Swagbucks Pays

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Swagbucks is worth it.

Just for using their default search I have won enough Swagbucks to turn in for yet another $5 Amazon.com gift card. That's my 4th gift card so far. I get about one card a month, and I don't even search that much. Just last week I turned in $10 worth of gift cards for some absolute steals on Amazon. (Madworld for Nintendo Wii for a little under 8 bucks including shipping, and some gorgeous playing cards for around 5, also including shipping)

There's plenty of other things on their site worth getting as well... I just happen to make Amazon purchases fairly often so this makes the most sense for me.

Short post today because it's just that simple; Swagbucks pays.

"Up In The Air"

A curious thing happened today.

When I opened my door to go out to check the mail I was greeted by a fair sized padded envelope left behind by my friend the UPS delivery person. Now, finding a package on my doorstep is nothing new but what was inside... that's where the mystery started.

Checking the return address as I opened the package I found a rather un-helpfully vague "Deluxe Media Management PHE Publicity c/o Deluxe". Okay, so, I know it's almost entirely likely to be a win from... SOMETHING. I don't get mail from publicity companies unless that's the case... but what did I win?

Inside I find a DVD of Paramount's "Up In The Air" but that's not all, there's also a CD of the movie soundtrack as well as a metal... thing. (I don't know what it is, check the pictures if you'd like to venture a guess)

But that's it.

No congratulatory letter, no self promotion... nothing.

Well crap, how am I supposed to credit this on MaybeAWinner? I never got an email notification of winning... So I check the return address again, looking it up on Google doesn't lead me to the answers I'm looking for, both companies are invovled in too much. So I went ahead and called the number on the return address, was connected to the specific person listed on the return address and talked to her about my dilemna. While she seemed a bit confused as to why I specifically wanted to know she was quite pleasant about things.

As it turns out the company sending the package doesn't even know where I won this particular prize set. They just had it handed down from Paramount. So this one remains a mystery, possibly from the movies website, possibly from somewhere else... no one knows.

Hopefully I like the movie... or the soundtrack... or the metal... thing.

Ghosts of Wins Past (2) - Socks.

I've been entering sweeps and contests for a lot longer than I've been blogging about it... there was a period of time when I thought I was doomed to a sweepstakes life of nothing but winning socks. I have actually won socks on three different occasions through three different sweepstakes.

Now, don't get me wrong, in the normal world 3 of anything isn't a lot... but in the world of sweepstakes it's not often that one sees socks as a potential prize... and to win the same basic oddball prize from 3 different sweeps is a bit ridiculous.

I've been making an effort to get into running more (my girl is a runner and would like me to join her). These days any time we're apart and I decide to hit the treadmill to stay on top of things and get in my practice run I find myself reaching for these most ridiculous winnings. these socks.

If memory serves one pair came from the NBA online store, one pair from one of the major cell phone companies and the other pair... I don't even remember anymore. All three pairs are really comfortable and nicely padded, probably better than I would have otherwise ever bothered buying for myself and besides the NBA socks they are all just white classic looking socks which suits me just fine.

So today, as I get ready to go for a good run, I say horray for the odd, the unusual, the out of place runt of the prize litter - Even you have a place my friend.

I'm Full of Lies

I said no more Microsoft Club Bing updates for a while but I had totally forgotten about one last prize:
It was so quick and easy to get that I had overlooked it... Having forgotten about that one I realized there's actually one more prize I'm still missing too. This one I think has really gone M.I.A. though seeing as I ordered it way back on October 18th. I already complained about it being missing once but now I'll have to complain again. The missing prize is just a little multi-tool, no big deal but still.

I'm starting to worry that I'm going to run out of good ticket making games to play... they have caps on how many times you can play each game and I really dislike how slow some of the other games are/how little they pay out. Boo.

Farm Winnings

I enjoy winning prizes, it makes the long days seem shorter when you have a win, when you come home to find a little surprise in your mailbox or on your stoop. I enjoy winning prizes even more when it's something I have a real use for... the best however is winning a prize you can share.

