Swagbucks, PeopleString & AroundMe

Happy Friday! It has been a busy week for me, spent mostly trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible before I go into labor. I caught up on all my business work for the week and managed to sneak a couple new side opportunities into the mix. Since I'm so close to my due date, I'm being careful to only take on projects I can take a break from when the baby comes so my side project earnings this month probably won't be too impressive. Every little bit counts though for my family right now as I'm sure it does for most others!

Swagbucks

I finally decided to try out Swagbucks after seeing it mentioned quite a bit. It's a search engine website that rewards you for using it for searches, online shopping, cellphone and video game trade ins, referrals, etc. Their rewards currency is called swag bucks, which you earn randomly from searches. You can cash them in for items in their rewards catalog and even for PayPal cash deposits. Once you get to 45 swag bucks you can get a $5 Amazon git card. This is what I'll be saving for unless they put some of the other rewards on sale. I installed their toolbar yesterday to remember to use them for more searches and have been getting more wins with swag bucks since doing that. I'm only a few days into it, but it seems to be an easy way to accumulate some gift certificates. I also went ahead and traded in 2 of my old cellphones that were headed for the Best Buy cell phone recycle bin, they paid postage and I'll be getting a couple swag bucks for it. I will post an update when I get my first Amazon gift card!

PeopleString

I signed up for PeopleString the beginning of the month to see what it's all about. They pay you to read mail. After signing up you complete a survey and then they mail you a post card to your home. Once you get the post card (it took a couple weeks for me to get mine), it will give you your code to use on the website. Just for entering the code in you get $1.50. After that you begin to get mail to your Cashbox, and you make money just for reading it! Pretty easy. The minimum payout is $25, and they pay every 2 weeks. You also get paid to receive postal mail (which I haven't gotten as of yet). I'm hoping the mail starts flowing soon so the money can add up to enough to cash out.  Be sure to keep the code they send in the mail, you will need to enter it to get money for reading the mail to your cashbox!

AroundMe.com

Aroundme.com is paying $25 for users to write 10 reviews for them on local businesses such as restaurants, doctors, salons, & banks. They want the reviews to be short, only 60-150 words total so it is a very quick and easy project. This is a one time thing, and only ongoing until November 24th. If you are interested, you will need to have a Facebook account. You have to apply through their Facebook page, here is the link to the job listing and instructions: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Around-Me/132806203731?v=app_4949752878&ref=ts

I did not hear back right away, as it seems it is a manual review process of applicants. I wanted to be sure to get this one done quick in case I went into labor early so I contacted them and heard back with further instructions fairly quickly. I don't want to post her direct email because of spammers, but they have a contact form on their site you can try if you don't hear back, http://aroundme.com/page/contact.

I got my $25 PayPal transfer earlier today. Here's my Payment Proof.