Microsoft has been behind Google on many things. Cell phones, set top boxes, search engines, email, etc. All of those, Google has trounced Microsoft rather easily. It is amazing because other than search engines, Microsoft was there first and in some cases, for decades and still lost to Google’s upstart effort. Particularly search engines. Bing has never been able to catch on with engine users and with their recent changes, they lost one of the few things that made the service unique.
Cold hard cash
I have covered Bing in the past and back then, it was a decent earner when killing time. Unfortunately, a few things have changed since then.
Bing gives you points for using the service. Bonus points are available if you go to your profile page. This means you can make cold hard cash with Bing and do things you already do. Me, I just typed in gibberish till I got my points, as well as used Bing on my phone throughout the day.
Sure, you were cannot retire on your earnings from Bing but for the average user, it paid more than TikTok does per view (if you are able to get monetized that is).
Image source - Kapwing
Even larger accounts on TikTok struggle to break 500 views on a video so they are averaging 1 cent per video posted. I understand, once the video is posted, it is passive income and Bing is very much hands on. The difference is you can get paid by Bing from day one. Make an account and you can start earning. TikTok requires 10,000 followers and a varying amount of watch time depending on who you ask. The monetization requirements are not public and no one wants to risk what little monetization they do get by posting screenshots. I have had people claim it is 4,000 minutes to 100,000 minutes in the last 90 days. Considering most TikTok videos are less than 10 seconds long, you are depending on going viral heavily to get monetized. If TikTok approves you and your content.
Money is money. $12 to $15 a month for using Bing was decent. Not amazing but it adds up (over $140 a year).
The fall begins
Bing has made some changes recently. Not good either. The signs are on the wall for everyone to read. Bing is going to get worse sooner than later.
Right now, Bing is letting me earn about 400 points per day. Total. When I wrote previous articles it was closer to 550 points per day. They have also lowered the value of some activities from 5 points to 2 or even 1 point.
That is a drop of about 26% in earnings per day. That hurts when you are going to for maximizing your earnings. That is nearly 4,300 points gone per month in your potential earnings. If using the 5,250 point $5 gift card for Walmart/Amazon/Target as reference, that is a loss of $1.30 per month in earnings. Doesn’t sound like a lot yet, that is over $15 a year. Gone.
Okay, I know what you are thinking, that is barely a decent size combo at Burger King every year, you won’t miss that.
They are raising the cost of the gift cards as well. Looking at other stores such as Best Buy and Chewy or Sam’s Club, we see $5 cards are 6,500 points.
That is an increase of nearly 20%. An increase of 1,250 points, or over 3 days’ worth of earnings.
Keeping with the 300 points average per day, 9,000 points per month we get this -
Old - $8.57 or $102 a year
New - $6.92 or $83 a year
This is if you were going for $5 gift cards. That is a 19% drop in earnings. That is disheartening to say the least.
I do want to mention, currently, you can still get some $5 gift cards for the old, lower, price. If you have points built up in Bing, I suggest cashing out while you can keep that 20% boost.
For more information, to sign up, or check your balance, please visit Bing.com