Today after a long day I came home and found an envelope waiting for me, I knew right away what this one was from the return address. Bob Evans had a sweep stake running (the Bob Evans Dream Machine Sweepstakes enter through March 31, 2010) that I only caught onto a week or so ago but with great luck I already won AND received my prize (possibly record time from a win to a delivery):

Now this is great because my folks really enjoy breakfast at Bob Evans. My dad is in a wheelchair most of the time and doesn't get out as much as he'd like so this will be a nice excuse to get together one morning and enjoy some time together, just my folks and I.

Does this sound like a cheesy ad? Yeah, kind of, but every once in a while a simple win can be more than it's monetary worth.

And Again

Microsoft's Club Bing just keeps producing. It's one of those programs where as long as you put in the time you are guaranteed the reward.

Since the hand blender showed up there have been 3 more rewards that have arrived here at the house.

A while back I mentioned a little gift for my girlfriend I ordered from Club Bing, well it finally arrived. At one point she mentioned being a big Tetris fan so I grabbed her Tetris 360. From what I can gather the pieces fall from the center and you have to rotate the game itself (while also worrying about rotating the pieces) to decide which side they fall to and in which direction. Sounds like a good challenge.

For what seemed like very few tickets I also picked up a DVD of Disney Pixar's hit animated movie Up. While I found the movie a bit depressing I'm still happy to own it for so few tickets.

Last but not least:


I grabbed this Bing insignia-ed Ogio Half-Dome Bag. I've been needing a good medium sized bag like this. Be it packing up sports goods or going on a quick trip it never hurts to have a nice bag to travel with. Added bonus: there's actually a little port on the side of the bag for a pair of headphones outside the bag to access and connect inside the bag to your music player of choice. How handy.

For now it will be a while before I have any more Club Bing updates... they recently started up a VIP program that includes some really nice prizes I am desperately working towards. Gifts like a Sony DCR-DVD650 Camcorder, a Roomba iRobot 530 Vacuum, and a Kitchenaid Mixer all cost a pretty high number of tickets but are something I'm really working towards. Fun times ahead.

A Gift From The Planet Of Soy

When you enter sweeps as much as I do opening the mailbox becomes equivalent to scratching off a lottery ticket... will today be a winning day? Is there a prize waiting for me? Must... find... out!

Opening the mailbox the other day I found a long, thin box addressed to me. Before even looking at the return address I can't help but wonder "did I win some sort of bracelet or necklace or something?" The box is about the right size for such a thing and they aren't terribly uncommon prizes but as this thought is passing through I read the return address. Ah, no, not likely to be a necklace as Kikkoman is hardly a fine jeweler.

It's always nice to pick up a prize you didn't know you had won. In the past I've won a coupon or two from some of the various Kikkoman promotions... which have been great I mean, I like soy sauce just fine but I enjoy some of their other products even more. Today though I was rewarded with this lovely little silicone baster. That's cool, I actually don't own a good baster and I'm a big fan of silicone kitchen utensils as they clean up so nicely. It smells a little fresh out of the box but with a quick wash we'll be set to jet. Thanks Kikkoman!

A Good Winning Pace

I've been lazy about updating. Oops.

I'm a big fan of secondary or otherwise "low-worth" prizes. They are very often the main product of the company doing the giveaways or sweeps and in most cases there's a reason why it's the companies bread and butter... or in this case salsa and queso.

Pace, best known for their salsa and queso dips has been running a giveaway promotion for a good long while now... the Pace Hand Pick & Win 2 promotion is run as a sweepstakes and, from what the claim on their site, 1 in 20 wins. The prize is simple but useful a $4 off coupon for any Pace brand product. This is really quite the deal, it can be applied towards the gigantic containers of salsa some grocers sell or it can be used to get a free product altogether if the total is under $4.This is actually the second time I've won a coupon from them... when I went to use one my grocer rang it up as the full $4 off my total grocery bill which was extra nice since the salsa didn't cost the full $4. Now if only I could win some chips.

Signing

Last weekend I took a trip to go see my fantastic girlfriend... her birthday was just 2 days before Valentines day so, with a bit of planning and penny pinching I made it from PA to CA to celebrate with her. We had an absolutely fantastic time and I still have to say if I never win another sweeps, another contest etc... I am still the luckiest guy there is. She just rocks.

