SEO Facts - Straight from Google

Summary of Google SEO

I've always wondered how SEO professionals got their facts since search engines don't exactly publicize how to get a #1 ranking.  It's especially suspicious when these SEO experts conflict each other.  Anyway, I wanted to know how these guys got their facts so I did a quick search on Google.  Not surprisingly I found a document and a blog by Google about how to make your site SEO friendly.

This post will attempt to summarize the facts and only the facts given by Google.  Their blog post is dated 3/15/2012 and their PDF document is dated 2010.

Google SEO Facts

In summary, the best SEO practice will always be to make your website easier and useful for the user both visually and in navigation.  This is because 1) you get penalized for sneaky SEO practices and 2) Google is continually improving their engine to match what users would find useful.  There are tons of things you shouldn't do so I will just be stating the facts of what you should do.

Titles - Each page on your website should have a unique title describing what the page is about.  It should be a brief, but descriptive title.
Description - Each page on your website should have a unique, accurate, summary of what the page is about.
URL - Your URLs should be simple to understand and easy to read.  You should use words (instead of ids or complex alpha-numeric parameters) and have a simple directory structure.
Navigation - Your site should be easy to navigate.  Use breadcrumbs so users can easily navigate back to where they came from.  Use mostly Text for navigation.
Site maps - You should have a site map for your users and also a site map in XML for search engines.  This will allow search engines to find all pages you want indexed.
Content - Stay on one topic and stay away from grammatical and spelling errors.  Create fresh and unique content.
Anchor Text - Anchor text is the clickable text that users will click on .  This should be descriptive of the page that it is linking to. (ie. "click here" is a bad example).  It should be concise and easy to spot visually.
Images - When using images use the "alt" attribute to provide information on what the image is.  It is helpful to both users and search engines.  Also naming the image file name appropriately is helpful for Google's image search.
Heading tags - Those old fashion header tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc) help users and search engines understand what is important.  It should be used sparingly on across a page.
Social Media - Reach out to social media sites and your community.  Get involved and share your site with interested users.  Avoid posting links for every update and go for the big, interesting items.
Webmaster tools - Use Webmaster Tools by Google to see how Googlebot sees your site.  Bing Webmaster Tools is also available.


Read the sources below to get the full effect of what Google says:
Search Engine Optimization by Google
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Amazon Affiliate Links

A great affiliate program to be associated with is the Amazon Associates Affiliate program.  They are the biggest online store there is and everyone knows who they are.

This is just a short post on getting a list of the products you want from amazon.  Getting a single product is straightforward.  Getting a list is a little less straightforward.

Listmania!
Getting a Listmania list and having your ref id attached to it is easy.  Go to the Widgets page and find "My Favorites".  Amazon now has a Listmania! search where you can easily get anyone's list and have your associate id in them when you put it on your website.

Every Page
For any URL on Amazon.com, you can just tack on your ref id.  The easiest way to get your ref id onto an amazon results page is by going to the Link to Any Page page.  The last box title "Link to Any Page" has a textbox where you can paste in your url and presto, you have a link with your associate id.

RSS Every Page
Often times, you have a blog and you have some space to list a bunch of products from an RSS feed.  Amazon makes it easy to do this by simply replacing "gp" in the address to "rss" in most cases.  You can read more about it on their rss help page.  Once you get your RSS url, be sure to go to the Link to Any Page so that you can add your associate id to it.

Check it
If you aren't sure if your referral link is working, just check the link with Amazon's Link Checker.  It is located in the Links & Banners section.

Get Rewards for Changing Your Search

What if I told you I get about $10/month in Amazon.com gift cards because I use a certain search engine?  Swagbucks uses Google and Ask.com so you will get the results you need.  You can also watch videos, do online scavenger hunts, do online polls, and play some games to get even more rewards.

How it Works
Do a few searches in the morning and a few searches at night.  Swagbucks randomly rewards you "Swagbucks" for searches you do through their site.  Once you get enough "Swagbucks" you can get a $5 Amazon gift card or many other rewards.

Why Should I Sign up?
Because it is FREE and they are legit.  They sound like a scam, you say?  Since April 2010, in 18 months, I have gotten about $360 in Amazon gift cards.  Sign up here and start using Swagbucks to do your searching.

4 Types of Qubids Bidding Outcomes

When using Quibids, there are usually 4 types of winners/losers on there.

