Online Reward Sites, are they good?

As a user of a whole heap of survey sites  I thought it would be best to talk about just a few of them out there and explain what their like.

The Three I will be talking about are:

SwagBucks

SmileCity

And Lockerz

SwagBucks:

Swagbucks, where do I start, Its pretty good, the fastest I have ever earned any money on a survey site, but it has its flaws, for instance being restricted to the USA, UK and Canada.

I originally signed up when I was in the UK and thought it was great! I was earning about 40 points a day and had my mind set on a $5 paypal card (700 points) Once I had reached the stage where I could redeem it was a relitivley easy process and took about 2 miniutes.

The problem that will annoy people was after that.  It took about 2 weeks for the actual Paypal payment to arrive.

Now Yes I understand it could take a few days to process but 2 weeks? thats a long time to wait for five bucks.

But this is just my personel opinion.

So, lets Review:

The Pros:

• Easy to earn
• Fastest Reward site.
• Decent UI

The Cons:

• Long waiting time for Paypal payments
• Restricted to the US, Canada and the UK

My Rating: 3.5/5

Smilecity:

Smilecity is a OK Reward site aimed at New Zealand residents ONLY, it has a basic UI and the ways to earn are sluggish. On the upside you can use it on and off and the surveys offer some pretty good reward points, one point = 1 cent so its easy to keep track of how much cash you have earned.

Now, you can earn anywhere from 0-500 points a day but thats a a good day, a REAL good day, to be honest the most I have ever earned on one day was 210 points or $2.10 pretty bad.

After two years of using the site I was able to cash out my first cheque for $30 I was pretty excited until it told me that the soonest it would arrive would be in 4 weeks and the maximum it would arrivie would be 8 weeks,  great.

So lets Review:

The Pros:

• Easy to use.
• able to earn at least 5c a day.

The Cons:

• Extremely long waiting times for cheques.
• Earning points is slow and tiresome.
• Restricted to New Zealand

My Rating: 2/5

Lockerz:

Lockerz is a well debated site, some say its good, some say its bad, and some say its rubbish (me)

I joined Lockerz in November of 2009 thinking it was great, back then you could earn a decent amount of points a day and then cross your fingers and hope that a redemption was not at 2 in the morning, I got my T-Shirt in the mail and was happy, all was good.

It all started going downhill when play was introduced.

It was then easier to earn points, all the prizes in the redemptions went up in price by 4x and to top it off after waiting a year for 24/7 redemtions when it was released it was a bidding system! A copy of black ops had a bit on it for 28 thousand points!, with my measly 1000 points I was doomed.

The Final nail in Lockerz coffin? After a year they wipe all your points, E.g I do a years worth of earning but miss all the redemptions, just waiting for a good time to spend my points, but on the exact day i signed up 1 year later they wipe my points to zero. Great.

So Lets review:

The Pros:

• Good UI.
• Free T- Shirt

The Cons:

• Redemptions Suck.
• Wipe points after a year.
• Bidding for items makes it almost as annoying as bidray.
• Points raised by 4x
• Play Videos use alot of internet (for people with limited GB amounts per month)

My Rating: 1.5/5

The Final verdict:

While Online Reward sites are good, nothing beats getting a job.