But as luck would have it I *am* still winning things.

The day I got back I found a UPS sticker waiting on my front door. I had missed a package that required a signature.

Signature packages tend to be the best packages. If a signature is required it generally means the value of the package or the size of the package is considerable. Thankfully the very next day the package was signed for.

It was fairly large and had a bit of weight to it, I wasn't sure what it was at first. Club Bing was listed as the return addressee but I'd honestly forgotten what it could be, what had I ordered of this size? This weight?

I cracked the box open... ah ha:

I had entirely forgotten but some time back I had ordered the Cuisinart Hand Blender from Club Bing and it has finally arrived. As it turns out it has a whisk, chopper and a measuring cup too. Nice. Now all I need to win is a nice big house with a big kitchen to put it in.

D.I.Y. Rewards?

Design It Yourself, that's part of the catch behind Marlboro's recent reward program. Sometimes being on email lists and mailing lists can be a huge pain, it's really something I don't recommend for people without much experience in knowing how to skim through those obtrusively long fine print documents but if you can put up with it sometimes it pays off.

Marlboro has some pretty good incentives for people who qualify and sign up for their lists. Besides constant coupons etc. every so often along comes a nice little reward like the one I received in the mail not too long ago:


This T-shirt is simple enough but it's exactly what I wanted... the rewards program allowed you to chose your initials, size them, place them and then add any of the additional elements pre-designed by Marlboro wherever you wanted them, if you wanted them. I kept things simple, just my initials but it was what I wanted and even better than that it was totally, 100% free. No charge for the shirt, the design or the delivery. A big padded envelope with a nice big T I designed? Yes please.

Shameless 2 - Shameless...er

So, the last post titled "Shameless" (here) I talked about 3 different sites that gave some sort of daily incentive for using them; ClubBing, Swagbucks, and Lockerz. Today a quick recap plus an additional topic Pogo.com:

Now, I've already talked about ClubBing in excess (missed it? click here) so I'll just leave that one at a simple "it's worth it if you have time to play a few games each day". Seriously worth it.

Swagbucks has actually pulled up in the ranks as well, just a few days back I turned in another 45 Swagbucks in exchange for what is now my second $5 Amazon.com reward code. It's been easy to just use their search bar in my toolbar... while they do have more sponsored ads in their results than Google seems to they've generally done alright for my searching needs (and a little trick... when they don't fill my needs I search for "google.com"). Racking up Swagbucks has been easy as can be and they offer loads of rewards (for me the Amazon.com reward code is the best deal). If you are interested in signing up with them, again, feel free to use this referral link. Again, worth it.

Sad to say that Lockerz seems to be striking out. It's an amazing site as a social experiment... see how many people you can get to visit a site on a daily basis when there's really not much in the way of content (and next to no interesting content) while offering rewards that never seem to become available. Of the three this is the only one that has yet to pay out... at all. Boo to you Lockerz.com, boo to you. Not worth it.

Lastly I'm going to talk about a long running play for points site - Pogo.

Pogo is great if you are just looking to play any of the games they offer for the heck of it. They offer a number of popular, brand name games as well as some of their own making. In theory it's totally possible to take the tokens you win in game and turn them in for chance to win a daily, weekly or monthly cash prizes. If you check their self-affirming ads it happens to regular people all the time. Additionally people actively playing games are often awarded Pogo themed prizes (mugs, shirts etc).

That being said I'd like to note that if you are playing in hopes of actually winning something you seem to have better odds in Vegas. There are an excess of auto-playing programs made available by individuals for many of their games, some of their games are exclusive to paying members only (or folks like me who tried out a free month of club membership via some incentive program) and there's just not enough time in the day to play enough to gather enough tokens to have any chance against the millions and millions people have gathered already. I'd imagine Pogo is doing just fine as a business but as far a site that actually pays out? Don't bother, not worth it.

Bing, Bing, BingBingBing... Bing. Bing.

So over the holidays the one thing I did keep up with relatively well was collecting my ClubBing tickets from Microsoft. ClubBing, like its predecessor ClubLive, has continued to provide some of the most worthwhile prizes available. (see what's available now, click here) They offer a lot of simple little things but stuff that's worth having.