Losers

These are the people that jump on Quibids expecting to win something big without much research and/or auction wins.  These guys are the ones who will tell you Quibids is a scam and they take all your money.  The reason they lose is because they go for the iPads or the big TVs but they don't take the time to learn Bid dynamics, what the average ending price of an item is, and how to win an auction.

Hopefuls

These people are the ones who usually try for gift cards.  They took the time to learn bidding strategies, they did some research, but they just don't get the whole picture or don't bother to learn as much as they should.  They try out the strategies and lose the majority of auctions.  However, they know they will probably lose so they take advantage of Quibid's Buy Now option.  So they spend a couple dollars extra (shipping/handling fees) for a chance to win a gift card for 90% off.

Winners

These guys are the ones that learned all there is to know about bidding and their target item.  They win 90% of the auctions they enter.  They get apple computers for 20% of the actual cost and gift cards galore.  One thing that is stopping them from getting them to the next category is just a state of mind.  They either don't have the time or the will to push it just a little more.

Professionals

The ultimate bidding outcome.  The people in this class get their items from Quibids for 20% of the actual cost or less and they sell it on eBay.  They are members on multiple auction sites and have various tools to get a better advantage at winning.  They have lists of items they want to get, lists of people to stay away from, and lists of auction start times.

Which one are you?

Quibids

Ever wanted a chance to win the lottery?  Ever wanted to buy some gift cards for Christmas?  Ever wanted to buy something for cheap and sell it for 10 times the price you bought it?  If you answered YES to any of these questions, Quibids may be the thing for you.

A Chance to Win the Lottery
Quibids is really as they say, "redefined shopping".  Quibids is a penny auction site that lets you bid on items and win them for a very low cost.  Here's how it works.  Each bid costs 60 cents.  Every time you bid on an item, say an iPad, the cost of the iPad goes up by a penny.  A timer counts down to end the auction, but each time someone bids, the timer goes back up to 20 seconds or so (depending on the auction).  So say you bid on an iPad to make the cost of the iPad 1 cent.  The timer will go back up to 20 seconds and start counting down.  If someone else bids, making the cost go up to 2 cents, the timer goes back up to 20 seconds.  If no one bids over you and the timer reaches 0, you win the iPad for 1 cent (plus shipping/handling cost $12.99 and your $.60 bid).

A Chance to Buy it for Less
Quibids also has a Buy-it-now option where if you bid (real bids - explained later) in an auction, the bids used in that auction can be used towards purchasing the item.  So lets say you bid 100 times ($60) on an iPod Touch and lost.  The actual cost of the iPod on Quibids is $229.  So if you wanted to buy the iPod, you can buy it for $169 ($229 minus $60).  In other words, if you are already planning on buying an item, you get a chance to buy it for very cheap on Quibids.

How it All Works
Quibids makes 60 cents per bid.  So if say an iPod touch sells for $30, that's 3000 bids or $1,800.  Quibids makes a huge profit.  Then there are auctions where a $250 gift card can sell for $.50 or $30.  So in the end as they state on their website, they make a 10-15% profit on average.

In an auction you can have real bids and voucher bids.  Real bids are bids that you purchase while voucher bids are bids that you can win in an auction.  Only real bids can be used towards purchasing an item.

Quibids has two types of bidding methods.  A Single bid is a bid that you press the "Bid" button and bid once.  Bid-o-matic is an automatic bidding option where you can specify what price to start bidding at and for how many bids (max 25).  Bid-o-matic will bid for you whenever you are not currently winning the auction.

Redefined Shopping
I have tried this out and I am not a good auction bidder.  I have won 2 auctions so far and lost many.  On the other hand I personally know someone who, in the same time span, has won several gift cards, a video camera, a digital camera, and sunglasses.  If you are good at following bidding strategies like those found on youtube (search for "Quibids") you can make a good profit by getting items for very cheap and selling them.  However, if you're like me and suck at bidding, you can use this site whenever you want to purchase something and get a chance to get it for less.  You pay the full price of the item you want whether you lose on Quibids or buy it from somewhere like Amazon.

How to Get Free Bids

Quibids offers many chances to get free bid vouchers through "Achievements", daily twitter contests, and referrals.  They range anywhere from 1 to 50 bids at a time.  Everyone likes free bids, these are the ways you can get them:

• Achievements can be won by doing specific things like winning an auction, using bid-o-matic, or by spending so much money.  
• The twitter contests are usually held in the morning and they ask questions like "what is your favorite Quibids tip?".  They choose the best answer and reward the winner with 50 bids.   
• For the referrals, if you get a friend to sign up under your link, you get 25 bid vouchers after your friend buys the initial $60 bid pack (100 bids).

