Is InboxDollars a legit way to earn real money?
There is no shortage of paid online surveys, but InboxDollars is more than a survey site. In fact, their surveys don’t even pay much compared to Vindale Research or Survey Junkie.
Today I will share with you my personal experience (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and the 10 ways you can make money with InboxDollars.
Table of Contents
What is InboxDollars?
InboxDollars is one of the most popular GPT (get-pay-to) sites, similar to Swagbucks. You get paid to do simple tasks such as taking surveys, watching TV, playing games, shopping online, reading emails, referring friends, and so much more.
InboxDollars has been around since 2000 and has paid over $56 million to its members for doing normal everyday activities.
Ways To Make Money With InboxDollars
There are many ways to earn money with InboxDollars. I will cover 10 ways for you to earn in this post.
1. Sign-Up Bonus
You earn $5 just for signing up and confirming your email address. The whole process is fairly easy and takes about a minute to do.
However, you will not have access to your $5 until you have reached a minimum payout threshold of $30. We’ll discuss more about this later in the post.
2. Surveys
Market research and paid online surveys are what drive the decisions of some of the biggest brands in the world. Your opinions matter and they want to compensate you for your time.
Most surveys pay between $.50 to $5 and take between 3 to 25 minutes to complete. You can earn up to $20 per survey if you match the demographic profile for the survey.
If you like taking online surveys and want to maximize your earning potential, I suggest you sign up for as many survey sites as you can. You might get just one or two surveys per day or none at all for a whole week. By signing up for multiple sites, you ensure that you will always have surveys to take daily.
Here’s the list of other legitimate survey sites.
Tip: Choose a survey that would best compensate for your time. Don’t pick a $0.25 survey that would take 20 minutes to do. Unless you just really enjoy giving your opinions and want to do them all.
3. Play Games
One of my daily guilty pleasures is playing Candy Crush. But lately, I’ve been obsessed with playing Mahjong on InboxDollars. In addition to getting paid, an added benefit is keeping your mind sharp.
You can play free or paid games. But since we’re here to make extra money, I’d just stick with the free games.
You don’t actually earn “cash” for the free games like Solitaire or Mahjong. What you earn is progress on the “Scratch and Win” bar. When you complete a bar, you’ll get a scratch-off card. You can win up to $100, but I’ve received mostly 1 cent to 10 cents.
If you choose to play paid games, you will get 18% cash-back.
4. Search Engine
Another way to earn is by using InboxDollars as your default search engine. Don’t get too excited and start typing in nonsense just to get paid (I tried already and it didn’t work).
The most you can earn per day using the Search segment is 25 cents for “qualified search”. Qualified search is a search that is performed naturally (In other words, you can’t just type in “I’m hungry” 10 times just to rack up the money).
It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s more than $50 per year for doing something that you’d be doing anyway. You can use the search engine for both desktop and mobile.
5. Read Emails
You earn about two cents for every email you open and read. All you have to do is open the email, read it, and then click on the button at the bottom to confirm that you’ve read it.
You can earn even more cash by signing up for special offers in the email.
InboxDollars users report emails as being one of their favorite ways to earn since it’s fast and easy.
6. Watch Videos
I’ve read that you can earn up to $225 per month with InboxDollar videos. While you can definitely earn this amount watching videos, it’s not feasible for most people. You’d have to be glued to your computer.
A trick with this is you can just have it play on your computer while you do chores such as cooking, cleaning, etc.
7. Special Offers
The “special offers” is where you can earn the most cash, but be careful. Don’t fall into the trap of spending $100 just to earn $10. However, the offers are really good if it’s something you’re interested in.
It has a wide range of offers and here are some of the offers they currently have:
- Deliver & Earn with Postmates ($20)
- Become an Airbnb host ($100)
- Monthly donation to an animal shelter ($25)
- Fresh food delivered to your door ($12)
8. WinIt Codes
WinIt Codes are fun promotional codes for you to win prizes and cash.