I've started to get a second sense for when my ClubBing packages are arriving as well. One day I was thinking about how the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W230 Camera I ordered should be due any day/time I went to check to see if I had missed any package drop-offs and just as I was going to look up rolled my favorite brown truck (many of the people who are big into sweeps talk about getting to know their local UPS drivers due to the number of packages they get sent to their homes).

It's nice to finally own a pocket-sized digital camera... it has a lot of nice intuitive features, pretty easy to use from what I can tell... sad to say that right now I can't actually tell much. The darned thing uses a memory card that, as far as I can tell, is exclusive to Sony. The Memory Stick Pro Duo is the official name; used for many of their cameras as well as their PlayStation Portable, which does me little to no good. I'm a photographer, I have memory cards all over the place but I've never owned a Sony camera so Ive never had need for this particular type. Boo to wins that require purchases to function. Boo I say.

Still a camera is a camera, who am I to complain?

Other recent ClubBing turn-ins include a DVD copy of Up, a present for the girlfriend (but I can't say which just yet), an Ogio half dome bag, and in the next few days I'll be turning in for my own copy of The Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. CD, and they've brought back a variety of American Airlines' AAdvantageFlyer Miles, which I will work on collecting any time there isn't a larger prize worth aiming for.

All in all, ClubBing still has my loyalty (even if their search engine still sucks).

Wendy's Follows Through

Wendy's has been a favorite source for some minor, yet consistently good prizes in the past. Over the holidays I got two of those fantastically plain white envelopes... the ones that look like nothing, look like a solicitation, look like a bill... the ones that have that odd, slightly raised stiff feeling right smack in the middle... a credit card? some sort of unnecessary membership card?

Ahh... it's my good old friend the gift card. The one shown above is good for $5 at Wendy's which is not too shabby, especially given their rather fair prices.

At the time of scanning I wasn't able to find the second of the two cards a $10 Home Depot gift card, lost in the piles to be found at a later date I suppose. I think that may go towards a little something for me, maybe a Ryobi auto-nailer (for those who haven't seen one - check it out here) or perhaps just some more sandpaper so I can get back to refinishing these great chairs I saved a while back. (edit: found the card... obviously)

In the end, I won't lie, when my family was trying to decide where to buy burgers for dinner one night I totally threw my hat in for Wendy's, if they're gonna be good to me by letting me win stuff, sure, I'll be good to them by giving them that much more business, why not? ($15 in gift cards received... $3o-some spent on dinner for a fair-sized family... I'd say it's worth it for the company)

Another Sweet Win

Sometimes it's the simple things... the small, forgotten, unexpected package in the mail that makes me remember why I love entering contests, sweeps etc as much as I do.

Life has been pretty good recently, while I've not been terribly busy with much I have slacked on my entries just a bit... a poor move on my part as this is a time of year when so many people find themselves swamped for one reason or another that many forget their daily entries, forget their chances to win... leaving more to be won by the avid sweep-a-holic.

In the mail just the other day I received a sweet (and tangy) little reminder that I need to go try my hand at a few new sweeps:

Mike and Ike candies are always tasty and, to tell the truth, I had forgotten entirely that I had won these... at the very beginning of every month for a number of months now it has been possible to play a game on their site until you win a free pack of candy from them. The game is hosted on the parent company's site Just Born (http://www.justborn.com/mike-and-ike/power-up/arcade) from their just choose the third "arcade game" - the one that looks like a slot machine - and just keep spinning until you win. The lions share of the free monthly candy seems to be given out at the beginning of each calendar month so check it out then for your best chance.

Out of hibernation

Holidays have a magical way about them... of eating up time I had planned to use to post about recent winnings.

Marlboro sent out the free T-shirt I put in for, the lovely folks over at Wendy's sent out both the $5 Wendy's gift card as well as the $10 Home Depot gift card that I won through 2 different contests of theirs.

I shall update this post with photos and specific info sometime in the next few days.

I finally reached my ticket goal on Microsoft's Club Bing and turned in for an immersion blender. More info on that to come as well.

Biggest win over the holidays - started seeing an excellent woman. Cheesy? Yes. Don't care, she's great.