Saturday, February 21, 2009

InboxDollars: Initial Review



Please also note that I have neither requested or nor received money from InboxDollars, so the final review will rest upon that. After all, we don't want imaginary earnings, right?


So here is the deal: Most of the time when people talk about making money online they are talking about earning a good living, getting rich quick, etc. But making good money isn't as easy as all these websites would lead you to believe, and sometimes we shouldn't be thinking big, but small and efficient. This is where InboxDollars seems to fit.

Signing up is harmless. You pay no money, and you only receive the spam you request (and get paid to "read").

Cash out comes at $30, but they start you with $5 for signing up.

Ways to earn: There are seven ways to make money at InboxDollars and we'll go over each in order: Cash Emails, Cash Offers, Cash Surveys, Cash Games, Cash Shopping, Insurance Center, Referral Center.

Cash Emails: This is what most of the reviews online are furious about. InboxDollars usually sends you 2 to 3 emails a day, and you make 2 cents for each one you open. This drives people absolutely nuts. Apparently they want thousands of emails a day. This simply isn't realistic. But 2 to 3, and sometimes more, is actually fantastic because of the efficiency of it. I don't check my InboxDollars emails every day, so I build them up to 10 or so and finish them all off in about 20 seconds. That equals out to earning 1 penny per second or $36 per hour. Maybe that's not pro sports money, but that's good, efficient money. You aren't going to get rich quick opening 10 emails a week, but you are earning a small amount efficiently, and that's a good thing.

Also, some emails will offer you extra money, say $1, to sign up to the advertised service, which sometimes is nothing more than providing your name and email. For instance, I made $1 by giving Norton AntiVirus my email. How slick is that? I have no problem giving a major company my email, and I can always opt out of their mass mailings whenever I like. For the record, they have yet to send me anything emails at all, but my $1 is already credited to the account.

Cash Offers: Please note that this is only beneficial if used properly. This is where you can sign up for different things, like the Disney Movie Club or LifeLock and get money back. Disney gets you $6 and LifeLock, for instance, $8. You're probably asking, but don't you have to pay more than that to Disney and Lifelock in the end? Sure, but if you were going to join one of the many opportunities on this site anyway, why not do it through InboxDollars and get a little money for doing it?

One thing that my family likes to do is join up to the book and movie clubs as we get close to birthdays and Christmas. That way, we can get a ton of gifts for practically nothing, saving a fortune, get paid back on InboxDollars and then just buy a couple more books or movies that we would want anyway (or as more gifts), and we're done.

PLUS, some of these don't actually work as a negative sum game. For instance, I got $4 for signing up to Flicker, which I needed to do anyway, and only had to spend $3 there for a little profit of $1 for doing something I already needed to do. Which is better? Just sign up at Flicker and pay three dollars or sign up via InboxDollars and get a dollar back? Easy choice.

Cash Surveys: This is a total waste of time. The vast majority of surveys take forever to complete and many of them finally end by telling you that you don't qualify. As an experiment for the site, I tried over and over to complete surveys and ended up spending over an hour to make $.50. Now that's a far cry from the $36 per hour I was making opening emails. Every now and then I'll take the surveys that are guaranteed money, but, overall, I avoid this section like the plague.

Cash Games: Speaking of the plaque, here it is. If you are the type of person who wants to deposit their own money to compete with online players in games like Turbo Solitaire then you go ahead, but this blog is about making money online, not blowing money online. Stay away from "cash games."

Cash Shopping: Much like "cash offers," this is really only beneficial if you use it for things you were going to buy anyway. For instance, I needed to make a purchase of a hard to find item off of ebay, so I just went through InboxDollars and got some cash back. There are a lot of stores available, but the most notable are: ebay, Borders, GiftCertificates.com, DisneyShopping, Dell, Overstock.com, Apple Store and Old Navy.

Not too shabby.

Insurance Center: You can shop for auto, home, health and life insurance through InboxDollars, but due to regulatory stipulations, you won't earn any money back if you decide to purchase. The broker that InboxDollars uses is Netquote, who I actually used to broker for many years ago. They are a very strong company that might just save you some money if you are interested in giving it a try. A penny saved is a penny earned, right?

Referral Center: You get 10% of the qualified earnings of anyone you refer.

In the month since I signed up to InboxDollars, I've earned $13.96, though that includes the $5 I got when I signed up. All in all, of the places I've reviewed so far, InboxDollars is easily the most legit. You won't get rich at InboxDollars, but if you use it wisely, you can both earn money and save money. I highly recommend it.



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