut Labs tab within 24 hours, you get a 12 Embee point bonus.

I went ahead and did one special offer on Embee for you this morning.

gWallet Bing Compare, Share, Decide for 3 Embee Points

This offer is for Bing, it's on the gWallet tab. It's not on gWallet on Swag Bucks yet, but it might show up soon.

Unlike other Bing offers I've seen, instead of changing your homepage or installing the toolbar, all you have to do is enter two search terms then press "Bing & Decide" to earn 3 Embee points.

I was drawing a blank so I entered Apple Macbook and Toshiba laptop.

The top of the results page wants you to invite friends. I didn't explore why, or go any further on the site. I thought it was funny that I got "Sorry, no products were returned." Maybe I was too specific? *chuckle*

Anyhoo, I left this page open and checked my balance. Here's what the account screen looked like before the offer.

I had 28 Embee points. 10 of those were for signing up.

Within 3 minutes of entering my search terms in the Bing offer, I received my 3 Embee points. If you subtract the 10 points I got for signing up, I've earned 21 Embee points in the last 12 hours between 5 total offers (though only one of those offers counts towards the Embee bonus). I should be able to hit 100 pretty soon, if I spend any time on it!

The only thing is I have seen and done a Lot of these offers before. The payouts SEEM lower which seems frustrating, but when looked at in the right light - 1 Embee point = $0.10 - it makes much more sense.

I definitely think I will be using this application! I always need money to top up my phone. I will primarily be doing offers, but it's good to know what whatever shortfall I have between the points I earn and my monthly phone bill can be made up with PayPal earned through Swag Bucks!

If this interests you, go ahead and PM Swaggin Brandon for a referral link. (That's another way to earn- for every 5 friends you invite that join, you get 10 Embee points, that's $1.00!) It's only fair you ask him; if he hadn't been kind enough to invite me, I never would have known about this to share with you!

That's it for today folks! I know it's not directly about Swag Bucks and special offers but this was too good not to share. I'll see you back here tomorrow with another detailed, Swagcentered post! Until then...

Happy Swagsurfing!!!

3 inquiries, 626 Swag Bucks, Success!

2010-12-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

Good Morning Swag Friends!

So tell me, how mega was your MSBD? I got two 11's... and a 7 ?!? Ok, not terribly mega considering I've been averaging 28 - 35 a day from wins.. 29 isn't too special :-P Never give up! Next week will be my mega! (I say that Every Week LOL)

I know I've been doing a list of offers every day. Yesterday I did a few, but my brain was on backwards and I didn't get any screenshots. I had to chase down after a couple of the offers, one in particular that a lot of folks on the Swagbucks Facebook page are talking about. But first let me update you about the Nextiva and "Win A Trip To New York" offer inquiries.

Yesterday I told you about my 3 week long effort to get Payment Wall to credit my Nextiva fax offer. This is the first time I have had a problem with Payment Wall. Which goes to show, everyone has their own individual experience with each company, because I read a lot of folks lately who have very hostile feelings towards Payment Wall. Anyhoo, yesterday I submitted a ticket to Swag Bucks via the Contact Us link on the home page. They must have worked FAST, because around 6 pm last night, the Nextiva offer credited. I received this notice on the inquiry screen.. very polite! And no warning about being banned lol.

Super, Thank you, Drive through! (uh huh huh huh huh - that's for you Kayla!)

This is the second time I have submitted a ticket to Swag Bucks about an offer wall, and both times they got right on it and made the company pay up! THANK YOU TEAM SWAG BUCKS!

There was also an offer on SuperRewards for 108 - "Win A Trip to New York City". I did this offer a couple of weeks ago and never got credit for it. I forgot to submit a ticket though, so the offer disappeared from my "Viewed" list. I saw the offer was still up a few days ago, so I tried it again. Only, the contest involved is closed, no way to submit your entry, therefore no way to complete it for swagbucks. I submitted a ticket a couple of days ago basically stating that though I had done the offer previously, and had not gotten credit for it, I was not writing for the swagbucks because they never sent a confirmation email. However could they please remove the offer from the wall because the contest was closed, no way to complete. I told them! I wasn't looking for swagbucks!

What did they reply? "Please submit your confirmation email."

DUUHHHHhhhhhhhhhh /drool!

I was already hot under the collar from the next offer I'm gonna write about, so that response really got my goat. I did something I don't usually do.. I got rude :P I wrote them back and said "Does anyone actually READ what we write you? If so then you look really stupid right now, sending me that response." That's all, pressed submit. I should have controlled myself but COME ON now.. I just told them I have no confirmation email. Told them I wasn't trying to get credited. Stupid form responses ...

This morning when I woke up, they had credited me the 108 for the offer! I about fell off the couch LOL. I did *not* expect that. However, look at what they wrote back to me. They STILL didn't get the point of my ticket I guess. I mean.. Really!

Oh well, whatever, at least I got points I didn't expect! However this makes me leery of submitting any tickets anytime soon. Though I submitted one this morning for an insurance offer I did last night that never credited. *laugh* I think I will take a break from Super Rewards for a bit so I'm not put in a position of having to submit an inquiry.

Partially because I also had This experience with SuperRewards yesterday. Boy I wish I'd gotten screenshots, I'm sorry, it was so chaotic here yesterday. Always is on the weekends!

There is an offer for 300 on the free tab, This Holiday do things differently with RightCliq. This is a Visa plug in for shopping. The thing is, the offer requirements state only that you have to sign up with accurate information. No where does it say you have to install a plug-in, or that uninstalling it will get your swagbucks revoked.

A lot of folks were talking about it on the Swagbucks Facebook page yesterday. The consensus was that since the req's mention nothing about the download, you should be able to sign up and get your points without installing the plug in. And they are right. The spirit of the offer is that yo install the plug in but the technicality of it is you don't need to, unless they update the requirements.

The problem is, if you do not install it, you will not get your swagbucks without submitting an inquiry.

You know me, I'm always doing unwise things to be able to share my results with you *laugh* so I went ahead and installed the plug-in. Like magic, the 300 swagbucks appeared as soon as I was done. HUZZAH! Even better, it set off no warnings on my virus software. However, I'm pretty sure this plug-in is a privacy invader. Just a hunch, based on what it is. So I went ahead and uninstalled it. I was really hoping that wouldn't be a problem, but they revoked my 300 swagbucks within 10 minutes. Oo I was steamed but not nearly as much as when I went to submit an inquiry, and there was nothing about it on the list! Seems like I was shut out. It wasn't on Viewed, it wasn't on Awarded.. I was stuck and getting madder by the second.

I debated writing to Swag Bucks about it right there, but I really hate to bother them unless I absolutely have to. The offer was back on my wall so I decided to do it again, with another email. I wasn't sure if it would work, cookies, IP address, all that, but I gave it a go. Signed up, installed, and waited. And waited. After about an hour it went to "Viewed" and that was that, no swagbucks. So I opened a ticket and stared at the screen for a few minutes- did I submit the ticket from the first email I used? The second? Do I explain the whole story? I decided to behave as if this inquiry were my first attempt at the offer, and see what happened. I figured I had a good chance of being denied, in which case I would have had to write Swagbucks at the Contact Us link and explain the situation, which I didn't want to do. Technically doing the offer again from another email might be considered cheating or, whatever, so I may still have been denied.

The thing that decided me was the requirements. These companies have to be more careful about being explicit in their directions, or they leave themselves open to loopholes. We have to go by the written rules, So Do They!

So I wrote using the second email, and simply informed them of the offer requirements, that I had done the offer and installed the plug in despite not needing to, and that I wanted my swagbucks, please & thank you. Submitted the confirmation email and that was that. Left it alone and tried not to be so mad about my swagtotal moving up and down like a see saw.

Woke up to this response this morning! 300 swagbucks back in my swagtotal! HUZZAH!!!!!
I like waking up 518 swagbucks richer! In about 36 hours I went from a 0 swagtotal to 1500! Sweeeeeeet!

We had an interesting code hunt yesterday. It was in steps. First thing I noticed was all of the "Thanks TSG" posts on Facebook, which tipped me off. I started looking- first the toolbar, then the swidget, finally the blog.

The Swag Store now has its own Twitter account to follow! More information, and another place to find code hunts. I thought, Cool, I will go follow them and find me a code, I can deal with that!

Ah but the code wasn't actually on Twitter. a Clue was. I felt like I was jumping through hoops in a circus because I had only 10 minutes to find the code when I started my hunt! It was fun though. The hint on twitter said to check the MUSIC section of the Swagstakes page. Off I went to click click click through the items. Time was tick tick ticking away, but I found it just in nick of time!

Usually the code is at the end of the description, but lately they have been changing it up. I almost missed this one. The code was In the description, but if you train your eyes to look for Gobbledygook, you will find them! Remember- No Extra Spaces Before or After The Code! This one was for 11, but was supposed to be for 12. The Swag Guy posted a cryptic message on Facebook about 1 plus 1 equaling 11 when added to 1 is 12, or something equally confusing :-P After the code hunt ended, they put another code out for 1 swagbuck with a VERY limited time to find it. I failed but I didn't mind losing the 1 swagbuck. I enjoyed having to jump through more hoops- guess he got me when I was in a good mood! *chuckle*

This morning there were videos on the Gambit tab- have you watched them yet?

With any of the offer walls, if you see the word VIDEO on the tabs, then there are, of course, videos to watch. *laugh* This morning I had 4 videos to view. Others on the Swagbucks Facebook page were getting 7 and 8. I think I get less because I check for videos a couple of times a day and watch them as soon as they are available. Anyhoo, go watch them if you haven't yet! Easy, 30 seconds long each (thereabouts) and 2 swagbucks a pop. No banner clicking, no sharing required.

Before I go I want to answer a couple of questions from the Swagbucks Facebook wall & from the comments section from Thursday's blog post.

I wasn't sure if the poster (Who are you ME, a mystery!) meant they wanted to order from a special offer, or the Swag Store. But to answer the question both ways - If you order something from the Swag Store, there is no shipping and handling. If you order something from a special offer, there is shipping and handling unless the company you are buying from provides free shipping. Each is different. As for having to sign, I have never had to sign for anything yet, but again it depends on the company you order from, and probably how valuable the item being shipped it. I've had things arrive through UPS, the post office, and Fed Ex, and haven't had to sign for anything yet, but I haven't ordered anything that required heavy shipping insurance. If you do have to sign something, it will just be a receipt of delivery, for shipment tracking purposes.

BTW- Thank you for the feedback! I must be doing something right, I must be learning! If anyone has any ideas for things they want to read, or ways I can improve the blog, Please, let me know! Layout issues, confusing language, whatever it is, let me know so I can keep making this a better, more useful, easy to read blog!

Last item before I go. A lot of people were asking about autoplay on SBTV yesterday. I even got a couple of questions in my PM box. Has to be because so many people are winning so many times. The general gist of the questions was how to let SBTV run. Do you have to click videos? Do you have to check on it? Here is the response I put in my notes for easy reposting.

I have two browsers that I use- I downloaded Google Chrome after seeing so many people talk about how it works better with SBTV. (No toolbar for chrome though BOO.) So I just go to the SBTV page in my Chrome browser, pick a category, press play, and leave it running in that browser. (Autoplay will just keep going and going)

I open up Firefox and do special offers, post, blog, what have you, while SBTV runs in the other browser. I keep the sound up just enough for me to hear if its still runnning. After a while, (I think it's my computer but it could be SBTV) the videos will start freezing, or have trouble loading. When that happens, I stop for a few hours. Doing it this way I've gotten at least 3 wins a day, and if I keep going back and doing the process over, up to 6. I know others are getting more wins but my computer can't really handle it.

That's it for today's SwagMelt. I'll be coming back with more special offers and various tidbits tomorrow! Until then, Swag Friends,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

Goose Eggs, Surveys, & One Fat Offer!

2010-12-03T12:57:00.006-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

Today, and the next couple of days, the blog will be in the afternoon more likely than not. Weekends are busy busy!

