Secret Swom Strategies

**PLEASE NOTE Swom has changed the way points are earned so the information given in this post is no longer applicable. Information on the new system is available here.**

One of the most frequently asked questions at Swom is “What’s the quickest way for me to get my 200 points a day?”

I don’t personally think it should be so much about the quickest way as the most effective way to do it, since that’s much more important to your future as a successful marketer than just collecting points to earn a few dollars. Fortunately this method addresses both.

So, here is my method and it’s a method used by most of the more experienced Swom members.

The secret to getting your points quickly and easily is to make connections. Specifically, you need to connect with the active members. Every time you make a connection you earn 1 point.

Swom currently has nearly 100,000 members and about 400 new ones join every day. Although a large percentage of these are inactive, that’s still plenty of people to connect with. In any case, you can’t interact directly with anyone unless you’re connected and, since you earn points for socializing, making connections is obviously the place to start. See How To Connect With Other Members.

How do I find the active members to connect with?

Go to the profile page of someone who makes a lot of connections. Let’s use mine as an example. Scroll down the page and you will see lots of notifications saying ‘Penny and ……… have connected.’ These are members who have just connected with me and that means they have been active very recently.

Right-click on each name in turn and open in a new tab. I recommend doing no more than 10-15 at a time since opening multiple tabs in quick succession can prompt the captcha to appear (more on that later). Now go to each tab in turn and click ‘Connect with….’, wait for the ‘Connection request sent!’ message and close the tab.

Aim to make as many connection requests (200+ a day if possible) in this way as you have the time and patience for. If 1 in 4 accepts in the next 24 hours, that’s 50 points but, since you’ve targeted the active members, the acceptance rate should be much higher.

If you would like to see a list of the most active members at Swom (guaranteed connections), visit Julio Magallanes’ blog.

So, let’s say 80 members have connected with you, you now have 80 points for the day. The next thing to do is to go through the list of those connections on your profile page and send them all a welcome/thank you message. It’s perfectly acceptable to write your message, save it in a text file and copy and paste it to each new connection. (Please note, points are not given for identical messages that are repeated more than a couple of times in succession. To avoid this, personalise your message with the member’s name or change it slightly each time.) If you are a Gold member, you can incorporate the word ‘Gold’ into your message and you will be taking part in the Gold Evangelist Bonus at the same time. Now you have 160 points.

Any connection/message/comment carries a small chance of a community chest win, so you may well receive one or even several while you’re doing this. Don’t forget that community chests are not included in the daily points limit so don’t stop posting until your points stop increasing. In fact, you can still win community chests after you have reached your points maximum, so you don’t need to stop at all if you don’t want to.

The remaining 40 points, or however many more you need, can be earned quite easily by participating in some conversations on the dashboard or by sending messages to your previous connections.

This method should take you 1-2 hours at the most to get your 200 points.

Avoiding the captcha

The captcha (often referred to by members as the robot) is a recent addition to Swom, introduced when it became apparent that some members were using automated software to make connections and cheat the system and consequently the other members.

When opening members’ profiles, clicking on links or doing any other repetitive actions in quick succession, there is a chance you will see the captcha page. If you don’t enter the words in a few pages of it appearing, for example, if you’re opening pages so fast you miss it, you will have points deducted from your account. This is why I recommend only opening a few tabs at a time, so you can keep an eye on what’s happening.

Many members are upset at the introduction of the captcha, claiming it slows them down. My response to that would be, they should be pleased that Swom is taking measures to ensure they’re not being cheated out of points/money/community chests by less scrupulous members. In any case, it appears so infrequently (for me anyway) I can’t see what the problem is.

A word about Linky

Linky is a Chrome addon which allows you to open many tabs with one click. Apparently, it’s not seen by Swom as automated software but you would be wise to check with Support first before using it. I don’t use it personally but I would think the likelihood of the captcha appearing would be much greater and more frequent if you did.