My Books, Swagbucks, and Amazon! The Right Match?
This will probably go down as one of the strangest notes I've ever written, at least so far. . . You see I've been looking for ways to earn funds in a low/no stress manner since discovering that my body isn't handling everyday stress the way it used to. Two major events in June caused everyone in my family to realize that I needed help and I needed it NOW! Even the lady on the phone from EI got concerned and recommended I go on Medical EI to reduce the stress of having to look for a full-time job. How often do you get sympathy from an EI agent?! In fact, the last time we talked, we spent maybe 5 minutes going over my account and I swear, at least the next 10 minutes talking about what I'm doing about my condition, whether any of it will help a friend of hers going through something similar, etc.
In the meantime, I ran across information suggesting one way to earn funds was to complete surveys that you get paid for. I have since discovered this is harder to do that I thought. However along the way, I ran across a website called swagbucks, that lets you earn points taking surveys that you qualify for, doing Internet searches, playing things like solitaire and Majhong(a 3D version), etc. There are things you can do that require funds that you earn points for, but if you're only interested in earning and not spending, just do the free stuff!
Word of warning here! DO NOT INSTALL FREE APPS ON YOUR COMPUTER OR CELL/SMARTPHONE THAT ARE BY NATURE, AD-DRIVEN! (unless your technically savvy and can opt out of all the ad installs during the app installation process then comb add/remove programs for any that may have been missed, all before using the program once. Doing this can render such apps unusable in some cases) This goes not just for any free apps found on Swagbucks, but any other points-earning site out there. Stay away from toolbars of any kind in particular! I don't want to get a call from you saying your system is overrun with pop-ups, only to discover 5 toolbars and three ad-supported apps on your computer! Got that??? Ok. . . moving on now. . .
Being relatively new to swagbucks, I was exploring the site when I ran across their shopping page. If you are the type by nature to prefer your shopping be done online from the comfort of your computer chair, then you'll want to listen up. Swagbucks only shows you online stores for the country you signed up under. For example, I am Canadian, so when I signed up, it identified me as being in Canada, and the shopping page only shows me Canadian online retailers.
One of those retailers is Amazon.ca. Now here's the cool part. Any shopping you do at Amazon via the shopping page of Swagbucks, earns you two points on the dollar! So if you spent $5, you'd earn 10 swagbuck points. These points can be cashed in for gift cards, coupons from the Entertainment Book, etc. 450 points will earn you a $5 Amazon gift card for example. That works out to 90 points per dollar for that particular gift card.
Now we get to why I'm sharing this with you. I was laying awake the other night in this Okanagan heat, and found myself doing some math over all this. I figured out that if a person buys my entire series, "Becoming the Bride of Christ: A Personal Journey" through the swagbucks Amazon link, they would earn up to 112 points! If a person were to purchase my grad gift, "Mom's Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate", they'd earn up to 20 points. Now say you are earning towards your own $5 Amazon gift card. You would have just earned roughly $1.47 toward that card!
Basically what I'm saying is this. You are an existing Swagbucks member, you can buy my books and boost your points at the same time! If you are not yet a member, but the concept sounds interesting to you, feel free to use my referral link to check it out. http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/songdove Will you replace your income doing this??? Highly unlikely! But it is a way to trade a little time and effort for a little reward.
Not all points-earning sites are created equal. Mypoints for example is all about the shopping and very little about anything else. A few other points sites I've checked out are very similar. One I quit because the only real way to earn points was to install stuff on my pc and I wanted nothing to do with that. See earlier warning. So I'm saying that based on what you want to get out of such a site, Swagbucks may or may not be for you, but I just thought I'd share.
Now back to regular programming. . .