I'm still on my hunt for swagbucks- check out my total on the swidget over there! As of the time I started writing this time, it was only at 94. But check THIS out!

Yes folks, That is a Real Total there. I have not seen 0 swagbucks ... Ever! I signed on with the 30 bonus sign up bucks so, this is a first for me! What Happened?

Well, you remember that I ordered 3 PayPal while they were on Black Friday sale. Nov 30, Dec 1 and 2nd I ordered more! One $50 Amazon, and four $5 Amazon cards. That brought me down to 63 swagbucks. If I hadn't gotten two of those three extra PayPals (I don't usually get 5 in a month) I would still have 1400 swagbucks, but I couldn't resist the deal!

52 of those 63 swagbucks were from partner sites. They were spread out over three sites that do not have any swagstakes, and nothing I wanted to save more partner bucks for. Once I drained my account of regular swagbucks, I had the chance to dump the partner bucks into regular Swag Bucks swagstakes, and that's just what I did. First I bought 3 entries into the $2500 Amazon gift card giveaway. They were 20 swagbucks a piece, so I had 3 stragglers.

I decided to dump the baby bucks into a 25 swagbucks giveaway. I should have chosen 5 entries but I was moving too fast and chose 3, which spent 2 swagbucks. So I had to go back and buy one more entry for that last lonely swagbuck.

When you enter a swagstakes, you have to confirm that you understand your swagbucks are NOT REFUNDABLE before it will submit your order.

Check it out. Three 25 swagbuck entries, three $2500 Amazon gift card entries, one Apple Macbook entry (I had a wild hair but still couldn't bring myself to buy more than one entry!) and a bunch of "Over The Quota" survey swagstakes (all lost, of course LOL).

This... is a Beautiful sight.. Not that I enjoy being at zero (in fact it gives me a small feeling of unease that I must correct by earning more swagbucks!) but I am Thrilled to see the Swagtotal and the Ledger Swagtotal match! Finally! Bye Bye Partner Bucks!

I didn't stay at 0 for long however. Just as I was saving the screenshots from the swagstakes purchase, TSG released a code for 10. I went to the Swagbucks Facebook wall to post a pic of my 0 total when I saw the board covered with this...

Half of the time I get a code, it's because I went to the FB Wall to post something and saw Thanks TSG splashed all the way down. That Always means there is an active code to find. The first place I looked was the Facebook Status message at the top of the wall. (If a hint had not been there, I would have then checked my toolbar "From TSG", then the blog, then the swidget here on SwagMelt.)

TSG posted that there was a 10 swagbuck code hidden somewhere in the Holiday MP3s in the swag store. I came just in time, only had about 20 minutes left to get the code! So I went on over and started clicking holiday MP3s until I found the right one.

I can only post this because the hunt is closed. Posting active codes is NEVER allowed, and WILL get you banned from SwagBucks. See what it looks like though? In this case, it's put in as the last "word" of a sentence, but it is a mix of letters and numbers, capitalized and lower case. This is what you are looking for when you do a code hunt. 9.9 times out of 10, it's going to be one long "word" with no spaces. When you copy it, be sure you have no extra spaces on the beginning or end of the code when you try to redeem it. The exclamation point was NOT a part of the code, by the way. So far I have only seen one exception to the "no spaces" rule- just the other day TSG threw us a curve ball with a code that had 3 sections. I wish I'd thought to screenshot it. It was something like "Rock says S8fnfg7fbFJ or whatever LOL. It took me about 5 attempts before I even TRied the extra 2 words at the front. I mean, I've never seen one like that! Just goes to show that just like raising kids, as soon as you think you know how the game is played, the rules can change.

Within minutes of hitting my 0 total, I was back up to 15, with a code for 10 and an SBTV win for 5. Still looks pretty pitiful, doesn't it? *laugh!*

This morning I decided ENOUGH was ENOUGH! My swagtotal was a meager 38 swagbucks after my daily four. I still had one large inquiry open with Payment Wall, it's been open since November 13th, and it was high time they coughed up my swagbucks! (Usually I have NO issues with Payment Wall, so it just proves that Every offer company has its moments..)

When I submitted my ticket, I received an immediate automated response requesting the confirmation emails and my zip code be sent via email to support@paymentwall.com with Inquiry ID xxxxx. I submitted the confirmation emails, my zip code, and screenshots showing me logged into Nextiva, the list of faxes I had sent, and my online credit card (gift card!) statement with all non-pertinent information blurred out. More than they asked for, enough to leave no doubt that I had completed the offer. As a new member, as the requirements stated. The last contact from Payment Wall was on November 19th, after I'd inquired if there was any action on the inquiry. They said it would take a few days and they would get back to me. That was 14 days ago, and despite writing them a couple more times (in email and from the inquiry screen), I have heard nothing back.

Time to get Team Swag Bucks involved!

I hate to have to go to Swag Bucks for help. I know they are busy! If it's a small offer I usually just let it slide- though I shouldn't! The more reports Swag Bucks gets the more pressure they can put on the offer companies to comply. I want my 218 swagbucks though! I explained the whole situation, including what proofs I'd submitted. Now to wait a few days and see what happens.

After that, it was time to swagsurf! I'd gotten a "Mega" win of 11, three SBTV wins for 5 each, but that swagtotal was NOT moving fast enough. Time to do more special offers.. YAY! (sarcasm!) I'm just tired and usually take a break from offers at the beginning of the month. I am behind on my ordering though!

I watched a couple of videos for 2 each on TrialPay, and browsed the other walls for more videos. Nothing there for me, I get on them pretty quickly. I haven't qualified for a survey of the day in a couple of weeks (and I never even get the Chance to do a survey on TapJoy- I hit START SURVEY and the very next screen is "Sorry, You do not qualify". Every Time, even after I clear my cookies and cache!) so I thought it would probably be a failure again. Not this time!

I know, it's funny, I went to Payment Wall for special offers today after submitting that report to Swag Bucks. Well, I was already on that wall! Why not try the survey?

After many qualification questions, I was sent to a survey about electric / electric hybrid vehicles. The estimated time was 20 minutes, with the boy climbing all over me it took about 35. The screenshot above was number 2 of about 20 questions that look almost exactly the same. They shuffle the options around and make you answer over and over and over to get a refined idea of what factors are important in buying the car. Most surveys do this, it's SOOOO annoying *laugh*.

At about 50% in I started "holding my breath". This is where I usually get tossed off a cliff and told "Sorry, You did not qualify!" or "Sorry, this survey has reached its maximum number of participants". Right around 70%, the browser "flipped out" and started rapid-fire loading pages. I saw onthe title bar something about "Sorry" and thought "Oh no.. What a waste!" Then the browser settled down and I saw the above message. Now I was really confused.. I didn't reach 100% of the survey, I saw survey, but now I see success? The swagbucks didn't show up right away so I had to wait to find out *chuckle* but not for too long. 30 minutes later the swagbucks appeared, bringing my total up to 94. Getting there!

I probably would have gone to another offer wall at this point to hunt for more swagbucks, but something caught my eye.

This offer for Clark Photos, for 374 swagbucks, had a 5 star rating. 321 people had successfully completed it, and though there were only 3 reviews, I took that as a good sign. People are more likely to post a review when they are unhappy than when they are satisfied. So I took a look-see.

Well, THIS looks promising! Before I decided to give it a try, I had a close look at the offer requirements. Purchase required, but no minimum. Free prints & the shipping / taxes on those free prints do not count, but, No Minimum! That means if I order just one thing I should be able to get my swagbucks. The three reviews seemed to back up that idea. Quick Note: Why would I spend money to make swagbucks? My total is greater than the swagbucks earned by Amazon gift card conversions. Because I needed the pictures for family for Christmas. My husband and mother in law wanted wallet photos of the kids, and the collage is a gift to myself! I was going to spend this money anyway, but would have spent more elsewhere, without the free prints, and would not have earned any swagbucks for it!

Once I signed up, the next stop was that Upload Photo button. I had 40 free prints coming to me! So I uploaded about 20 pictures and popped them in my cart.

I chose one of the photos and ordered one set of 4 wallets. That was $0.99. Just to be on the safe side, and cause I love them, I added a 5x7 collage print for $0.79. That brought my purchase total to $1.78- no minimum right? That should qualify. Together with shipping, the 4 wallets, 1 collage, and 40 prints came to $4.73.

I love these photo offers. I get all these free prints and the bonus bits for much cheaper than I would at Walgreens, and I get swagbucks too!

Between the time I finished the offer and now, wrapping up the blog, the offer credited. About 45 minutes. SWEET! That's enough now to get my last $5 AGC for the month- but I think I will wait a few days... I want to beef up my total first. I don't want to see 0 again so soon!

That's it for today folks! I will be doing more offers later I'm sure, but for now, it's lunch time! I hope you are all having a great Mega Swag Bucks Day!

Until tomorrow,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

5 Good Offers, NO FAILS! Amazing!!!

2010-12-02T11:12:00.001-05:00

Good Morning Swaggernauts!

I'm sure you guessed by the title up there just what this post is going to be about. Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into an "all offers all the time" blog. I'm just on a push to get enough to order my five $5 Amazon cards so I'm doing offers right now. (I thought I'd have enough swagbucks but PaymentWall STILL has not credited my Nextiva trial! 13 days later!)

First thing I did this morning (after my Daily Four) was turn on SBTV to run while I went offer hunting. I thought for sure I'd end up with a few bad offers, and if I was lucky, a couple of good ones to report. To my shock and delight, all five I attempted credited! Even bigger shock? Three were from TapJoy! *faints*

I may be a glutton for punishment even trying TapJoy special offers, but I figured, if they worked, Fantastic! If they failed, no surprise, and I'd be able to help you avoid the bad offers anyway. I got pretty lucky I guess!

I'm pretty much out of free trial special offers I can do at the moment, so I went looking for smaller free offers. TapJoy loaded up first so that's where I started. For once I didn't click the FREE tab, I just went looking, but I'm sure all the offers I list today are on the free tab as well as all. All of them were on the first page of "All" though!

The first offer I tried was FriendMatcher for 27 swagbucks. "Login to FriendMatcher to receive your swagbucks." It doesn't say in the offer listing that this is an IMVU app, but I saw those letters in the linkage as it was loading. Which made me groan. I do not do any IMVU offers, no matter how tempting, because the software is full of adware, spyware, etc.

However, when the offer loaded up, I saw that it is an app that doesn't require you to download any software. You just have to allow IMVU FriendMatcher to connect to your Facebook account. Then it pulls the list of your Facebook friends. It will show you a piece of land, and three Facebook friends, and you are supposed to pick which friend would match the property. It also might show a Facebook friend (if they have an IMVU account it will show their avatar, otherwise it shows their Facebook profile pic) and give you 3 options of a "relationship match" to choose for your friend.

Look! Marge is on TV!

In either case, once you select a friend (or match), it asks if you want to post the match on your friends Facebook wall. All of this took about 1 minute. I did not post on anyone's wall, but as soon as I'd "picked a match" I checked my swag total- SUPERDUPER! It credited Fast.

So I kept moving down the list...

Earn Cash Just By Sharing Your Opinions! for 23 swagbucks. "Swag Bucks will be awarded after you register with your valid email address." This is for the OnDemand research panel. Typical sign up form with name, address, email, & password. Then it loads up a "survey" page- in reality an information phishing page so they can select a bunch of offers to show you.

After this survey page it takes you through an "offer path" - you skip, no thanks, pass offer after offer trying to get to the OnDemand main page. About 4 offers in to the clickfest I checked my swagtotal. Sure enough! Swagbucks were there. Good thing to. Out of curiosity I kept going through the offer path. About 20 skips later, I landed on one of those (Annoying!) iPad consumer survey pages. You know the ones, I've blogged about them enough. You can't get the iPad without completing a gaggle of offers. I would have been pretty ticked if my swagbucks hadn't arrived yet. Would have gone on the warpath of "bogus free offers" and "incorrect requirement listings' and such. *laugh*

Meet singles in your area. 90 Day Free Trial with full access to Jazzed! for 34 swagbucks. Swagbucks awarded when you create a profile and upload an approved photo of yourself. Must be a new member in the USA. (Sorry Canada and UK that Sucks!)

