As my team and I finalize our plans for Swagbucks in the coming year, I find myself reflecting on our collective achievements over the course of 2014. First among those was a significant milestone that we reached early in the year: on January 31, the 10 millionth member joined Swagbucks.

Our vibrant, vocal and compassionate community remains the backbone of Swagbucks; and, to whom we owe our continued success. On the threshold of this 10,000,000 member milestone, we invited you, our users, to share your stories; stories about what you do with your free gift cards, and how you use the monetary rewards. The stories that you wrote have a common refrain: helping others & sharing. I encourage you to read the rest of the stories (here and here).

Also this year, Prodege, Swagbucks’ parent company, received its first ever external investment from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), one of the industry’s leading venture capital firms. Heretofore, we had been completely self-funded. In conjunction with TCV’s investment, we also named Chuck Davis, an accomplished digital media and e-commerce executive, as our new CEO. The investment from TCV and Chuck’s appointment is a significant validation of our business model, and signals the accelerated growth we’ve realized over the past year.

This growth is attributable to our members’ positive response to our most popular reward channels. Our Encrave and Watch channels were met with enormous success in 2014. We’ve seen that our members love being rewarded for checking out interesting videos and content; and our partners place tremendous value on the viewer and readership we deliver for them. To put a finer point on the popularity of these two Swagbucks channels, consider this: in 2014 you viewed and read over 2 BILLION videos and articles!! From this activity, we awarded over 1 BILLION Swag Bucks (and that translates to over $10 MILLION in cash awards). In the coming year, we have exciting plans that will make our content experiences both more rewarding and fulfilling.

We were also astonished by your response to our Answers and Shopping channels. In 2014, we collected responses on 7,621,222 surveys!!! The feedback you provide to market researchers helps inform important product development decisions for our clients. You also wield significant power in online retail; this year, the amount of online shopping that you influenced grew by over 50%. Shopping has fast become one of the most popular ways for you to accumulate large Swag Buck rewards. And, we’re pretty sure you’re going to love some of the programs we plan to introduce in the coming year; ones that will reward your continued loyalty!

Our capstone to 2014 is a milestone that I’m most excited about. Over the course of the year, we issued to you about $30,000,000 in gift cards and cash awards. And, on Friday, December 5, we crossed the $80,000,000 mark in cumulative awards issued over our 6 year operating history. This is the part about what we do that is personally most fulfilling. And, it goes back to the stories I shared at the beginning of this post: what we do enables you, our millions of members, to make a positive difference in the lives of those around them. Individually, the $5 gift cards you share with your family and friends represent a small way of helping out. Though, when you stack all $5 and $10 gift cards we award, they let our members touch the lives of millions around them.

2014, as in years past, reinforces my conviction about the human spirit: its yearning to help, care and provide for those around us. I wanted to thank you, again, from the bottom of my heart for continuing to make Swagbucks such a wonderful, caring and growing family. As always, I’m grateful to God for all the blessings. Let us pray for a healthier, wealthier new year and a happier more peaceful world.

Happy New Year!

-Josef, President & Founder – Prodege, LLC, Swagbucks.com