Cash In on Your Searches: A Closer Look at the Benefits of Switching to Bing, Based on Personal Trial and Success

Key Takeaways

• Microsoft Rewards is a program that gives you points to redeem for rewards when you use Bing.
• You earn points by conducting searches with Bing, completing offered activities, and buying things on Microsoft and Xbox Stores.
• You can use your points to redeem various types of gift cards, sweepstakes entries, in-game currencies, or even to donate to charity.
• Overall, you can expect to earn $10-$15 in redeemable points per month if you consistently max out your points gain every day.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could be rewarded just for using the internet? Microsoft will reward you for using Bing, but are they paying enough to justify switching from your preferred browser? I’ve spent a lot of time using Microsoft Rewards, and this is my honest take on how worthwhile it is.

How Microsoft Rewards Works

Microsoft Rewards is the name of the program that will reward you for using Bing. To make use of it, you’ll need a Microsoft account of your own. When you have one, visit the Microsoft Rewards homepage and sign up for free. After signing up, you’ll see the Rewards dashboard, which keeps track of the points you’ll be redeeming.

The way this works overall is pretty simple: you earn points by doing certain tasks every day through Bing, and when you accumulate enough points, you can redeem them for various rewards. If you earn enough points every month, you’ll get a discount for your redeemed rewards, meaning you can get the same amount of profit for fewer points if you remain consistent.

Earning Points, and What They’re Worth

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It can vary slightly depending on what you want to redeem, but generally speaking, 1,000 points is equivalent to $1. You can expect to need 10,000 points for a $10 gift card of any type, for example. As for earning points, there are many ways you can do that.

The most common way is using Bing to conduct searches . Every day, you can earn 150 points, earning 5 points per search when using Bing. You can get another 100 points per day by doing mobile searches on Bing as well. You can use any browser you want for either of these: all that matters is that you’re using Bing while signed into your Microsoft Rewards account.

This is where most of your points come from, but Rewards offers a few other ways to rack them up. There are daily activities to do, usually things like visiting a web page or answering a poll. These tasks will give you around 10 to 30 points, and if you continue to complete your daily set of tasks every day, you’ll get streak bonuses when you hit certain benchmarks, like 45 points for a three-day streak.

You can also earn points by completing offered activities outside of the daily set, shopping online at the Microsoft or Xbox store , and completing special activities in the Xbox App for PC or Microsoft Rewards App for Xbox consoles if you’re a gamer.

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The Rewards You Can Redeem

The most common reward you can redeem points for is gift cards . There are all kinds available: Microsoft and Xbox gift cards, but also cards for grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters, general purpose stores, and many more. You can also redeem your points for free trials of services like Spotify or Duolingo, or spend your points on in-game currencies or sweepstakes entries for prizes.

If you’re the charitable sort, you could use your points to donate to charities. For every 1,000 points you redeem for this, Microsoft will donate $1 to the charity you select. There are dozens of organizations you can donate to, from wildlife conservation agencies to research hospitals and everything in between.

How Much Can You Really Make With Microsoft Rewards?

Alright, the idea of Microsoft Rewards sounds nice upfront, but how much can you make with it? Is it even worth your time? As someone who has redeemed a few hundred dollars worth of points through Microsoft Rewards, I can honestly tell you that it is. No, you’re not going to rake in life-changing amounts of free money, but it’s enough to be worth your time.

The exact number of maximum points you could earn every month varies, since the points offered by activities vary too. But let’s just consider the daily Bing searches as the bare minimum: that’s 250 points a day, 7,500 in a 30-day month. That’s $7.50 worth of redeemable points. When you include the points you’ll be making from activities and daily streaks, you’ll earn closer to 10,000 points a month.

Yes, that’s only $10 a month. It’s not going to change your life, but it can be nice to knock a free $10 off a purchase each month. Plus, don’t forget that you earn points for buying things on the Microsoft and Xbox stores . If you’re already buying products or services from those stores, there’s no reason to not earn points you could redeem for free money while doing it.

The main reason Microsoft Rewards is worth your time is the fact that it doesn’t take much of your time at all. Activities on the Rewards dashboard rarely take more than a minute to complete. Completing your daily search limit for points might take five minutes if you’re just looking to max it out. You only need to spend about fifteen minutes a day or less to get the monthly 10,000 points we talked about.

This means you don’t have to commit to Bing to make the most of Microsoft Rewards. Use it for a few minutes every day to max out your points, then go back to your preferred search engine. It’s a small sacrifice to make for free money you can use for yourself or to donate to charity.

Microsoft Rewards isn’t a way to pay your bills. It’s not going to replace your day job. But it can score you some free change every month: enough to knock a $60 game to a $45 one or to shave the cost off of an important package from Amazon. It doesn’t take much time or effort for you to maximize your point gain every day, and honestly, though Bing still doesn’t quite stack up to Google , it’s plenty good enough to use seriously.

I can honestly say that Microsoft Rewards is worth the time. After all, you can’t get better than free!