I've tried this one before and never got credit, so I was pretty skeptical. Last time I tried, I couldn't get the photo uploader to work. This time I ran into the same problem When you try to upload a photo from your computer, after you find the pic you want and press UPLOAD, you are taken to an "URL UNKNOWN" type screen. This time I decided to try uploading photos from Facebook, so I created a SwagTester account and uploaded a dozen pics. Used the Jazzed FB photo uploader to grab them all. There were glitches with that uploader too! It kept dumping my 10th photo, and would Not let me out of the uploader screen. I was starting to think this was a fail offer, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. (I wish I'd taken screenshots but you will figure it out!)

I went up to the address bar and chopped off everything in the URL after www.jazzed.com/. Hit enter, and I got taken back to the "dashboard", and was instructed to finish entering my basic profile information. Once you've entered all that basic profile information (get to the end of the "Progress" bar) you will get an email stating you have completed your profile. That is when to check for your swagbucks. Mine came as soon as I got that email. You don't have to continue filling out any more information on Jazzed beyond that basic profile, don't pay attention to the Profile Page. It will say you are like, 76% done with your profile, but once you've gotten that email you don't have to do anything else. That is just trying to get you to fill out extended information to refine your matches.

Of course.. I'm married and sure as heck not interested in meeting someone online, so I will be closing that out soon. I don't know why it says 90 day full trial- it never asked me for credit card or billing / payment information. I guess after 90 days it will cut you off unless you set up payment? I don't plan on waiting to find out.

At this point I figured it was better not to push my luck with TapJoy. They don't exactly have a stellar record of offers crediting, and an even worse track record for answering / completing inquiries. Three successes was enough for now! So I moved on to SuperRewards.

Free Love Compatability Readings for 15 swagbucks. The offer requirements are written in poor English, something that usually steers me away from the offer. If they can't even write the requirements right, who knows what the req's really are? But what the hey, I did it. Must register to complete offer. Ok let's try.

Moonit is a horoscope based matching app. You choose what kind of relationship you want to analyze; Romance, Friendship, and Business. You input the persons name and date of birth, and it gives you a compatability rating, and a breakdown of what they dynamics of your relationship are supposed to be. You can also receive email alerts when the stars / planets align in such a way as to change the dynamics of your relationship. Sounds.. detailed?

My swag bucks didn't credit immediately so I tooled around the site for a bit. There is a "things to do " box on the right, I figured if I finished the items on that list, maybe Then I would get my swag bucks. Easy stuff, like input three relationships (I made them all up and what do you know, I'm compatible with all of them LOL) or asking a question on "the couch". (Got me folks, I didn't care enough to find out hah! I just asked "What is this couch stuff?" hehehe)

After I finished the stuff in the "things to do" list, my swagbucks still weren't there. It's SuperRewards though, their offers really do usually credit about 15 minutes later, so I took a deep breath and checked back 5 minutes later. HUZZAH! They were in my swagtotal.

At this point, I kind of can't believe I've done so well. Not big swagbucks earnings with each offer, but they all credited with no fuss- that's doing well in my book! I decided to try just one more. One that I'd tried before but never gotten credit for, because no confirmation email ever came. I figured either I'd have 2 time proof of an offer that didn't work, so you could avoid it too, or it would credit and I'd have a full house!

Play Fragoria Online! for 13 swagbucks. In order to receive swagbucks, you must complete sign up for a new account. You MUST create a character and play also.

It's a typical sign up form there. If you have registered for any Suba Games before, it will autofill your email- just change it to a new email (or you won't get swagbucks. Must be a New user.) Once you hit confirm, you have to wait on the confirmation email before you can log in and play. This is where I started to think I'd finally hit the wall. It took 10 minutes for that confirmation email to show up!

When it finally shows up, click the activation link, log in, and create your character in 3 easy steps; Gender, Name, and Avatar. Then it puts you right into the gameplay, in your web browser.

Linara vs the Walking Dead!

My swagbucks didn't show up right after creating the character, so I played a bit. Again, being SuperRewards, it could just be a matter of time- or I might need to play a little bit first! So I did oh, 3 quick tutorial quests, and checked my swag total again. HUZZAH! ANOTHER CREDIT!

You know what? I think I've pushed my luck enough for the morning! *laugh!* I decided to stop right there and come share all of this with you. I can't wait until I hit my goal, so I can find something else to talk about again :P

I really hope all these offers credit for you as well. If you run into any problems, let me know what they are, I can note them here for other users, so they can know what else might happen when they try.

For now, I'm off to clean the kitchen - I'm slackin'! Until tomorrow swag friends..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

Good Offers, Bad Offers, & Offer Tips!

2010-12-01T15:50:00.005-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

Last night I ordered a $50 Amazon card, this morning two $5 Amazon cards.

I have enough swagbucks for one and a half more $5s so I have to earn a few hundred swagbucks today! I bet you know what that means for the blog..

Yep! Special Offers! Not just bad ones this time, but a couple of good ones too! First let me show you something that made me chuckle on last nights Swag hunt.

One right after the other, offers for Equifax credit check / credit monitoring. Two different swagbuck payouts. The obvious 1st question is, Why would anyone choose the lesser payout? Sometimes there are similar offers on several walls, and while Payout is usually my first criteria, I look at each offer because they are not always exactly the same.

In this case, the 1,088 offer has 3 - in - 1 monitoring, identity check protection and offers a 30 day free trial. The 1,020 offer doesn't mention identity protection, and says it includes "Credit Watch Gold" and also has 3 - in - 1 monitoring. It's only a 7 day trial however.

I'd say do the 1,088 one, especially since I've seen posts on Facebook about it crediting quickly today.

(Oh my Gosh I'd say try these cookies I just made too. NOM NOM NOM they are good! Oatmeal Craisin cookies - with cherry infused cranberries instead of raisins. WoW, YUMMY!)

The bad Super Rewards offer I posted about on Monday came to a quick resolution this morning. They credited me 17 swagbucks because I fulfilled the requirements, but of course made no mention of contacting the advertiser to pull / fix the offer. One can only hope! I'd still say avoid it unless you want to have to do screenshots and an inquiry. Then again, if enough of us do it and inquiry the same offer, maybe they will do something about it!

In Positive TapJoy News (so rare, I know) I found two easy insurance offers last night that don't require you to input anything other than your state or zip code. One is for 25, and the other for 34.

Save Over $500 a Year on Car Insurance for 25 Select your state from the drop down menu. A tab and a new window will open with a list of companies and "Get Quote' buttons to the right. I'm not sure if the TAB or the WINDOW has the tracking cookies so I did the following for both pages - I clicked on two different insurance companies. A new tab opened for each. One of them had another State Selection button so I did that and left both quote screens up for about 5 minutes. Closed them all out because I get impatient. About an hour later the 25 credited.

You Could Save Hundreds of Dollars a Year On Car Insurance for 34 Input your zip code / state (can't remember now sorry) and do the same as you did for the offer above. Click, open pages, let them sit a bit, and check back for swagbucks later. This one also took about an hour to credit.

GO TAPJOY! You finally did Something right!

I found another good offer on Gambit. They are number 2 on my poodoo list right now, but I have pretty much emptied everything BUT insurance offers from the other walls.

I did the Gamehouse Fun Pass 7 day free trial. This is the second time I've done it. The first time I believe I found it on PaymentWall, but I can't remember for how much. That time, I had issues with the downloader for games and couldn't even USE the Fun Pass, so it was logical to cancel.

This offer is currently on a couple of offer walls. Gambit has it for 900. TapJoy has it for only 510. It Pays To Shop The Walls!

By the way, some of these free trials, like the one above, Can be done more than once. Often, if you use the same credit card (or in my case, prepaid Visa gift card), you may get your free trial but not your swagbucks. You may not even get the free trial, being a previous customer. I happen to have two different Visa gift cards, so I just used my second one, and had no problems. The swagbucks rolled in about 20 minutes after completing the sign up.

This time I can download and play games- but so far the games I've tried all end up being STUCK- as in, I can't exit them without alt-tabbing out, starting the task manager, and ending task. Not so good. Probably going to cancel again... *GRIN* I love it when they give me a perfectly plausible reason to cancel. Then I don't feel like I'm somehow cheating the system LOL.

Now on to a couple of quick BAD offers. You know it was coming- I can't do a serious swagbuck hunt without running across at least one.

This isn't a BAD offer so to speak, it's just a DEAD offer. Waste of time. You are supposed to enter a contest and submit a phrase "What if ...." for a chance to win a trip to New York City. I completed this offer before but never got my swagbucks. My bad, I forgot to inquiry it, and it fell off the Viewed Offers list. Too late now! So I decided to try it again.

Well, The contest is closed, no more submissions accepted, therefore no way to complete the offer for swagbucks. I wrote them asking them to remove it as a dead offer, but until they do, don't waste your time. 108 swagbucks would have been nice though...

The last item is a 680 swagbucks offer from TapJoy for eMusic. You sign up for a 30 day free trial and get 50 free MP3 downloads.

This is one of those times I am really glad I use a prepaid gift card instead of a regular credit card. I filled out the sign up information, inputted my card information and clicked SIGN UP. Instead of being taken to a confirmation screen, or a further information screen, or even a denial screen, I was sent to a "Thank You! Please enjoy this Special Offer as our way of thanking you for joining,"

It was an offer to sign up for a 2 month free trial to 2 magazines, either People, Time, Sports Illustrated, or Entertainment Weekly. I recognized this offer as one I'd done for several hundred swagbucks a couple of months ago- but this wasn't through the special offers screen, I would get no swagbucks for signing up.

I could find no way to get off that page. No skip, No Thanks, pass buttons. No mention of eMusic by name anywhere on the page. Trapped. Dead end.

I tried to log into eMusic but could not, as I was never taken to a "create a password" screen. I checked my Visa gift card statement and sure enough, there was a pending charge.

PANIC! Started feeling a little sketchy there. Thank GOODNESS I use the gift card, no matter what it will not effect my credit if some scam has occured. That's what it felt like. A scam using the eMusic sign up as a front to get your credit card information.

First thing this morning I called eMusic to find out what was up. The customer service rep knew nothing about TapJoy, nothing about the magazine offer, stated that it couldn't have had anything to do with them. I explained (won't go into it now) how it must be embedded in the sign up form. Anyhoo, point is, apparently it was a valid attempt to authorize my credit card but was for some reason declined. It wasn't a matter of insufficient funds, they could not explain why it cancelled, but implied it was a glitch and would I like to try again.

No Thank You. Not on the phone, not for no swagbucks, and not with this kind of sketchy, shady stuff going on. The lady said she would forward the complaint to corporate to see what might be happening with TapJoy and the magazine offer.

I suppose this may or may not be a bad offer. I would suggest you stay away from it, despite the tempting 680 swagbucks. Something is not right. For one thing, whether I completed the offer or not with a successful sign up, there was NO RECORD of me even attempting the offer on TapJoy. No way for me to report any offer problems to them. eMusic couldn't even explain why I was denied, they have no explanation why I would be trapped in a magazine offer, and I still don't feel 100% sure some third party didn't grab the credit card number.

Gift card. Gift card.

I keep saying credit card but it's such an important difference. If you are using a real credit card for these offers, you really should switch to something like the Visa Go-Tag. It Covers Your A$$.

That's it for today's offer meltdown. I'm sure I will have more good and bad in the coming couple of days, as I have about 600 swagbucks to earn.

One last tidbit and I'll be signing off for the day-

Last night we got a typical frustrated question about special offers on the Swagbucks Facebook wall. The poster was asking what the heck to do when they ask for a confirmation email, and you can't find it. Well, my answer is FIRST : Don't let it get lost!

