Which gift card is the best value on Swagbucks?

Welcome to this week's Frugal Follies Frugal Tip!

I had an interesting dilemma related to Swagbucks this week.

I had earned 450 Swagbucks, so I went to get a $5 Amazon.com gift code with my points.  But I couldn't!

You see, Swagbucks only allows you to get 5 of the same prize per month.  And thanks to lots of great search wins by myself as well as those of you who have used my referral link, I had already gotten five $5 Amazon codes.  (I'll have a giveaway soon for these codes - stay tuned!)

This is the first time this had happened.  So I had a dilemma - what should I get with my points?

I decided to figure out which gift cards were the best value.  I checked the values of the cards for Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Alice.com (a household products purchasing site), as well as PayPal cash. I ranked them in order of how many Swag Bucks you would need to buy $1 of card or cash value.

 Here's what I found:

Card Value	Swag Bucks	SB per $1
Amazon $5	450 SB	90 SB per $1
Alice.com $25	2,650 SB	106 SB per $1
Amazon $500	54,995 SB	110 SB per $1
Alice.com $10	1,150 SB	115 SB per $1
Barnes & Noble $100	11,549 SB	115.5 SB per $1
Amazon $100	11,599 SB	116 SB per $1
Amazon $50	5,900 SB	118 SB per $1
Alice.com $5	595 SB	119 SB per $1
Barnes & Noble $25	2,985 SB	119.4 SB per $1
Barnes & Noble $10	1,225 SB	122.5 SB per $1
Barnes & Noble $5	625 SB	125 SB per $1
Paypal $100	12,549 SB	125.5 SB per $1
Amazon $25	3,150 SB	126 SB per $1
PayPal $50	6,330 SB	126.6 SB per $1
PayPal $25	3,215 SB	128.6 SB per $1
Target.com $5	649 SB	129.8 SB per $1
PayPal $10	1,335 SB	133.5 SB per $1
PayPal $5	700 SB	140 SB per $1

These values are the regular-priced values for each of the cards as of this writing (5/31/12).  Values can change at any time, and sometimes the cards go on sale.

So what did I learn from making this chart?

• The Amazon.com $5 cards are the best deal!  I always assumed so, but this list makes it clear.
• PayPal is the worst deal.   If you had 2,250 Swag Bucks, you could by 5 $5 Amazon.com codes, but only $15 in PayPal cash (with 215 Swag Bucks left over).
• Alice.com is a pretty good deal if you want to use that site to purchase your household products.  However, the prices there are higher than what you'd spend if you play the drugstore game.
• A Swag Buck is basically worth 1 cent.  So when you look into doing a survey on Swagbucks, think about how much you're actually earning.  If you're doing a 15 minute survey that is worth 25 Swag Bucks, that means you're earning $1 per hour.  
• Other than the Amazon $5 codes, most of the small-value cards are not as good a deal as the higher-value cards.  But unless you do some serious Swagbucksing, it's hard to get to those values.  I've been doing Swagbucks for 2 years, and had I not bought Amazon $5 codes as soon as I had 450 Swag Bucks, I still would not have enough to get an Amazon $500 code.

So what did I do?  I decided not to get anything.  Tomorrow, June 1st, I'll purchase a $5 Amazon code with the Swag Bucks I earned in May.  If I get 5 of the codes before June is over, I'll have another decision to make then!

For more frugal tips, please go to my Linkup Parties page and check out the bloggers listed under Frugal Tips Linkups.  There are lots of great ideas on each blog and I'm sure you'll find lots of wonderful tips

(This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.)