Scam?
Many people say Quibids is a scam.  I for one think that their business is too profitable to be a scam.  Why would a company which can legitimately make money and earn customer loyalty try to scam people out of a quick buck?  They can be bidding on their own auctions to raise the price, but with so many people bidding, they don't need to.  With so many auctions going for well below a price for them to make a profit, they aren't doing a good job at raising the price either.  The bottom line is that I got all the items I expected to get at the price I expected to pay.  Check out Quibids for yourself.

1000 Free bids

Be careful on scams that promise you free bids for signing up under their referral link.  They make promises of sending you a code for 1000 free bids, or show you the website in a video to convince you that you too can have unlimited bids.  Do not trust them.  These videos are of an altered website where their bid count is increased.  If you sign up under them all that happens is you will grant that person their 25 bid referral reward from Quibids.  You will get nothing but disappointment in return.

The Complete Guide to Getting Traffic on Your Site (in progress)

This posting will be updated regularly as I learn more and more on getting traffic.  I have learned a bunch of things so far and have forgotten half of it.  So this post is for me to remember what I learned.  Much of these methods involve something called "backlinking".  It's basically commenting/posting on another website and having a link back to the site you want people to go to.  It's a relatively simple concept and something that everyone wanting traffic should be trying to do.

Join Social Networking Sites

Joining sites like twitter and facebook will definitely help spread the word about your site.  If the content isn't good though, it may only reach as far as you're furthest friend.

Posting on Facebook:
 When posting on facebook and you want everyone to know about your post, you can click on the lock and choose to share with "Everyone".

Posting on Twitter:
Twitter already posts to everyone.  I find that it is better if I post links back to my blog using the full URL rather than a shortened one.


Submit to Directories
An easy way to get backlinks to your website is by submitting them to directories.  This is like putting your phone number in the phone book.  It's fast, effective, and best of all, FREE.  Google and Yahoo are the obvious choices when submitting to a directory, but did you know there were more?  There's a seemingly infinite number of directories out there.  This website lists the top 100 directories along with their google page rank: http://www.tipsntutorials.com/Top-Directories/.
Other sites include:

• Dmoz
• The SEO King
• SoMuch.com
• The Living Link Web Directory
• Great Directories

I found a tool that can submit your website to directories almost automatically.  It basically lets you enter all the information in one place and submits them to their list of directories.  It prompts you to enter the category and captha word if needed.  This tool needs to be set up on a web server, please contact the developers on the page if you need help setting it up (I am not associated with them):  http://www.seopanel.in/


Posting Comments
No, I'm not talking about spamming.  Posting legitimate comments on pages with a similar topic will help support your online presence.  Many times you can put your site URL in your profile and have your name link back to your site.  You don't need to paste a link inside your comment to get traffic.  Posting interesting comments may get readers to wonder who you are and what your website is.

An interesting article at Daily Tech shows how you can search for websites that allow comments.  In Google, you can search for urls with specific attributes and also look for comments.  For example:

site:.com inurl:blog + “post a comment” + Keyword

Since it's pretty hard to promote something without your comment
looking like spam, I modified the search query they gave and came up
with these two:

site:.com inurl:money + “post a comment” + url

site:.com inurl:money + “post a comment” + website
Basically these two searches search for any websites with ".com" and
"money" in the url. The next two items are keyword searches. So it
looks for those words on the page. I added "url" and "website"
because when the comments allow you to put in your website, they
usually use those terms.
As you can see, from the first search, the first hit is this website:
http://www.bethkobliner.com/beths-blog/2011/2/3/this-week-on-slate-our-newlywed-money-dilemma.html
That website allows you to enter in your website and then post a comment. So you can just comment on the article even if it's not about your specific topic.  You can be a interested person commenting on the blog and have your website as a link in your name at the same time.

Just a warning if you are trying to post comments for backlinking, Google does not value links in the comments as much as it does in the actual post.  Also some comments add an attribute called "no follow" to their links.  This attribute causes search engines to not count the link in your comment as a link to your website as noted here. 

