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Paid Search Engines Compared
Tagged Under : amazon, cash, gift card, google, minimum payout, money, Paypal, referral program, referrals, search engine, search program, Swagbucks, win, Won
I know I have probably talked about paid search programs a little too much recently, but I thought I would do one more post about them before I leave the subject alone for a while.
I’ve been seeing a lot of advertisements and posts about Scour.com recently. For those of you that don’t know, Scour.com is a new player in the paid search that offers to reward you for not only searching but also voting and reviewing results.
Lets take a look at how Scour stacks up against my two favorite paid search engines, Swagbucks and Homepages friends.
- Search Engine Used – Google, Yahoo and MSN aggregated. Search results are actually pretty good for an aggregate engine.
- Payment Per Search – Users receive one point for a search, two points for a vote and three for a comment with a maximum of four points per search. 6,500 points earns you a $25 Visa gift card. A little math and we learn that each point is worth a little less than .4 cents. A search earning the maximum of four points is worth approximately 1.5 cents. That means in order to earn $25 by yourself you would need to make over 1,600 searches.
- Affiliate program – If you invite friends to join Scour you receive 25% of what they earn. This can definitely increase the speed at which you earn, but you would still only receive one point on each four point search a friend makes. You could definitely make some decent money if you have enough friends sign up, but it would probably take several dozen actively searching referrals before you would start seeing any real money.
- Search Engine Used – Google and Ask.com. Search results are actually probably the worst of the three, but as long as you aren’t searching for something incredibly specific it usually finds the correct results.
- Payment Per Search – SwagBucks is definitely the odd one in terms of payment. It is actually my favorite site since I believe it offers the best payout and referral program if you use it correctly. You are not paid per search with Swagbucks, instead you are randomly awarded between 1-5 Swagbucks during your searching. Since Swagbucks are redeemed for prizes not cash there is no firm number for how much a Swagbuck is worth. However, 45 Swagbucks will get you a $5 Amazon Gift Card so I generally think of each Swagbuck as being worth a little more than 10 cents. You can usually win your first Swagbuck within your first few searches each day, but you will rarely win more than once within a few hours. Because of this, it does not pay to keep searching with Swagbucks after you win, instead you should use another search engine for at least a few hours before trying to win on Swagbucks again. For more Swagbucks tips, click here.
- Affiliate program – I think Swagbucks has the best affiliate program because you actually win exactly what your referrals win. So if you have just 10 referrals earning 1 Swagbuck per day, you would be winning 10 Swagbucks per day. You can easily see how Swagbucks can start adding up, in fact in the last month I’ve made over 1,000 Swagbucks!
I hope this helps clear up some of the differences between the three programs. I know there are more out there, but these three seem to be the most popular and the best paying. Again, I tend to like Swagbucks because they have the best referral program and because its really exciting when you get the little notification saying “You’ve Won a Swagbuck!”.
Stumble it!
so after all the best one is swagbucks, right? haha, that’s why i like to visit your blog! you analyze that thing, you come out with that result, then i apply the best one, haha, fast and easy! Thanks ya~
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Well that’s the one I like best. Technically I think you could say that Homepages friends offers higher payouts if you do more searches. But simply from an effort/payout perspective I think Swagbucks is the best.
Does any one use more than one of these?
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I’m using homwpage friends
well i use Scour and use their toolbar has a nice fitur
Do you use these site for your personal searches or am I missing something? Can these be incorporated with a personal website so that users on the site use the search tool? I’ve tried these in the past and used them for my own personal searches but didn’t really make any money. Any tips?
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Justin I use them for my personal searches. The best way to make some decent money with these sites is to sign up referrals, but it is possible to make a few bucks by yourself if you don’t sign anyone up.
Swagbucks in particular is great even if you get just a few friends to sign up under you since you win exactly what your friends win. Even homepages friends pays out pretty decently if you do a fair number of searches in a month.
The way I do it is I use the search engines for 90% of my normal navigating, for example, instead of typing in amazon.com , I will search for amazon through one of the search engines.
Check out our post from a few weeks back on tips for paid search engines, I definitely do think that they are worth the little extra effort.
I personally use Scour. I like the nice toolbar and like to be able to vote results up and down. I did not join to make a huge amount of money, but figured since I would get paid per search where Google does not pay per search, I would give them a try.
So far I really like it.
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Great review. I use Homepages Friends myself but maybe I should give Swagbucks a try too. thanks!
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I have heard of search engines doing this, but have never tried it, I may have to check out Swagbucks just to give it a try.
@Justin
I’m using it for my searches. Just use it as if you are using a regular search engine.
I think swagbucks is better. And really pay to affiliate member.
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I don’t use Homepages Friends anymore because they get results from Yahoo!, which I don’t really like.