As soon as you do the offer, check the email used for the offer. Look in spam IMMEDIATELY so it doesn't get bogged down and lost. Create a folder in your email for confirmations- if you want to be Very organized you can have a folder for each offer wall, but a simple "Confirmations" folder should be enough. Whether the confirmation is in your inbox or spam, move it to the confirmations folder immediately. That way if you have to do an inquiry, you know right where to look.

If you do open an inquiry, and they want a confirmation email, this is what you need to do. Open the confirmation email, and "FORWARD" it. You are not going to hit SEND, you just want to see the entire email, including the "header" which shows what date / time the email was sent To You. Instead of sending it, just highlight and COPY it all, top to bottom. Paste that into the inquiry comment box.

Sometimes you Will forward the email. You will know because the inquiry page over on the special offer wall will say "Please forward the confirmation email to support@whateverCo.com with Inquiry #XXXXX in the Subject line." PaymentWall is one of those that asks you to send screenshots and confirmations by email. Most of the others do not.

If an offer requires you to get to the "end of an offer path" and see a quiz result, or confirmation code, Take A Screenshot when you get there! There's a 50 / 50 chance you will need to submit a ticket, and you can't go back after the fact to get the screenshot. Pay CLOSE ATTENTION to the offer requirements. That's where you get the offer companies by the proverbial gonads. If they ask you for a confirmation email and the requirements don't mention needing one, If you have screenshots to back up your claim, point out to them clearly and politely that the requirements do not state a confirmation email is needed, nor was one sent, but you have screenshot proof that you met the requirements.

If they still deny you, report the Inquiry ID and Offer Company to Swag Bucks via the Contact Us link on the home page. Send them the same proofs. They will take care of you, as long as you are using valid information for the offers! :-D

Lastly, don't submit an inquiry as soon as you are done, even if you have a feeling it won't credit *chuckle* Even if the offer states it reports on a 15 minute delay, or receive swagbucks in minutes, sometimes it takes a while for them to come through. I've done so darn many of them that I can kind of tell when I need to inquiry, depending on the type of offer, and the company, but that's not really a guideline I can give you. Each users experience is different. I will wait anywhere from an hour, to a day, before submitting an inquiry. In the case of PaymentWall, I will look at the feedback / reviews and see what others say about how long the offer takes to credit. That gives me an idea of how long to wait.

That's it for today! I hope those two insurance offers credit you. I hope you have better luck than I am having today!

Until Tomorrow Swag Friends..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

The Day After! :D

2010-11-30T16:25:00.001-05:00

Good Afternoon Swag Friends!

I'm sorry the blog is so late today- I had to take my son to the doctor! He's had 5 bloody noses since 10pm last night. Every time he starts to cry, it starts flowing! Ugh! He's ok, just very irritated sinuses.

Did you all have a good Monday back at work? Did you hit any Cyber Monday sales? (other than Swag Bucks I mean!) I admit I couldn't keep money in my Amazon account long enough to wait for Cyber Monday.

I saw the perfect gift for my stepson a couple of weeks ago and there was only one left in stock. It's a racing game, with customizable cars, online play and rankings. It comes with a card swiper which plugs into the USB port, and 5 cards to get you started. These cards are upgrades to your vehicle, body, engine, tweaks, paint, etc. I went ahead and bought it, along with 2 booster card packs from Amazon, 1 from ebay. Using Swagbucks funded PayPal deposits, of course! I figure this, for him, will be a good reward system. He gets the game and first set of cards, and gets to open another present with the 3 booster packs. Instead of opening the three booster packs, he'll get one upgrade on Fridays if he's had a good week. Two if he really accomplished something good, like a major homework assignment on time with legible handwriting and minimal complaining on his part. *laugh* Apparently that's a LOT to ask!

Then I had to buy some earplugs for myself. I can Not sleep without them and my last pair were pretty much done for. So my account was pretty much drained to about $5 for Cyber Monday *chuckle*.

Gotta love having fund to buy the things you need though, don't ya? I <3 Swag Bucks!

Even though Amazon Gift Cards never went on sale at Swag Bucks, It's ok that I didn't order my $25 AGC yet. Gave me time to look at a nice, fat swagtotal! I've decided to buy a $50 card today, so I can hopefully wrap up my Christmas shopping in time. I'll get the five $5s when December rolls over too.

I decided I could afford to do that when the Gamehouse FunPass offer on Gambit credited for 900 swagbucks. Once again the prepaid, reloadable Visa gift card comes in handy! I only have $5 on it, but that's enough to cover the $1 or $1.50 pending charge most of the companies use to check the card. Plus I get a week of free gaming! So far I've played Wheel of Fortune- not much time to game today *chuckle*

The Cyber Monday sales at Swag Bucks were, mm, they were OK. There was a laser pointer. *chuckle* All of the Holiday 2-for-1 Swagstakes went on double entry, That's pretty cool! The Holiday section of the swagstore, as well as the video games & sports trading cards all went on sale. Shop & Earn is at double payout- 2 swagbucks for every 1 dollar spent. I think it's cool they put the video games on sale, but I wonder how well they did with sports card sales. Collectible cards are not a giant market right now. I wish they had some wrapping paper in the Holiday section, but no.

As I mentioned before, Amazon cards did not go on sale. However, any cards ordered before Tuesday, the 23rd of November shipped out and arrived yesterday. Extra spending money for Cyber Monday! Now, that IS pretty cool!

There were a couple of mini contests, on the Swagbucks Facebook page and on Twitter, for 150 swagbucks each. 3 codes for 5, 9, and 5.

And... that's about it! It was a pretty fun day, chasing down the sales, codes, and contests.Not much else to say about Cyber Monday!

I just wanna share one thing with you before I go. Tomorrow we'll get back to more tips and such :)

Yep! That's me on TV again!

Google Translate is an excellent tool for swaggernauts who may not speak English as a first language. If you have questions to ask on the Swagbucks Facebook page but can't quite word it right in your head, you can go to Google Translate, type in your question in your own language. Google Translate detects your language. Choose English from the language drop down box, and your question will be translated as you type it.

Google Translate isn't just useful, it's fun as well! Sometimes some of us will have swag conversations on the Facbeook wall in and number of random languages.

That's about it for today. Tomorrow I will return to tips, offers, etc. I hope your week is going well. Don't worry, you'll get another holiday SOON!

Until Tomorrow Swag Nuts..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

Cyber Monday All Day! BAD OFFER ALERT!

2010-11-29T10:07:00.010-05:00

Good Morning! It's CYBER MONDAY!

I've been here pressing refresh on the blog and the swag store since 5 am PST. That's when the Black Friday blog posted, and when the items went on sale last week.

Finally! It's TIME! Oh my gosh I thought I would first die of excitement, then of anxiousness, finally of boredom, waiting so long! *laugh!* And DOH! It's in Pieces! I mean, it's not all on sale at once.. here, let's take a look at the blog.

Apparently they are keeping the Black Friday sales of PayPal, Starbucks, and iTunes cards going for one more day. Sweet!

They have also discounted the entire Holiday section, and all of the Holiday 2 for 1 Swagstakes are double entry.

That's it, but only for now. The Swag Guy says he will be putting more items, and whole categories of items, on sale throughout the day. So I will be keeping my eyes peeled and updating SwagMelt as new sales are announced!

Keep YOUR eyes peeled too! He says there will be three codes today, and mini contests throughout the day, so keep checking the Swagbucks Blog and the Swagbucks Facebook page! If you have a Twitter account, be sure you keep your eyes on that too!

In fact, RIGHT NOW there is a code in the blog for 5 swagbucks, it's good until 9:30 am PST, 12:30 am Eastern. Hurry Hurry! It says it is a warm up code, so I expect there will three more throughout the day. YAY!

UPDATES SECTION!

CODES

The third code is out right now, for a limited time, and can be found in the Swagbucks Facebook daily discussion thread.

There was the warm up code this morning, and right now (3:20 Eastern) there is a code hunt on! If you area reading this before 4 Eastern / 1 Pacific, hurry! Go to the swag blog and read the details on the Sports Cards that are on Cyber Monday sale. At the end of the blog it gives you a hint where to find a code worth 9 swagbucks. Pay attention to the two new categories of cards! That's as much help as I can give you as to where to find it. Rules are rules. However when you DO find the code, (you are looking for something that is letters and numbers and makes no sense) there's a trick. Watch the spaces. That is all I can say. HURRY!

SALES

Check out the blog for details on the Cyber Monday Sports Card Sale!

Cyber Monday Video Game Sale in the latest Swag Blog!

Come on Swag Guy, don't let us down! Give us Amazon Gift Cards on sale! Please?

The Swag Guy put out a blog rehashing the holiday sale.

CONTESTS

A second contest was held on Twitter. He asked a question and the first three people to answer correctly won 150 swagbucks.

The Swag Guy held the first contest on the Swagbucks Facebook page.

These contests appear out of nowhere, and are over in seconds flat! You have to be quick! Remember the Get Ready For Cyber Monday blog? Ya I dropped the ball and didn't post it but if you look to the right, the last 5 posts from the Swagbucks Blog are listed. So keep an eye on that! :)

Anyhooooo, I believe what TSG said was..

In order to be properly prepared for everything, be sure to stretch out your wrists and typing fingers and practice your high speed mouse clicking!

I had a feeling he meant contests, or contests on Twitter. Mini contests usually means on Facebook because they go SO fast. I mean dang, the Twitter ones are lightning speed but Wow. *laugh!*

If you are a newer swaggernaut, take a look at this before we go on. This is how to find posts from The Swag Guy whenever you are looking for code hints, etc. VERY USEFUL!

Below the post box is the word Filters. Click that and you have three filter options for the wall.

Look! Katie's on TV!

If you choose Just Swagbucks you get only his posts- a Tremendous help when looking for his code hints.

Until more sales are announced, keep reading on for yet another Bad Offer Alert!

Last nights find was on the SuperRewards wall, for 17.

Not that I wanted to download anything but hey, I'm hard up at the moment. Besides I love hunting out viruses and nasty things so YOU don't have to experience them!

This one isn't a bad offer due to virus. It's a bad offer because the requirements are NOT CORRECT. It's similar to the Gambit offers I keep spotlighting, except instead of entering your email "for swagbucks" you download the toolbar. That's it, that's all the requirements say. Download and install toolbar, reports on a 15 minute delay. Free tab.

I opened Internet Explorer for this one. It downloaded fine, checked out OK with my uber virus software. All seemed like a GO until I got to this....

Last Step? Complete the offer below? Are you kidding? Hey, this looks Awfully Familiar...

If you read the other posts with Gambit offers that require things like Submitting Email but in reality are "Silver, Gold, Platinum Offer" deals, then this Does look familiar to you, and it should. It's the same deal.

These offers say FREE. They list requirements that do NOT include doing other offers- and I can pretty much promise without going through the steps that in the end, after the 12 offers you have to complete, you WILL end up spending money.

I gave it 24 hours to see if it would credit but of course, it has not. I downloaded and installed the toolbar, but did not complete the 12 offers. So *sigh* another inquiry to start. At least it's not Gambit. I haven't had to chew SR out for a while, maybe they will respond positively.

I give this offer a big ole "MEH!" rating. Don't bother doing it, it won't work without inquiry.

That's it for today Swag Friends! I'm going to GO SHOPPING!:D

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

Until Tomorrow - HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

TapJoy Saga Resloved & Buy 3 PayPal Get 1 AGC! (Black Friday Sale)

2010-11-28T10:44:00.000-05:00

Good Afternoon Swag Nuts!

Ok, I am sorry there was no post yesterday. I had to take the day off to recover :P My husbands best friend came over Friday night, drinking (something I have Never seen him do) and in the mood to reminisce. It turned into a reunion with various friends from their youth plopping down with more beer *laugh*. I don't drink often, once in a blue moon, and I only had a few beers, but I didn't get to sleep until 3 am. Then had to wake at 5 am with the toddler. So I was VERY brain blurry yesterday. I couldn't even remember my password to log in to blogger or my email *LAUGH!*

So I took the day off. I guess I'm able to do that, right? You didn't miss me didja?