Get another Blog
Two blogs are better than one.  One blog linking back to another blog is even better.  It's called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Search engines look for links linking to another blog.  The more links you get linking to your blog, the better rank your website is.  You can also just do random postings on other blogs or websites.  Here are a few websites that I have posted on:
Squidoo.com
http://www.squidoo.com/magic-shoelaces
http://www.squidoo.com/superbowl-food-statistics
http://www.mymonkeydo.com


Digg
Digg is a site that lets you "Digg" or like a website.  The more people like the same website, the more exposure it gets.  Digg your website and others...  Follow people in hopes that they will follow you back... Then when you Digg a website, your followers will see what you digg.  Reddit is another site that is similar to Digg.  Reddit seems to be more popular than Digg now.

Free Advertisement
This one doesn't get you much traffic, but any exposure is good.  If you see a computer in a store with access to the internet and open to use, go on the computer and navigate to your website.  Once there you can leave it on your blog for the next person to see.  Also if you want, you can set the home page, add it as a bookmark or shortcut, etc.  I wouldn't overdo it though as it will start to look like spam.


Also trying these out:
Technorati
Reddit
Making your own blog ring

Neobux / Onbux

Summary

Initial Cost:  $0
Cost Down the road: $0
Time investement:  5 min/day
Payout:  $0 / month

Crappy Crap
I've been clicking on ads since December and have been getting referrals that click less than 2 clicks/day.  Only about 2 or 3 of about 20 referrals were clicking more than 2 clicks/day.  The motivation has vanished so I'm no longer clicking and thus no longer making money.

Make Money Online?

Neobux and Onbux are two different Paid To Click websites.  They have slightly different prices and payouts, but basically they are the same thing.  I'll just be talking about Neobux mainly, but only because I signed up with them first.  Each of them pay you 1 cent to click on an ad and view it for about 30 seconds.  They give you at least 4 ads a day.  You get half a cent for every ad your referral clicks on.  What will make you money though is the Rented Referrals.  You can pay Neobux (with the money you earned) to rent referrals which in turn give you half a cent for every ad they click on.

Rented Referrals
When someone signs up to Neobux or Onbux without a referral they get put into a pool.  From that pool Neobux rents them out to people who want a rented referral.  These rented referrals act just like a direct referral and earn you half a cent for every ad that they click on.  Referrals are rented out 30 days at a time for about 22 cents each.  There's other options like autopay or buying in batches to make the cost go down.

If your referrals don't click up to your standards, ie only clicks one or two ads / day, you can recycle a referral for about $.07 and get a new one.  If you like your referral, you can "autopay" and save 15% when the month is up.

In order to get the most out of your referrals, you need to click on your share of ads.  You only get as much clicks as you put into it.  You can max out at 300 rented referrals.  If you want more you'll have to upgrade your account to be a Golden member.  It costs $90 to upgrade to be a Golden member.  Once you are a Golden member you can get 9 ads / day.

What do you get out of it?
If you rent out 1 referral for 22 cents and this referral clicks 4 times a day for 30 days you will be getting 60 cents - 22 cents = 38 cents profit.  Multiply this by 300 and you can get $114 profit every month.  Though at first you will not be making much money.  maybe $1 - $2 per month.  After you get a dozen or so referrals you can start seeing how you can be getting some decent spending money.  The below banner shows the total amount I have earned since signing up in December 2010.  As of this writing I haven't gotten anything yet because it has all gone back into renting referrals so far.

What do you have to do?
Sign up to Neobux here and Onbux here.  Be a good clicker and click the 4 minimum ads a day until you get $2 in your account.  Once you get $2, rent 3 referrals.  These 3 referrals will hopefully be clicking above 2.5 clicks per day.  Use the autopay feature so that active clickers will be renewed and will keep working for you. Each time you get $1, rent 3 more referrals.  The more referrals you have, the better.  But make sure they are good clickers.  If they click less the 2.0 clicks per day I suggest refreshing them for 7 cents and getting a new one.

What's the Catch?
It's pretty easy to see the catch and risk in this one.  First of all, Neobux is paying you to click on ads.  If you pay them that money back to rent referrals, you are working for free.  If you keep paying for referrals and do not take out a penny and they close down... you have just volunteered your time to click on ads.  Neobux has been around for 2 years and has gotten nothing but good reviews.  Onbux has only been around for 6 months and has gotten good reviews also.  I am willing to risk a few minutes a day to see if I can turn this into decent spending money.  If you want to sign up, you'll need to decide how much you want to make and risk the time it takes to get there.

