SwagBucks
SwagBucks bills itself as "the Internet's Premier Currency," and they're not far wrong - by my calculations you can get as much as $0.50 per SwagBuck earned, depending on the value of SwagBucks at the time. The fact that the SwagBucks team understands that they should track the value of their currency is already a very good sign. I should point out that you can purchase a limited and rotating selection of mp3 singles for a SwagBuck, so in that case you're getting what is normally a $0.99 value. Also, many retailers are offering $5.00 gift cards for 5 SwagBucks. Bigger prizes fluctuate more, though, based on a variety of conditions.As you search using the Swagbucks toolbar, you will randomly win Swagbucks, most often one at a time, but during special time periods you could earn up to 50. Swagbucks searches Google and Ask.com, but inserts its own search advertising in the results. Because the user base determines the value of SwagBucks advertising products, they're driven to give good incentives to users to download and search via the toolbar.
SwagBucks doesn't stop there - they have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter, and use these service to advertise special "Swag Codes" which can earn extra SwagBucks. And they have a referral program that allows current users to earn up to 100 SwagBucks from each person they refer to the Toolbar. (The link above is one such referral link.) If you like the service and tell your friends, they will be adding to your SwagBucks balance every time they win SwagBucks from a search result.
SwagBucks is very responsible with your contact information. I have not encountered any spam in my inbox or on Facebook or Twitter. They are committed to customer service, and the toolbar is attractive and functional. One great feature is that you can highlight text on a web page and it instantly fills into the search box on the toolbar. Also (at least with Firefox), any search string or incompletely-typed URL that you enter into the address bar is sent to SwagBucks as a search.
If you're looking for excellent search results, and great rewards for searching, SwagBucks might be the way to go.
The Bar
The Bar, by Boloto Group, operates on the same premise as SwagBucks, but they reward users for every click of an advertisement from their special ads sidebar. While you're browsing, you can click on the "ER" or "Ads" button, and receive ads from the ER Network that are targeted to the demographic information you provide. The Bar gives you four tenths of a cent ($0.004) for viewing ads, which open in a separate window. The emphasis is on video production, but there are also ads that simply lead you to interesting web pages.Four tenths of a cent is not that exciting, but The Bar has devised a way to multiply your earnings - it pays you that same $0.004 for clicks from your friends, and their friends, and so forth, all the way to the famous "six degrees of separation." Depending on how motivated your referrals are, this can add up pretty quickly. When you consider that 1000 clicks is $4.00, it is easy to see how inviting tons and tons of people to this opportunity is an easy way to make some money on the web.
The Bar understands that friend networks of this magnitude are rare, so they offer another exciting opportunity as well - you can offer the bar to any charity, school group, or other organization that is looking for fundraising opportunities. The organization gets a dollar-for-dollar match on all of the activity generated by the members of its referral group. Because of the scale of organization mailing lists, The Bar could become a significant source of donations, just by harnessing the web activity of people.
The Bar has some interesting quirks, including currently running "training" ads that are not paid by advertisers. They're clearly trying to develop an advertiser base. But there's nothing shady or inappropriate. They do collect more demographic information than one normally has to give away, but they aggregate all that data - no user contact information is shared, and ads are delivered based on the user's membership in a specific demographic category. The downside is that your individual earning ability is tiny. However, as a fundraising opportunity (or if you have a million friends!), there is serious income potential inherent in your network.