We didn't miss too much in the Swag World yesterday anyway. Holiday weekend and all that. However I read on the Swagbucks Facebook wall that The Swag Guy made a comment about looking out for Cyber Monday. !! !! !! !! !! Could it be? Could my dreams come true, and Amazon gift cards will go on sale? I am still hanging on to the swagbucks to buy a $25.

For the moment, the Black Friday sale is still going on over at the Swag Store. PayPal, Starbucks, and iTunes cards are still available at their discounted price. On Black Friday, I'd ordered two $5 PayPal deposits. Then I saw emails from Swag Bucks and PayPal in the inbox. My first 2 PayPal ordered on the 16th came through YAY!

This is the email you look for to find out both if Swag Bucks shipped your PayPal, and whether it has cleared into your PayPal account. Of the 15 or so PayPal deposits I've ordered, only one hit a snag. Swag Bucks sent the email saying the card shipped, but PayPal never sent one saying it arrived. I ended up writing to Swag Bucks via the Contact Us link on the homepage. I waited about 30 hours after receiving the Swag Bucks email before writing. I gave them the order number and explained the situation. Within a few days (it was over a weekend so allow time for those non-business days!) they got back in touch with me, letting me know they had refunded the card so I could purchase it again if I wished. Which is just what I did, and have had no further hiccups.

When I saw the PayPal email, my brain got to working.. "Are the cards still on sale? Should I get another one??" Sure enough, the cards are still on sale, so I snagged one more, bringing me to my limit of 5 for the month. I kind of wish I'd waited on the other two, earlier in the month, but I needed to be sure I had money in PayPal to fund Netflix and extraneous Christmas shopping on eBay / Walmart.com. (Yes, WalMart takes PayPal! Free site-to-store shipping this month!)

That's a lot of cards! (I know, right?) This is what I've ordered so far for November. I still have bucks in the bank HOPING for a Cyber Monday sale so I can snag that $25 Amazon gift card. I also have the bucks in the bank for December 1st when I start ordering Decembers five $5 AGCs. By purchasing these three PayPal cards now, on sale, I saved 450 swagbucks, enough to cover one of those five $5 AGCs. Sweeet.

How Did You Get So Many Swagbucks??

I did a lot of special offers. A few of which were for large amounts, free trials such as Equifax. Using a prepaid, reloadable Visa gift card means not having to have, or use, a real credit card (though not all offers accept them.) and checking your own credit score does NOT harm your credit, so you can sign up for quite a few of the free credit check trials. I would definitely recommend you only do one at a time. Open one, (write down all details such as email used, log in name, password, and when to cancel by! Get a cancellation phone number or link as soon as you sign up so you don't have to hunt it down later!) get your swagbucks, leave it open at least a week, then CANCEL before you open another one. (Or Keep It! LOL) Just safer, easier to keep it straight that way, with the added benefit of spreading out your big bucks wins for a few months. If you do them all at once, your well will run dry!

My swagtotal was also aided by a positive resolution to my TapJoy saga. I was watching special offer videos the other morning. Refreshed my total expecting it to go up by three. Instead it flipped and showed up about 500 swagbucks higher. YIKES! YAY! What?? LOL!

I had a feeling.. more than one inquiry credited! But, which, from who, when?

Booyah is RIGHT! 6 SBTV wins (been getting 6 a day the past few days- some folks are getting 10 - 12!) and FIVE inquiries from TAPJOY credited!

Whaaaaaaa.... How? Swag Bucks! You Guys RULE! It had to be them! I ran over to check my email...

Josh from the Team Swag Bucks wrote me to let me know that TapJoy had responded to them, and was crediting the offers I'd written to them about.

To refresh your memory, after writing the BBB about TapJoy, I finally took my own advice and contacted Swag Bucks via the Contact Us link on the homepage. I told them that TapJoy has not responded to a single inquiry I've submitted since September, and that I'd even contacted them Twice about some of the offers. That the inquiries were vanishing off of the status screen because TapJoy hadn't responded, so they were closing out automatically after a certain time limit. I gave them the ticket numbers for the 5 that were still open and available, and didn't even bother trying to pursue the offers I could no longer see.

I got credit for all 5 of those offers on November 26th. What nice Thanksgiving 2.0 kind of present!

Over in the mailbox I used for all of these special offers I found 5 emails from TapJoy. Each one stated which offer it was and that it had been credited. Of course, I have to laugh at the response in the last email...

Please note:

Excessive number of manually credited offers may be automatically flagged as potentially fraudulent activity and result in the disabling of offers from your account.

Should you have any further questions, please let us know.

Thank you,

Khajavali
Tapjoy Support

ROFLMAO! Really? You can flag ME for fraudulent activity if I pursue the swag bucks you owe me, but are you not being Fraudulent when your users fulfil all offer requirements and you don't bother to pay, or respond?

Also interesting to note is that the Perfect World offer was listed as 162 swagbucks. I received only 136. Oh well, they are so screwed up, I will be happy with what I got.. for now... !

My Advice? Use TapJoy Sparingly, because you Will have to submit inquiries. It's a pain in the BUTT keepin track of them all, especially since they don't respond. And who wants to be threatened with being banned? This is the second time I have been given that warning by the way. The first time was in August, when I'd done several offers and none credited. After about the 4th inquiry, I received my warning. Ridiculous.

Forget the negatives though, I'm focusing on the POSITIVE- Team Swag Bucks Has Our Back!!

I love Swag Bucks for so many reasons - it's LEGIT for one! It has a thriving community. It is always evolving, improving. And their customer service is TOP NOTCH. I challenge you to find another search & win or rewards site that is as good, reliable, or helpful as Swag Bucks. (If you do, send me a referral link LOL!)

That's it for today. Good News for the Good Day. Tomorrow I hope to be all excited and goofy over Cyber Monday sales- let's cross our fingers and toes! (Not your eyes, please, they'll stick that way you know!)

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

Until tomorrow my Swag Friends....

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

Black Friday Sale & BAD OFFER ALERT!

2010-11-26T12:49:00.003-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I hope it was at the least Peaceful for you! Any funny family stories? Comment, Please! I'd love to hear them.

I cooked my first Real Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. It went Very Well! Since it was my first, and supplies were low, I didn't try to tackle anything like sweet potato casserole. I stuck with the basics; Turkey, Stuffed & Golden Brown, Homemade Turkey Gravy, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, White & Yellow Corn, Asparagus Tips, Sweet Mexican Style Corn Bread, (had to do a nod to my hood you know,) and Pumkpin Pie! It was a Glorious Feast that overran the meager size of our table. The garlic potatoes and homemade gravy were the highlight for me. I mean aside from the turkey skin- Perfect! Today- Turkey Sandwiches for lunch and a Turkey Stuffing Casserole for dinner! That should polish it off- my husband ate two heaping ridiculously full plates yesterday- a big compliment to the chef! So there's a lot less left than I thought there would be.

I know you are all wanting to hear about Black Friday! But first let me share a Special Offer Alert.

There is an offer on TapJoy for 29 swagbucks, "Download the Yahoo Toolbar and get 29 Swag Bucks!". This offer is a perfect example of why you MUST always read the fine print, if they bother providing any. Check it out ...

The requirements state that if you already have the Yahoo Toolbar installed, you will be offered the Simppull Toolbar to download instead, in order to be able to complete the offer. Hmm nice to be offered an alternative, right? Well I dunno.. Let's do a swag search on the Simppull Toolbar first, Just In Case!

Woah there Nelly! I see a lot of results inferring that the Simppull Toolbar is Malware. FORGET THAT! Nope, Nuh Uh, No Way. (Sorry had a Huckleberry Pie / Strawberry Shortcake flashback for a second there.)

VERDICT : Don't Do It!

Always, Always pay attention to the offer requirements, and Always research downloads you aren't familiar with. Ok, Really, if you want to be safe, just avoid downloads all together!! If you are just too tempted though, always do your research, and always have good virus software running first.

Ok On to happier topics- Swag bucks Black Friday Sale!

Several gift cards went on sale today. None of the Amazon cards, sadly, and the blog doesn't mention the sale extending beyond Today. I was hoping it would be like last years sale, with different cards discounted every day, but the blog really didn't sound like that was the case.

As you can see here, the PayPal and Starbucks cards are two of the sale items.

Even though this will eat into my swagtotal for the five $5 Amazon cards next month, I think I will order this $10 Starbucks card, because my husband was Stoked when he found out I could get him one through swagbucks. (Hey, whatever it takes to get him off my case about swagsurfing! LOL) It's a 101 swagbuck savings. Not tremendous, but any savings is great! However, I can't get this today because you can only snag two prizes a day, and I got two of the $5 PayPal deposits that were on sale!

I bought two of these first thing this morning, as soon as I found out the sale was on and Amazon was excluded. Darn I was really hoping to buy a $25 AGC on sale but I will get over it :-p Each PayPal deposit is on sale for 550, a savings of 150 swagbucks each. That's better savings than the Starbucks card!

The only other card on Black Friday Sale is the iTunes $15 card, normally 1850 swagbucks, today it is selling for 1650, a 200 sb savings.

There are two other gift cards on sale, but they have been on sale for a little while.

Phone Halo - Normally 135, Now 105

Gourmet Gift Baskets.com - Normally 249, Now 179

Another Swag Bucks Black Friday feature is Shop & Earn bonus payouts. For each $1 you spend today, you will get 2 swagbucks.

Well, it's some small savings and bonuses, I'm happy the PayPal card went on sale! I'm slightly let down that they only featured three cards, and it sounds like that's going to be it. However, I will check in tomorrow and hope they came to their senses and put Amazon cards on sale for all of us Swagnuts who have been hording swagbucks all month "Just In Case".

Last thing I wanna show you today are some new SBTV features. Earlier in the week The Swag Guy announced that Swagbucks TV now has a Search feature.

This should Really Help us with the SBTV Swag Code Hunts. Now instead of watching tons of irrelevant videos, we can do a keyword search and seriously cut down our time and frustration levels.

Also, the look of the Swag Bucks TV home page has changed. Now instead of seeing the Daily Top 10 videos in list form, we have a rotating slideshow.

I would like this feature if the videos would stop getting hung. That may not even be related to this new look but it started happening the same day it was rolled out. At least it Looks nice!

Ok, that's it my friends! Time to make some turkey sammiches for lunch, the dinosaur *cough* er boy is up! See you back here tomorrow! Until Then...

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

Happy Thanksgiving! Uber Linkage Here

2010-11-25T08:50:00.001-05:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING SWAG FRIENDS!

Oh my GOSH am I busy today. The past few Thanksgivings we have simply eaten at my sister in law's house. This year we have all the kids with us since their mom has to work, so I am cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, and then we are going to my sister in laws house later for Her dinner. UGH too much turkey. But there should be some special sides there that I'm sure will tempt me into eating again *laugh*

Today I'm just going to post some links to my other blogs, for newer swaggernauts who may be surfing today. Tomorrow I will come back and spotlight the new features on Swagbucks TV, and throw in some other stuff, who knows what yet :)

So on with the links list and, Until Friday - HAPPY SWAGSURFING!

Beginner Tips!

Daily Four Breakdown (120 swagbucks a month!) and Swagbucks Facebook Guide

SBTV and Special Offers Quick Tips

Survey Quick Tips

Snagging Your Swag Loot

Refunds, Referrals, and Other Issues

Get Alerts for Swag Codes (Feedburner, Twitter, Etc)

Swago, Swagstakes, and Partner Codes

Referrals and Questions Answered

More Questions Answered (plus How to enter the Amazon Universal Wishlist Giveaway)

A Couple More Questions Answered (yes, I love answering questions!)

Games Beta Live, 2 for 1 Holiday Swagstakes!

2010-11-24T13:46:00.002-05:00

Good Morning Swag Friends!