Get "Free" everyday products

Summary
Initial Cost: $200
Cost down the road: $0
Time Investment: as low as 5 hours one time
Payout: Everyday products paid for by profits

Disclaimer:  This is something I wanted to do, but unfortunately, I live in Hawaii and so cannot participate in Amazon's Subscribe and Save program.  I'll probably be taking this blog soon as when the traffic dies down.

What is it?
This idea will SAVE you money, not necessarily MAKE you money.  This is all about helping others make money.  It will not work if you are feeling ungrateful and do not want to help other people.  The idea is that  you will be letting people know how they can save some money and time.  In return they will hopefully go through your website and purchase products they want from Amazon.

This idea consists of Swagbucks, the Amazon Affiliate program, and Amazon's Subscribe and Save.

• Swagbucks is a website/search engine where you can earn Amazon gift cards.  Read more about it on my Swagbucks post.
• Subscribe and Save is where you can tell Amazon you want them to ship an item to you once every so many months.  When you do this, you save 15% off the price of the product.  Most of these items have the Free Super Saver shipping.  You only get charged when the items ship and you can cancel at any time.  Read more about it on my Subscribe and Save post.
• Amazon Affiliate Program is something you can use to get a commission whenever someone clicks on Amazon links on your website and purchases something.  You initially earn 4% commissions on whatever a person buys.  In this blog I will use 6% as your commission because you only need to have 7 items shipped before you get the 6%.  I was told if you are an Amazon Affiliate and a visitor gets to Amazon.com through your links and purchases an item using the Subscribe and Save, you get a commission each time that item is shipped.  Once you earn $10 you can cash out and get a $10 Amazon gift card.  Or you can wait until you earn $100 and get cash.  NOTE:  This program is not available in Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico for some reason.  Living in Hawaii, I am not actively participating in this.

What do you get out of it?

• $10+ / year
• $200 worth of products you would normally buy (like brand name toilet paper, paper towels, etc).
• Time saved from standing in line at your local store.

What do you have to do?
Step 1:  Use the Subscribe and Save program in Amazon and buy everyday products using my links to Amazon.

Cost:  $200/year

Savings:  Time (as it gets delivered to your door).

This is where I will be helping you save some time and trusting that you will buy through my Amazon links.  The cost is the same whether you use the Amazon search on this page or just go directly to Amazon. Below are just some suggestions that you can Subscribe to and Save money and time.  If the products below are not ones you normally buy, please use the Search box on the right to find the products you prefer.

Charmin Ultra Soft, Mega Rolls, 12-Count (Pack of 4)
Bounty Value Big Roll, Select A Size (Pack of 24)
Vitafusion Fiber Gummies Weight Management, 90-Count Bottle

Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser, For all skin types, 16-Ounce Bottles (Pack of 2)

Tide Powder Detergent, Original Scent, Case Pack, Two 120-Load Boxes (240-Loads)
Dove Beauty Bar, White
Lipton Black Tea, 312-Count Tea Bags


Those are the products that I usually buy at Costco or Target.  I have priced out these products on Amazon and Costco and have found that Amazon can compete in price with these products.  These products also qualify for their Free Supersaver Shipping.  You don't need to buy these specific products, but just remember to compare prices because Amazon can sell products for twice the amount Costco does

Try to get about $100 worth of products that you buy 2 times a year and use Amazon's Subscribe and Save program so you save 15%.

Step 2: Use Swagbucks and get Amazon giftcards
Profit:  About $90/year.

For money savings, use the Amazon giftcards you get from Swagbucks.  To see how to get Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks, read this blog.  By leisurely using Swagbucks, you can get yourself $5 every 3 weeks or $90/year (more if you actually put some effort in).

Steps 1 and 2 alone save you the time and money.  Steps 3 - 6 are where you get the other half of your money so that the products are paid for and you can possibly make a net profit along with getting products.

Step 3: Sign up to be an Amazon Affiliate
Step 4:  Do what I'm doing... get a blog

Get a free blog or website and write about what you are doing, which is buying your products from Amazon and saving yourself some time and money.  Add Amazon affiliate links to your website so that when people click on your links and buy products you get a commission.  If you decide to buy $200 of products a year through my site, I would get $12/year from Amazon's program.  Not much, but it's something.  Note:  You cannot purchase products through your own Amazon affiliate links.  This is a no-no and your account can be terminated for doing so.

Step 5:  Get 10 people to buy from you.

