I'm sure this has been explained before...

[heygrey]

it's a search engine, albeit not a great one. you search, you earn swagbucks, you cash them in for gift cards or prizes. $5 amazon cards are one of the best values i think. you can earn swagbucks from other things too - daily polls, surveys, other random things as advertised. you can earn by searching every ~4 hours so i generally just use it a few times a day to get the points and then move back to google. i'd guess that i earn over $100 in amazon cards a year with minimal effort, like under 5 minutes a day, doing things i'd do anyway.