Advice: Making the Most of Swagbucks Video Apps Part 1

Attribution: Author’s Own Work

The Swagbucks apps for playing videos are my bread and butter GPT apps. I run these every day and make about 40-80 SB depending on how well they run. If you’re new to these apps, they’re pretty straightforward to use. However, there are a few interesting things you might want to know to get the most of your Swagbucks apps.

Brief (somewhat) Background

I have written this blog post with the understanding that most of the people who read it will already have some experience using the Swagbucks apps. But should that not be the case, I’ll begin with some background of how the apps work.

There are seven Swagbucks video apps that provide SB for watching videos (you can refer to the above picture and ignore the Answer and Swag IQ apps). Currently, users will get 2 SB per video “set.” And each video set is usually made up of either six or 10 video “cycles.” A video cycle consists of the Swagbucks video itself (it can be anything, such as a cooking video, celebrity interview movie trailer, etc.) plus one or more ads.

These ads can be anything and change at any time. These ads also determine how well your Swagbucks apps will run. If you’re lucky, they’ll run smoothly and you can run your Swagbucks app all day with the only intervention coming when you need to start running a new Swagbucks app when the currently running app has maxed out the SB earnings for the day (more on this later).

From my experience, there’s not much you can do to help these ads run smoothly besides: restarting your phone, deleting the app’s data or clearing the app’s cache. If none of these work, then you’re probably stuck with a glitchy ad and have to babysit your app if you want it to earn any SB that day. You can always try another Swagbucks app and see if it’ll run ads that aren’t as glitchy.

After a video cycle is complete, the number of videos required to complete the video set will drop by one. After you’ve finished a video set, you’ll earn 2 SB. After you’ve earned 10 SB in an app, you’ve maxed it out and can’t earn anymore SB until the app resets at 12am PST (3am EST). If you’re lucky enough to get a bonus round (I usually get them, perhaps 80% of the time, although sometimes the bonus rounds require you to watch a lot of videos to complete a video set) you can earn more than 10 SB in an app that day.

My Observations When Running Swagbucks Apps

• All apps reset at 3am EST (12am PST). When the apps reset, your app is no longer maxed out and you can resume earning Swagbucks until you hit the 10 SB daily limit and max out your bonus rounds.

• SB TV, EntertaiNow TV and Swagbucks apps require six video cycles to earn 2 SB. All the other four require you complete 10 video cycles to complete a video set and earn 2 SB. There’s a reason the apps requiring just six video cycles for 2 SB are at the first ones I play each day.

• In my experience, the apps will often need babysitting. There will sometimes be an ad that needs to be X’ed out every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes these ads will X themselves out, but sometimes they don’t and the app stops earning SB. Because of this, when I have an app that has been running smoothly for hours, I’ll let it continue to run even if the bonus round requires completion of as many as 30 video cycles for 2 SB. Yes, it takes a lot of time, but the fact that it’s 100% percent passive means I can do other things (such as babysit other apps or work for real money) while the app runs.

• To make the video cycles complete as quickly as possible, you should find a short video and add it to your Favorites. In Android you can do this by holding your finger on the video until a menu pops up and allows you to add it to your Favorites. Besides the ads, this will be the only other video that plays. The trick is finding the shortest video to make your favorite. What the shortest video is in each app will constantly change. And when you clear your app’s cache, delete its files or update it, you’ll lose whatever video was your favorite. If you’re lucky, you’ll find it again, but chances are, it’s been a few weeks or months since you last added it and you’ll have to find another video.

• After a while of running the Swagbucks video apps to the max (or at least until you hit the bonus rounds), your bonus rounds will get bigger and bigger. As I write this, I’ve been getting 70 SB each day from all 7 apps for the past few weeks (give or take a day or two when I don’t max the apps out) and my bonus rounds typically require 20-40 video cycles to complete a set. However, the bonus rounds will sometimes become more manageable (less than 15 cycles per set) if you start using your apps at a different location or go a long time without maxing them out or using them at all (how long, I can’t say, but at least a few weeks). I noticed this when running my apps in hotel rooms on road trips or when I get really busy with my day job or other obligations and can’t manage the apps for long stretches of time.

• Your favorite video (or any other app video that’s not an ad) must play for only 10 seconds to get credit for the video cycle. After 10 seconds, you can hit “Done” in the top right corner to prematurely end the video and you’ll complete one video cycle. You can sometimes hit “Done”  after just one second and still get credit for the video cycle, but it doesn’t work every time. I don’t know how often you can do it, but I only do it once or twice per video set.

• I’ve noticed that the apps seem to work more reliably and provide better bonus rounds (fewer video cycles need to complete a round and earn 2 SB) if it’s been a day or two since you’ve last run them. I don’t know if this is a Swagbucks or third party verification thing and it’s an anecdotal observation.

More information coming with Part 2.