It's a gorgeous day before Thanksgiving here in Florida. Not a cloud in the sky, t-shirt temperatures, and our neighbors are gathering for their annual 2 day Thanksgiving and Christmas Display Building Fiesta! This isn't the best neighborhood, *cough* (understatement) *cough* not many people go all out decorating for the holidays for fear of vandalism, but our neighbors to the right say "NO FEAR!" every holiday, and their display grows bigger, brighter, and more festive every year. Being a 20+ year resident of this hood gives them a small bubble of respect- no one messes with their display for the most part. I love it! It's a little sparkle of normalcy in a spot where we bus the kids OUT for trick or treating :P

Today's post is short & sweet. Just a couple of things from the Swagbucks Blog I wanna share with you. Tomorrow there probably will not be a post. We have the kids and a dinner to cook, and in the evening another dinner to attend, so I will take a Holiday :)

Oh but first, small brag time. Did you see my swagtotal over there on the swidget? I had a 1200 swagbucks day yesterday! 10 special offers (three were old TapJoy inquiries, Swagbucks made them pay! THANKS SWAGBUCKS!), 9 video special offers, 4 search wins, 2 sbtv wins, and the daily four. No referral points yesterday. (maybe they will show up today!) Tack that onto the offers that finally credited the day before and I went well over my goal! I wanted to have the swagbucks for my five $5s on December 1st, one $25 this month (still hoping for a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale, you see), and have enough left over for 2 more PayPal deposits. That would be a total of 6800 swagbucks (unless there is a sale). I'm Golden! Now I can start saving for January's $5 Amazon purchases!

However I Must point out- I've pretty much tapped the well on large, free special offers. You can only do most free trials once *laugh* You can't have 1200 swagbucks days every day. I will have to work extra hard in December to meet my goal for January, but I have no fear! I can do it!

Ok! On to the Swagbucks Blog. I'm sure you all know exactly what I'm going to talk about first.

You guessed it! The GAMES BETA is Live! And you know what?

I WASN'T INVITED!!!!! :( :( :( :( *laugh!*

That's ok. I had a rough patch last night with all the braggers and screenshots on the Swagbucks Facebook page, but I'm better now. It's not about losing out on extra swagbucks, it's not about wanting to be first.. it's about my Beta Tester mentality. I love to try things out, find out what works and what doesn't, and give feedback to help improve it. I wanted a chance to be able to be Really useful to Swag Bucks. This site has given me So Much and I wanted to give back! I realize now that I do give back, every day, with this blog and with the help I give on the Facebook wall. It's not helping Swag Bucks directly, but it's helping newer swaggernauts get rolling, which benefits us all! We get more swag, They get more money and add more ways to get swag, we figure out the new ways and help others earn more swag, it's a lovely snowball effect!

Not being in the beta hasn't stopped me from paying attention to what the testers are saying, though! Last night there was a small flurry of screenshots.. let me go dig some up for you right quick since the cat is already out of the bag....

Only beta testers are supposed to have the link but if you somehow did run across it, this is what you would see if you weren't invited to the beta.

This is the games screen. Starfish, Crazy Taxi, worDrop, Capital Tower Defense.. sounds Interesting!

Apparently you get swagbucks randomly for playing, like SBTV wins.

There are also two tournament modes: Limited Players and Limited Time. These tournaments cost some (unknown) amount of swagbucks to enter, but could pay off with some greater (unknown) swagbucks win if you are the tourney leader.

I have no more information for you than that UGH I wish I was in the beta :P I wonder if there's supposed to be a confidentiality clause? All those photos above were taken off Facebook, if there's a clause, it's done been broken!

I'm really curious how the tournaments work though...

The second item of interest from yesterdays blog is a great holiday swagstakes bonus!

As a special treat for the holidays, Swag Bucks has several items listed as Two for One Bonus Swagstakes.

5 DVD bundles, One "EZ Grill" Portable Charcoal Grill, and a double set of WOWee One Power Portable Bass Speakers. Mmm, the grill seems kind of Random, I'm thinking they have overstock :P The Shrek and Nickelodeon bundles have 6 DVDs! Now, being a literal yet off the path kind of thinker, when the blog said you can "pick a friend to get the second set", my first thought was "do they mean you pick another swaggernaut to win the prize also?" That would be kind of cool, but so would just getting both yourself and either gifting others or selling the second set on eBay or Amazon. I'm probably overthinking the statement though. *chuckle* I do that sometimes.

Tomorrow I'm going to take Thanksgiving off and focus on my family. I'll post some highlights for the new swaggernauts to chew on, & come back Friday with a spotlight on the new SBTV features. By then the kinks should be pretty well worked out :-p

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of the blog. That should give you some quick pointers on how to get started!

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll see you back here Friday! Until then..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!!

Holiday Bonus Bucks & CheckPoint!

2010-11-23T13:16:00.000-05:00

Good Afternoon, Swag Friends!

Check out the redesign. What do you think? I put a couple of tabs up top, have a few more in the works to help new swaggernauts navigate to what they need most to get started raking in the swag! Let me know in comments if you don't like it, and why - bad color scheme? background is distracting? Let me know what you think.

Yesterday was a fairly good Swag Day! It definitely had a festive feel to it. I got 4 search wins, and around 11:00 -12 EST a lot of people were hitting a 4th win. I got 3 SBTV wins, usually only get 2 but I don't try as many times as I used to. The Swag Guy gave us two codes, a nice Monday treat. Payment Wall credited the second of 2 offers I had in inquiry. Still waiting on the first, but I'm glad the one for 576 credited!

I decided to surf over to the special offers page to find some videos or try a survey, when I saw this : Happy Holiday News!

Oh, SWEET! Well, Sweet if the offers credit, of course *cough mumble cough*. Dangit, they roped me back into doing special offers!

I noticed something else that's changed, and I quite like it!

Payment Wall has Moved! It's not down on the tabs with the rest of the offers. The layout is neater, in my opinion. The only feature I see missing is the Search box, but that never worked right anyway. I like it, it's cleaner and once that Thanksgiving bonus banner goes away, will eliminate the need to scroll down to get to the other offer walls.

I didn't see anything on Payment Wall that I hadn't already tried or wanted to do though, so I did a couple on SuperRewards. I meant to screenshot these but after taking a pic of the offer requirements, I forgot to take more. *shrug* My Bad :-p

One was for 14, sign up with HauteLook, it credited in about 20 minutes. the other, for 35, "What If You Could Win A Trip To New York City?" did not credit, still has not. I've read others on the Swagbucks Facebook page complaining of the same, though one person last night managed to get credited. We'll see. I'm still happy I entered the contest. I'd love to take my husband to New York City, it's the one place he'd choose to go. Plus I'd like to visit Times Square Church :)

I hadn't really done anything on Gambit since the Special Offers Breakdown, was too annoyed with them to try. I decided to give it a look see. I noticed the offer I fought them over was removed from the Free wall. I guess the advertiser decided it really wasn't free after all, submitting your email was Not the only requirement to get swagbucks. After all, Gambit said in the end, it was up to the advertiser if the offer got moved! Lovely.

Oh, you know what? More likely it's just gone because they credited me. Some walls the offer stays on your list when they customer service credit, some it gets removed. That's probably more likely. I bet it has nothing to do with anyone wanting to do the right thing :-p

Right away I also noticed the other offer I mentioned in that same post was still there, for 41 sb. Further down the list was yet another of the same type of offer, for 20. Both requiring you simply to submit your email for payout, or so say the requirements.

I decided, "What the Heck? I've got nothing to lose." I'd do the two offers but ONLY up to the stated requirements- why go further? I'd already proven there was No way to complete the offers for free.

In this offer you are supposed to pick Yes or No from a short survey of questions about Facebook features, then submit your email. You never receive a confirmation but the requirements do not say one is needed.

The nail in the coffin for me is the next screen. If it looks like what I think it will look like, I know I won't get credit and will have to go to inquiry battle.

Doh! Dang! Darnit. Does this look familiar? It's the same screen you get from doing the MacBook offer. Right then I knew I wouldn't get credit. I didn't go any further, I already have enough screenshots of failure :-p

On to the next offer, because I knew it would be a short and sweet fail.

Pick : Pepsi or Coke? iPad or other fictional prizes? What's my email? Swing and a Miss! Same screen after submitting email. Oh well, now I have two more offers to inquiry YAY! I could just let it go, but it's the point of the thing here. This wall has several versions of the same offer that Never Pay and are Not Free. I'm wondering how many of these I will submit before they ban me. I'm not trying to get banned, I'm trying to get them to do the right thing, but there's a Good Chance that will be the result, in the end.

So, from Positive to Negative back to Positive, so we can end on an upbeat tempo!

SwagBucks has partnered up with CheckPoints, the nations #1 Lifestyle App for iPhone (and soon Android) phone users.

With this app you "check in" by scanning products with your phone. You earn CheckPoints that you can trade in for things like gift cards.

You receive 20 swagbucks for downloading the app, which credits in two weeks. Each month that you scan at least one product, you get 6 swagbucks. Use your swagbucks referral code and get 2 free pulls on their slot machine, and a bonus 300 CheckPoints to get you started. Apparently, that's enough to get your first free gift card through CheckPoint! Nifty! Makes me jealous, I want an Android! (Since, you know, it's coming "soon" lol)

Head to the Swagbucks Blog to read the entire post, and to click that link to Apple! Let me know how it works out for you!

That's it for today's SwagMelt. Keep an eye on the tab bar at the top. There will be FAQ's coming, and the temp drafts will be fleshed out with screenshots and clearer instructions. Homework, every night!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and click the Beginner Tips tab at the top of SwagMelt. Skim through it and get to searching! I promise, once your first prize or gift card comes in, you will be hooked!

Until Tomorrow...

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

Bad Juju Offers & Quick Questions

2010-11-22T12:16:00.001-05:00

Good Monday Afternoon To Ya, Swaggernauts!

I don't have too much on the agenda for today's post. A couple of questions, and some warnings, but no screenshots. *chuckle*

First the warnings. There are a couple of tempting offers on the special offer walls right now, for PageRage and Facemoods. One promises to spice up your profile (and has recently been approved and promoted by Facebook which would seem to lend it legitimacy), and the other promises to spice up your chat and messages with awesome emoticons.

They are tempting but- DON'T DO THEM!

PageRage will JACK UP your Facebook. You get large ads placed on your sidebars and in the middle of your walls. Some of these ads have sounds which you can not turn off. They constantly reload your page whether you are on that tab or not, they make your mouse flickery and unstable, and cause all sorts of other annoying, interfering havoc. The instability issues eventually creep into your browser (and I feel Very sorry for Internet Explorer users with this one) and cause errors and disruptions when using other sites. (I can NOT blog and have Facebook open right now.) The profiles look nice but it is NOT worth it.

Uninstalling this one can be tricky. Some people have no problem, but I have several layers of issues. First of all, the Yontoo Layers client didn't show up in my programs list. Had to track it down via Windows Explorer. Secondly, I can not uninstall it from the Control Panel or from Piriform's CCleaner because, get this, the INSTALL.LOG file is corrupted. I wrote to technical support and they gave me this long, convoluted list of procedures that had a 50/50 chance of working. I've decided on a system restore, but I can't do that until I have resolved an open inquiry with TapJoy. (Which may never be resolved as they STILL haven't responded to me.)

Just stay away from it, it is NOT worth the risk. I knew the risks heading in, I was only half motivated by the swagbucks. I also wanted to see how it worked and let you guys know. Well, I'm letting you know- STAY AWAY! BAD JUJU!

As for Facemoods, I basically had the same motivations with the added twist of Wild Hair. I wanted to see these emoticons in action and decided to take the risk lol. It's not nearly as bad as PageRage, but it CAN post spam if you don't watch it carefully. It DOES wig out your Facebook posts: It can get "hung" loading the facemoods stuff so when you go to press Share or Comment, nothing happens. It causes Facebook to freeze up. So, More Bad Juju.

Now on to the questions.