InboxDollars will occasionally post special redeemable codes on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. It’s free to participate but you have to follow them on social media to know when they post the code. The code expires at 11:59 CST on the same day it’s posted.
9. Coupons
InboxDollars has another category for coupons. You earn 1 cent for every coupon you print, for up to 25 cents per day. You also earn 10 cents for every coupon redeemed. The real saving is the value of the coupon that you will use at the store.
One of the coupons I see now on InboxDollars is $2 off for Aveeno. If you print this coupon, you will get 1 cent for it plus 10 cents if you use it, plus the $2 off.
The greatest savings will be the coupons you actually use. I wouldn’t print coupons out just for 1 penny though. It would be great if you can clip the coupons digitally.
10. Refer-a-friend
Get $1 bonus for every friend you refer for up to 5 friends PLUS 30% of your friends’ earnings while they are active users.
There does not appear to be a cap on this residual income, which is extremely generous. Most sites cap it after 12 months.
If you have a lot of friends, this could be a great source of passive income.
How to Redeem with InboxDollars
The minimum amount required to cash out is $30, which is a bit higher than other sites.
Payment options include:
- PayPal (my preferred option)
- eGiftcards (45 options)
- Prepaid Visa
- Check
How to Become a Gold Member?
The Gold Membership is FREE.
InboxDollars encourages its members to be active by offering a free Gold Membership. You’ll automatically become a Gold Member once you request your first payment. As a Gold Member, your future payments will be processed up to 5x faster than non-Gold members.
Pros and Cons of InboxDollars
Let’s dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of InboxDollars:
Pros:
- Bonus $5 for signing up. Just sign up and confirm your email and you automatically get $5. Easy enough.
- Free to join. NEVER pay to join a survey site. The point is for you to make money, not spend money.
- Many options to earn. I get bored taking online surveys and I love the fact that you can earn money doing other things. I could spend hours playing games while having a movie in the background.
- Generous referral program. You can earn 30% of what your referrals make and there is no cap.
Cons:
- Minimum payout is $30. The minimum payout is high since you can cash out at $10 for most sites. You might end up doing a bunch of stuff for free for InboxDollars if you give up before you reach $30.
- Very few surveys to complete. You get 10 surveys when you sign up, but after that you might only get one per day.
- Most of the surveys go to US residents only.
- Need to disable ad blockers for Search.
Is InboxDollars Legit?
InboxDollars is owned by a parent company called Cotterweb and has been around since 2000. It has an A rating on Better Business Bureau (BBB), which is really good.
Is It Even Worth My Time?
You definitely won’t get rich doing this, but you can definitely earn an extra $50 a month easily (that’s less than $2 per day) doing things that you normally do already such as surfing the net, shop online, play games, etc.
Invite all of your friends to join and you will earn a percentage of what they earn.
Let me know if you’ve tried it and if it’s even worth your time.
Related articles:
- 12 Highest Paid Online Survey Sites
- 11 Ways to Make $50 Fast
- 10 Easy Ways to Get Free Gift Cards
- 14 Best Phone Apps to Make Money
📌Don’t forget to pin it on Pinterest!
InboxDollars
Pros
- $5 sign on bonus
- Quick payouts
- Many options to earn
- Generous referral program
Cons
- $30 minimum payout
- Most surveys are for US residents only
- Very few surveys to complete
I think the payouts on InboxDollars are very small. You have to dedicate a lot of time into filling out the surveys. If you are committed to doing this and don’t mind sitting on your computer for hours, then InboxDollars is a good website. I personally prefer bigger payouts and don’t like sitting on my computer for hours. That’s why I use Prizerebel instead. Prizerebel is way easier to use than Survey Junkie and I’m proud to say that I’ve made $320 last month. Good luck!
I totally agree. I use InboxDollars mainly to play games and check emails (you earn money from those too). For surveys, my current favorite one is Qmee. I can easily earn $10 a day not doing much. One time, I even earned Amazon gift card on top of money I make from the survey!