I was looking at my Account settings and noticed that there’s something called “Rewards” and I’ve earned about 3100! What are they, how can I earn more, and what’s the point of them?
You’ve bumped into Microsoft Rewards, also sometimes known as Bing Rewards. It’s a program Microsoft created to encourage users to search with its Bing search engine that can earn you points every day, leading up to various prizes. The rewards range from vouchers in popular Microsoft game environments to actual gift cards from popular merchants like Amazon and Starbucks. Yes, you can get paid to use Bing as your search engine.
I’ve written about Microsoft Rewards in the past, but let’s go through it again because they do keep changing the program and because, well, I try to max out my points every day because I have more than once turned them in for gift cards at my favorite merchants. Before you get too excited, though, it’s a slow way to earn money; an average day will yield 200-250 points and a $5 Starbucks gift card costs over 5,000 points. Still, it’s fun.
FINDING YOUR REWARDS POINT STATUS
Jump into Settings and look at your Accounts setting. It’ll be right at the top:
You can see near the top that I’m doing pretty well with 25,909 points. Since those $5 Starbucks cards are about 5,500 points, that means I could trade them in for about $20 worth of coffee. At a modern Starbucks that’s three cappuccinos.
Click on the “Rewards” icon and it’ll take you to rewards.bing.com and show you how things are progressing with today’s point goals:
Today’s been a pretty rewarding day with 255 points so far. On this same page you can scroll down and see the various ways that you can earn points…
NO POINTS LEFT BEHIND IN MICROSOFT REWARDS
This Rewards page is a good place to check because sometimes there are easy ways to earn points that aren’t otherwise highlighted (I’ll show you what I mean shortly). Near the top I’ve got them all:
but further down there’s one that will yield 5 points that I haven’t checked out yet:
Notice the “+5” on the top right of the “Do you know the answer?” box. Most everything that you’ll do through Microsoft Rewards are learn how to explore Bing features, so they tend to be searches for various themes or topics. The Bing team loves its quizzes too and this one’s exactly that, a quiz. But it’s easy: You can use Bing to search for the answers!
BING HOMEPAGE QUIZ
What I most enjoy are the Bing Homepage Quizzes, and that’s exactly what this opportunity to earn points is focused on too. They tend to be obscure:
They also often have funny puns or wry incorrect answers that reveal the team has a good sense of humor. The more you know about a particular subject, the more you can pick up on this. In this instance, the quiz is about national parks in the UK, something few people outside of the country are likely to know. So… it’s time to search. I opened another tab and searched for the exact question prompted: “Which English national park is the Roaches ridge found in?” then clicked on the correct answer:
You can see on the right side that only 52% of people got this question correct. This means they weren’t using Bing to search for the answer!
OTHER WAYS TO ACCESS MICROSOFT REWARDS
If you’re a Microsoft Edge browser fan you can access your Rewards status and see the latest entries from any new tab. Simply click on the “+” on the tab row, then click on the rewards icon to bring up a handy menu:
In this instance, it’s a new day so all new chances to earn points. Handy tip: You can click on the challenges directly from this menu and earn points. Also note on the very bottom that you can earn up to 150 points for web-based Bing searches of your own each day, and an additional 100 points for searching Bing through mobile. So if you’re really hardcore, that’s another 250 points!
I’ll check out today’s Daily poll…
Ah, hmmm…. lightning vs rainbows. I’ll answer rainbows.
Looks like people prefer lightning to rainbows. I would not have expected that!
Finally, ready to learn about what you can redeem these points for? There’s quite a list. Just jump to REDEEM and you can peruse the extensive list. Good luck and have fun!
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about Microsoft Windows for many years. Please check out my extensive Windows help area for more useful tutorials while you’re visiting the site!