A lot of people have suddenly noticed "partner bucks" in their account that they did not earn themselves. Often for partners they have no interest in. Apparently, you can now earn partner bucks from your referrals as well. I don't know if this was always the case. I have never gotten partner bucks from one of my referrals. I do know I've never seen this question until yesterday, and I saw it Several times.

If any of you have the answer to this, please let me know so I can repost it. Do those partner bucks count towards your overall 1000? That would be a Bummer, especially if they are from sites that do not interest you.

There are a lot of new swaggernauts every day that need to know how to take a screenshot. One of these days soon I will do a detailed, screenshot filled blog about it, but for today, I just want to share a few links. There's so many operating systems, so many levels of experience, I want to do a detailed report if I'm going to say anything at all :P

How To Take A Screenshot In Microsoft Windows

How To Use Windows 7 Snipping Tools

eHow - How To Take A Screenshot

Another swaggernaut asked me to do a post on how to successfully complete a special offer so it credits. The problem is there are too many offer walls, with too many types of offers, to be able to do such a post and be able to promise it will work. I did a whole series of special offer wall posts, and I still wasn't able to answer that question. I'm sorry, I have failed you :( But not for lack of trying! LOL

That's it for today. I didn't get to prep anything last night, had family time with my husband this morning, and now the boy is about to wake, ready for lunch and outside time! Besides, after two days in a row of such good news posts, I thought I would bask in the glow for a day. :D

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and start with October's second blog post, "Beginner Tips for Swagsurfing!", for tips on how to get started!

Until tomorrow Swag Friends,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!

New Features! Daily Deals, Coupons, Book Swap!

2010-11-21T14:27:00.005-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

How's your Saturday goin? Mine's been pretty Mega so far! My first and second wins were for 12! I got 34 swagbucks for videos from Gambit, TrialPay, and gWallet. Tried for and got 1 SBTV win so far. Yesterday, I won Quads, meaning I got four search wins, 3 of which were for 10.

So much more Mega than Friday's Mega Swag Bucks Day. I wonder if something happened that nerfed the win algorithm on Friday, and they've tweaked it this weekend to compensate. Or, maybe this is a tweaked win pattern to celebrate Thanksgiving week. Or to keep the air of excitement flowing until they let people in to the closed beta for Games? The world may never know! But I'm pleased with it *wink*

Speaking of being pleased, I gotta say that I Love two out of three of the new features I'm going to talk about today, Coupons and Book Swap trade in. The third, Daily Deals, is kind of a "Meh", rating. Nothing wrong with it, just not really new or interesting.

All three of the new features can be found on the Swag Bucks home page or from the Earn button on the toolbar at the top of any swagbucks page.

You can also find Coupons and Trade In from your browser toolbar but Daily Deals is not there yet. I'm sure they will add it soon.

I highlighted The Swidget there because it's a quick way to get code to post your swidget- but it's not, as I'd hoped, a quick access to the swidget to check it for Swag Codes. Ah well!

Let's start with Daily Deals. I like to eat my least favorite part of a meal first :P

There's nothing wrong with Daily Deals. As I said up top, it's just not new or terribly interesting. It's just TrialPay's listing of Daily Deals in a slightly different format. It's a way to access them without having to go to the special offers page. It does give you more options than you get from TrialPay's "Local Deals" tab, but it's basically just a filter that leaves only TrialPay's Groupon, Mertado, and Living Social deals.

So I guess I give this one a "Meh" rating.

Hey, on the bright side, TrialPay has been one of the few offer walls that credits consistently without a battle, for me anyway. So, that's a good thing!

The other half of the Two New Ways To Save & Earn addition is Coupons.

There's the coupons tab, and a recipes tab. You can browse & print recipes and get ideas for which coupons to print!

On the coupons page, there is a left sidebar with a variety of filter options such as by Zip Code, by Category, or by Brand.

The first thing I looked for was a Whisk coupon. I got one in the mail along with a free sample, $1.00 off with no size restrictions. I thought if I could get another one of those, and if it also had no size restrictions, I could go to WalMart and either get some travel sizes if they have any, or get two of the smallest size they Do have. That makes the $1.00 off stretch farther.

I found what I was looking for. Seems to be the same as the coupon I got in the mail. Just check the CLIP button, and keep searching!

At this point I decided to browse the Publix weekly ad for Buy One Get One Free offers I could match with coupons for bigger savings this payday.

The first time you visit it asks you for your zip code to find stores and deals in your area.

I chose the Buy One Get One Free filter and found this goodie:

Sounded good, I wonder if I can find a coupon on swagbucks?

Save 50 cents of any one Betty Crocker box muffin mix or Fiber One box muffin mix. The BOGO above is a box of the Premium muffin mix. I'm sure that counts! Between the BOGO and the coupon, instead of paying $5.18 for two, I will only pay $2.09 :D I like that. Basically a buck a box.

I wrapped up this coupon clipping trip with another Publix deal.

Ziploc containers, 2 for $5.00. I knew I'd seen a coupon for Ziploc containers somewhere over there...

Sweet! Save $1.50 on any Two Ziploc containers. That will bring the price for two down to $3.50! Ok, I need more of those... why do the lids always disappear??

At the top left under the tabs you will see Coupon Carrier. That's like your printing cart. I have 3 coupons here for a total savings of $3.00. When I redeem them, (and the swagbucks credit,) that will be 30 swagbucks earned for $3.00 saved. PRETTY NEAT!!

Just press the Print Coupons button on the right. The first time you print, you will have to install a coupon printer. It's a quick install with no viruses or adware.

Once it's installed, you don't have to go through that step again. You will, however, be presented with a special offer. You DO NOT have to do this offer. You can skip it.

Once you've passed this step, your coupons are sent to the printer. I don't know how yours will work, different printers different software etc. For me, my print preview opens and I get to select the layout.

The coupon tells the vendor not to accept the coupon without a dot scan bar code beneath the expiration date, and to verify the coupon through veri-fi.com. In the bottom right, beside the other bar codes, are any consumer instructions. This one says no other coupon may be used with this coupon. The item is on BOGO though, so no worries!

I really, Really REALLY like the idea of saving money AND earning swagbucks. I know a lot of swaggernauts out there already clip coupons. Some have turned it into a fine art! I'm betting you folks will be just as excited about this as I am.

There is a limit to the number of coupons you can print each month. I asked on the Swagbucks Facebook page when I read one lady saying she'd already hit her limit on the first day, but I didn't receive a reply. I don't know what the limit is, my apologies.

I definately give this new feature...

Two Thumbs Up!

There's one last new feature I want to cover today, then I'm outta here!

On Thursday, Nov 18th, The Swag Gal let us in on yet another way to earn swagbucks.

Now you can look around your house for old books, search for them using Swagbucks Book Swap, and if your books are listed / accepted, find out what your swagbucks payment will be for each book, depending on it's condition and printing version. When you are done selecting books to trade in, you are able to print a FedEx shipping label. Pack the books securely, put the label on the box, and drop it at your local FedEx center.

Just choose Trade In from the homepage or toolbar, then pick Books.

You'll be taken to the search screen, where you can enter single or multiple IBDNs, title, author, or keyword inquiries.

I looked up the first book that came to mind, one I got from my sister-in-laws garage sale items that didn't sell. Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil. I'm reading it right now but we've got so many books without bookshelf space, we Need to get rid of some of them. First I searched by author name, Sharansky.

The first thing I noticed was the title of my book was available to sell. Then I noticed there were three pages of results for the author. Then I noticed only one book on the list seemed to be acceptable for sale. I decided I needed to check the ISBN, as the cover didn't look the same. So I searched by ISBN, but lo and behold, they were not buying my version of the book.

However let's go back and look up at that one it DID find.

There is a drop down menu that lists version choices. U.S. Edition, International, Annotated, and Instructors Editions. Each one comes with a different Swag Selling Price. Had this been the right version, and a U.S. Edition, I would have made 80 swagbucks on it.

There is a little question mark bubble next to the dropdown which explains how to determine what version you are trying to sell.

I haven't looked for any more books yet, but I will be very soon. I definately give this feature an EASY

Easy swagbucks, Free shipping, house decluttering! What's NOT to love?

That wraps it up for today. Leave me some feedback, tell me what YOU think of these new features!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and start with October's second blog post, "Beginner Tips for Swagsurfing!", for tips on how to get started!

Not sure yet what tomorrow's SwagMelt will be about but I'm sure I can dig up something good for you! Until then, Swag Friends,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!

Bye Bye Offer Walls, Hello New Features!

2010-11-20T11:41:00.002-05:00

Good Morning Swagfriends!

Happy Saturday! Happy Thanksgiving Week! (It feels like it really starts today for me anyway.)

This Saturday before Thanksgiving, I am thankful that no one in the house is sick today. I'm thankful that my toddler let me catnap very well this morning- I sure needed it! And I'm thankful that I am THROUGH with the special offer posts for a while. Frankly, between Gambit and TapJoy, it was pretty depressing.

I do have one more note and then On To Better Things!

I was pretty frustrated this morning over TapJoy. Looking at the offer status screen, I noticed more of October's unanswered inquiries had moved down off the list. Case Closed, No Response. My most recent inquiry is for 162, and of course, has received no response yet. It bugs the snot outta me that I can't view an open inquiry. All I see is "Processing your feedback" (yah RIGHT) and Contact TapJoy. Which opens another "ticket" instead of tacking on to the old one.

So I took my own advice and wrote to Swag Bucks from the Contact Us link on the homepage. I chose Special Offers from the drop down, gave the company name, offer name, offer value. In the body of the message I explained about the offer in question, included a list of other offers that have received no response, and mentioned that there are several more that are no longer accessible to me from as far back as October 8th. (I am not even going to try to pursue anything before that, but it's been going on a while.)

I'm just asking Swag Bucks to make TapJoy contact and communicate with their users first and foremost. And if possible, to honor their agreement, and pay out the swagbucks owed. From a business perspective, it's in Swag Bucks best interest to make sure the companies they have agreements with are honoring them. I wouldn't want my users slowing (or stopping) their use of my product (Swagbucks.com et al) because they feel ripped off.

When I get a response I'll let you know. Other than that, it would take something Pretty Positive for me to do a special offers post anytime soon :P Besides, I've got Much More Fun things to post about right now!

Swag Bucks has rolled out a whole Slew of new features this week. Some of them are pretty cool, can't really find fault with any of it yet! :) Oh! Before that though, just a quick screenshot of a search workaround for newer swaggernauts.

This was my biggest win yesterday. On Mega Swag Bucks Day. Pitiful. But not really the point :P I've seen a lot of new swaggernauts ask why you can't do a .com type search without being taken straight to the URL instead of to search results. I don't know why but there is a work around. You just put a space between the word and the .whatever. See above? I didn't search grants.gov, because I wanted to try to get a win off the search THEN go to the website. I did grants .gov and achieved both of my goals.

Alright Already! On to some of these new features!

Now you can add your 2 cents to the item listings at the SwagStore. You can also add an item to the new WishList feature.

Look, Im on TV *AGAIN* !

To add a review, you simply click in the review box and start typing. Rate the product when you are done (You can only rate once. I added those rate stars after I'd reviewed so you could see what it looks like, but the option to rate is gone once you've rated it.) Once you click Post Comment, you're done! Sort by Most Recent to see your review. The default is Oldest First.

If you click Add to Wishlist, You get a pop up confirming it's been added.

You can view your wishlist from this pop up, or from the toolbar at the top of the Swagbucks pages. Just hover your mouse over your swagtotal.

You can snag anything on your wishlist from that page, as long as you have enough swagbucks to buy it. There are also three filter options for email alerts that you can set for each item.

You can be alerted when there is a price change, (good for those of us hoping for a Cyber Monday type sale,) if the item availability changes, (for instance the Ultimate Game Cards run out of stock, see when they come back in,) or when you've saved enough regular swagbucks (non partner) to snag your item.

I give both of these new features....

Two Thumbs Up!!