Profit:  $120/year

Help 10 people save money and time by getting them to buy products through your links to Amazon.  If they use Subscribe and Save, you should continue to get commissions from their purchase.  If you help 10 people to do what you are doing and spend $200 / year, you will be getting $120/year from the affiliate program.

Step 6:  Get more people for more profits!
Basically any additional people you get to buy through your website is pure profit.  The more people that buy through your site, the more your commissions rise and the more profit you get.

So lets review the numbers:

-$200 / year -> the cost to buy the products you normally buy.

+$90 / year -> Gift cards from Swagbucks to be used on Amazon.

+$120 / year -> Profit you get when you get 10 people to buy their normal products through your site.

____________

+$10 / year  -> Net profit to you after purchasing $200 worth of products.


What's the catch?
You'll be supporting Amazon and the person you are purchasing through.  Though this doesn't cost you anything and in fact saves you time in the long run.

The profits from this are laughable to a blogger who is getting a lot of traffic through their website.  This idea is meant to try and kickstart the affiliate program for bloggers who don't see a lot of traffic or profit. 
 

Swagbucks

Summary
Initial Cost: $0

Cost down the road: $0

Time Investment: 2 minutes / day + Use their search engine 2x / day (morning & night)

Payout:  $90+ / year

Make Money Online?

Swagbucks is a type of Paid To Click site with a fun twist to it.  They randomly award you "swagbucks" for using their search engine which in turn uses Google's search engine.  The search results are a little different because they have a lot more sponsored links in there.  Another way to win swagbucks is by hiding special codes in their blogs, special offers, videos, surveys, etc.  When you find these codes you enter them into the swagbucks home page and they reward you with X amount of swagbucks.

What do you get out of it?
Once you get so many swagbucks you can redeem them for prizes.  The most valuable item is the $5 Amazon gift card.  Getting the Amazon gift card for 450 swagbucks basically increases the value of your swagbucks.  If you look at all their other "prizes", a swagbuck is worth about 1 cent or less.  If you get the Amazon gift card, your swagbucks are worth more than a penny each.

What do you have to do?
Using Swagbucks search engine is the best way to easily earn swagbucks without any effort.  If you use their search engine as your normal search, you will earn enough to make this worthwhile.  To get more swagbucks you can do daily polls, trusted surveys, watch videos, and do special offers (free and paid).  You can also go through their site and earn swagbucks when you purchase items on their affiliate sites like bestbuy.com and others.  You can also earn up to 1000 swagbucks when you get friends to sign up. You get 1 swagbuck for each swagbuck your referral gets by searching.  Swagbucks often post codes that give you free swagbucks just for paying attention to them.  I am usually busy doing something else so I check websites for updates.  For example, http://swagbuckscodes.gather.com/swagbucks.

My Experiences
On average, I get about 20 swagbucks a day.  Once a day i take a daily poll and click on the "survey" link.  I never take the surveys anymore because I never seem to be able to finish those.  Anyway, this gets me 2 swagbucks in about 30 seconds.  I usually get an average of about 5 swagbucks a day from various codes that are posted.  You can get notified of new codes from individuals and websites that watch for these codes.  I also have Swagbucks TV on in my browser when I use the computer.  This on average gets me 5 swagbucks.  Of course, the most important activity is to use their search engine, which usually rewards you about 7 swagbucks in the morning and another 7 or so at night when you do a search.

What's the catch?  
Well, swagbucks makes their money by showing you advertisments, special offers, offering you surveys, allowing you to trade in recyclable electronics, etc.  Bascially, they are making money by you just using their site.  They don't need anything but your clicks.  They do ask for your address which is mostly so that they can send you your prizes if you get a material thing like an iPad or T-Shirt.

Like any "easy money" opportunity, please research this and do your own homework.  At the time of this writing, from my research, this is a great way to make some side income.  Things can change and/or reveal themselves to be scams later on however.   After doing your research, if you decide to sign up you can click on the banner below..




Scam or Legit?
If you still don't believe me, I've found a whole lot of people asking and writing about swagbucks.  This should help:

• http://www.moneycrashers.com/swagbucks-review-is-swagbucks-a-scam-or-legit/
• http://help.com/post/275473-is-swagbuckscom-a-scam
• http://www.mooladays.com/2011/01/05/is-swagbucks-a-scam-what-are-swag-codes/comment-page-1/

Update: Swagbucks is owned by Prodege, which in turn is featured as one of the top 10 internet companies.