There's several more awesome new features to blog about, but I'm going to have to pick ONE and leave the rest for tomorrows post. I'm gonna go with the one I'm most excited about.

SWAGBUCKS GAMES!!

According to yesterdays blog post, sometime early Thanksgiving week Swag Bucks will be opening a private beta test of the Games function. 10,000 lucky swaggernauts will get the chance to be the first to use, try out, test the new Games! After the closed beta period, they will start adding new users slowly, continuing to tweak and fix the issues that arise. By the end of December, all users should be able to play!

I think this is a FANTASTIC idea. This new feature could be a lot of fun, but it could also present a lot of bugs and unforeseen issues on launch. I sincerely hope the 10,000 that get to try it out first are the types who understand that there WILL be issues. I hope they do their part by giving swagbucks the constructive, detailed information about their experiences needed to make Games work for everyone when it's fully launched. I hope they are patient, and of the mind to volunteer to make Swag Bucks better by treating it less like a sneak peek and more like a service. In the end, the effort you put into the beta will reward you with a more enjoyable, reliable experience at launch.

I really, REALLY hope I'm one of the 10,000! I'm just the type they need! I have no idea if they will be picking by lottery, or if they have a number of swaggernauts they would like to see involved, plus a lottery for the remainder. *shrug* I'm not begging but..

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME IN!

hahahahah I got 2 wins, for 8 and 10, searching for a good begging picture LOL. Gotta love it. Won more today before noon than I did all day on Mega Swag Bucks Day! Good times :)

Ok That wraps up today's SwagMelt! Come back tomorrow for Daily Deals, Coupons, and Book Swap! GOOD STUFF!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and start with October's second blog post, "Beginner Tips for Swagsurfing!", for tips on how to get started!

Until Tomorrow Swag Friends...

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!

Special Offers Breakdown part 7 - TapJoy! (OMG I'm Back!)

2010-11-19T11:21:00.005-05:00

Good Afternoon Swaggernauts!

I bet you thought I'd abandoned you :P No, No, I've thought of you guys every day! I've just been dealing with a lot of health issues this past week. Myself, my husbands, I've been in no shape to post.

However! I'm back, and I'm going to wrap up the special offers segment. Because Tomorrow! I have to show off some of the awesome new features SwagBucks had rolled out this week!

Ok.. *shuffles around papers in her head* where was i... *mutters and pushes her glasses up her nose until - * Oh yes! TapJoy. YAAAYY *laughs with a slight edge of irony*

Ok I really tried to come up with something positive about TapJoy. Really, I did. I kind of have some mediocre feedback about some features but basically, it still boils down to- I can't get TapJoy to credit or to respond to inquiries. This is just.. it's gotten ridiculous. They won't respond, there's no way to view an open ticket, only to submit another request which also gets ignored, then the inquiry gets closed out because of no activity. And you lose your swagbucks.

But let's just, push through this shall we, and shine rose colored lights on the spots that we can!

This is the TapJoy wall. It has All, Free, Survey of the Day, Shopping, Daily Deals, and More tabs. The green Missing Swagbucks button on the right is where you go to see your inquiry list *chuckle*. More on that later.

I guess we can start with Survey of the Day.

Right off the bat I've got a glitch to point out. It says the surveys are for 76, but we are only getting credited 68. Boo. Also, the surveys are very hard to qualify for.

On this one I gt disqualified for being a 34 year old female LOL. At least it was quick. I've only qualified for one so far. Sometimes if you DQ (disqualify) and refresh the offer page, try again. Sometimes it will be a different survey. If it's not, when you start the survey, you will be instantly DQ'd.

I did manage to qualify for one survey last week. As I said though, it only credited for 68. I was happy for it though! Getting swagbucks from TapJoy is RARE!

This is the Shopping tab. I didn't do any of the offers because without a regular income, I can't spend money to earn swagbucks. :)

Here you see the Daily Deals tab. Good things to jump on if you have disposable income. I didn't try any shopping or daily deals though, sorry.

I wanted to show you a successful offer. I have tried, and tried, and I am not going to post a whole list of fails. It's too depressing *chuckle*.I did screenshot an offer with a virus though. I knew it would have a virus, relied on my Zone Alarm Extreme Security to do it's job- and it did!

TapJoy has several offers for around the same amount of swagbucks that all require you to download the PicMorph toolbar. They all have a virus. So I did what I normally do, and reported it in inquiry. Other walls would respond and possibly give me some small swagbucks for screenshotting and warning them of a virus but not TapJoy. TapJoy just doesn't bother responding at all. YAY!

When you press the green "Missing Swagbucks?" button it takes you to a list of offers. It looks like you complete them all! However it's just that they list the completed offers first, and the open offers / ones with inquiries last. Above shows a typical fail. 6 offers, none credited. Well, the next day 3 credited, 3 did not. All the same type of offer- click through to a sponsored link. Really, 50% credit is GOOD for TapJoy - Bad in the real world!

Check these out. 3 open inquiries from October that have yet to get a response. There are three or four more that just went POOF, despite me having to open multiple tickets to attempt to get them to respond. No Response, and POOF. No more action I can take. YAY!

Anyway, find the offer you are looking to get credited, and click the Contact TapJoy link on the right.

Here I gave them screenshots proving the offer has a malicious virus and needs to be removed. No response.. and the offers are still there. YAY!

I got so frustrated by TapJoy last week that I did something I've never done before. I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. If I count just the offers they haven't made vanish, they owe me serveral hundred swagbucks that I *seriously* doubt I will ever see. One offer is for 162. That one I will be reporting to SwagBucks in a few days if I still get no response.

Hmm! Well, that's all the screenshots I have for TapJoy. Not much rose colored light there huh? Sorry!

I also managed to pluck up and do a Gambit task for you. I'm just going to post a list of screenshots. In the task I had to go through 10 pages with 4 items on each page. You have to get an 80 accuracy to be credited. I made it all the way to 50% with 100% accuracy, then I started tanking. The answers they wanted became more specific, though the links / videos they were telling you to look at had more than one possible answer, depending on the observer. So, needless to say, I failed. I felt tricked, hoodwinked. Fished lol. So I wrote them feedback saying the task was not fair because after 50% completion the questions became too subjective for a single objective correct answer, therefore impossible to finish with 80% accuracy.

In the end they emailed me back, saying they reset my accuracy to 100%, and I could try the task again. Well, yay. I can start all over and still not get through. PASS. For now. Maybe tomorrow ... :P

In this task you click a link and it takes you to a search page. You also click the video link. Compare the search results with the video it's chosen for you, and tell Gambit what level of relevance the search terms had to do with the actual video watched, and what the quality of the video was.

That's pretty much it. Most tasks are far more detailed and involved than this, from my experience. I will admit- this is the first one I ever completed. I have a problem with earning 30-60 cents an hour :P That's how the math works out for me, time spent, swagbucks potentially earned, and what those swagbucks add up to when converted to Amazon Gift Card currency rates :P

Let me leave you with an upbeat, positive note.

I ordered my stepsons Christmas presents YAY! And it was all FREE, with my free trial of Amazon Prime giving me free shipping on most items through Christmas, and my swagbucks AGC balance! I also bought a piece of his present at eBay last night, using PayPal money earned from- you guessed it - Swag Bucks! Love! Swoon! Joy!

If anyone reading this is not yet a member of Swagbucks, but wants to get on the swagtrain and start earning the free loot, there's no time like the present! Just go to the swidget , up top on the right there, press the Sign Up button on the bottom right. Fill out a short form, confirm your email, and get 30 swagbucks to get you rolling! Then come back here and start with October's second blog post, "Beginner Tips for Swagsurfing!", for tips on how to get started!

Well this was short and not so sweet. I'll be getting back into the swing of things tomorrow with some great news about New Swag Bucks Features! HUZZAH!!

Until then Swagfriends,

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!

Late Edition

2010-11-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

I apologize readers, yesterday I did not finish the TapJoy post as promised.

Let me tell ya,when it rains around here, it really pours.

You know I was just sick with the flu. Then my husband got it. As if a sick husband isn't bad enough (poor men are like little boys when they don't feel well!) yesterday he had not one, but TWO seizures. One in the afternoon, and one in the evening as he was stubbornly trying to get ready for work. In the shower, one of my worst fears.

He's ok but had to go to the hospital for stitches and concussion check. He's got a lot of testing scheduled for December.

I have the material ready for the TapJoy post, and did a Gambit task this morning too, but I won't be able to post until a bit later. Sorry for the missing SwagMelt again, but family comes first. See you in a bit.

SwagMelt is On Air with Gambit part 2 and TapJoy

2010-11-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

Hello there, Swagfriends!

I'm sorry SwagMelt has been off the air for 4 days. I've been too sick to do much of anything but search until yesterday. I just haven't been up to typing. I've also been trying here and there to find something positive to screenshot and post about TapJoy, but I have to accept that it is what it is, and the post isn't gonna end with rainbow cookies leading to pots of swagbucks.

Before I start baggin' on Tapjoy, I gotta return to the Gambit post. Might as well get two negatives out of the way at once, right? *laugh* It ended with a resolution similar in ways to my answers to most geometry questions back in high school, which got me a 50% average grade most of the time. I would get the answer correct, in the end, but the way I got there was "wrong" and didn't ever address the "heart" of the geometry problem. My teacher would look at me mystified that I even got the right answer in the end, so "illogical" was my route.

That's how I feel about the process on this offer with Gambit. In the end, I got my 38 swagbucks. But the mountainous route they made me climb made no sense, because, in the end, they never addressed the heart of the problem. They had ample proof that they needed to either honor the requirements for all users - simply submitting your email -

Or they needed to correct the offer requirements and move the offer from the free wall. They said they would let the advertiser know, which I assume means that it's up to the advertisers discretion whether they list it as free or not. That didn't tell me if they would start paying for the offer. Most people who do this offer don't get paid for it - or any of the offers like it. A lucky few slip through, but their "method" doesn't work for everyone. *sigh*

After they told me they would contact the advertiser, they still didn't credit me right away. I mean, I'd already submitted proof that I'd completed the requirements- submitting my email. I'd explained the problem with the offer. Instead of crediting me, they asked me...

What have I done to complete this? I'd already submitted screenshots and an explanation *laugh*. That kinda got my goat so I sent them a longer message with a link to the Gambit blog . That didn't work however, they said the link would not open, it showed nothing. Which made me wonder what kind of firewalls their customer service reps are behind. So I sent them, link by link, almost all of the screenshots from the blog.

I explained that after the screenshots showing the offer requirements, the submit my email screen, and the screen immediately thereafter, I had proven enough, by the offer requirements, to get the 38 swagbucks they owe me.

Then I noted everything that followed was my attempt to complete the offer the way the advertiser stated it- FREE. It was proof that it was impossible to complete the offer for Free, if submitting ones email was not enough.

Well, they credited me, but it felt kinda like a door being slammed in my face. *laugh*

Anyway, that draws this episode of "Gambit Theatre" to a close. I'll leave you with one last thought to ponder.

From http://getgambit.com/faqp

I'm going to go ahead and publish but this is not the end of today's blog. I have to plug in the computer and get lunch for the boy, nurse my now sick-as-a-dog husband back to health. I just want to get something out there after being gone so long! Ugh! Felt like forever

I will be back with the rest of the Special Offers Breakdown, part 7 - TapJoy! This afternoon.

Until Then...

HAPPY SWAGSURFIN!!

No Blog Yesterday? No Blog Today? What's WRONG with you Jenny?

2010-11-13T07:58:00.000-05:00

Sorry for no blog and no communication. You remember how I said, the other day, how I felt like a truck hit me? Well, I think it was a FLU truck, because I am so Very Sick. I was hardly able to get on to make my 3 search wins yesterday (and sorry but I don't think an 8 is very MEGA but that's another story.)

I've got the TapJoy blog screenshotted and ready to write, I just ugh I have to run lol. Hopefully I will be feeling better by tomorrow.

Thanks for checking in, I hope you are feeling far better than me!

Happy SwagSurfing!