In my “January 2016” resolutions post from yesterday I mentioned how I made extra money last year through a site called Inbox Dollars. This is a site that pays you to take online surveys. I know you’ve seen these before and you probably thought they were a scam. Yeah, I did too until I joined this one and started using it.

I made just over $130.00 with them last year. Might not seem like a lot but think about how much you spend at the grocery store each week, or how much you spend in gas each year, or how much you spend in school supplies for your kids, or on gifts for Christmas.  No matter what you spend it on, we can all use some extra cash, right?

I joined in April and was slow at first. I didn’t earn $50 until August. From August to November I earned another $40, and earned the rest before the end of the year.

I like Inbox Dollars because they are one of the few sites that will actually send you a check in the mail. You don’t have to take your payment in the form of a gift card. The only limit is you can’t get a payout until you’ve reached $30.  There is a $3.00 check processing fee, but if you wait and cash out when you reach $40 they will cover this fee for you.  And, they even credit your account another $3.00 after you cash out just to entice you to keep using the site.

There are lots of different features on the site for making money, but I’m only going to discuss the ones I’ve used personally or use on a regular basis. Let’s start with cash offers.

When you sign up and go to the Inbox Dollars home page, you’ll see lots of cash offers like getting a magazine subscription, or getting your credit score, signing up for Publishers Clearing House, or signing up for free samples. Inbox will pay you a small amount (anywhere from .25 cents to $1.00 or more) to take advantage of these offers. The amount is always listed below the offer. However, a lot of these offers cost money or want you to sign up for a subscription of some kind so to me they aren’t really worth it.  Who wants to spend money to earn money, right? But there is an advantage…

Inbox Dollars also emails you different cash offers each week that might only be available for a limited time. The good news is they’ll pay you 2 cents per email just to read or “confirm” the email without having to do the cash offer itself. So I always confirm the emails but I rarely take advantage of the offers.  Two cents might not seem like a lot but it adds up.

Here is one cash offer example that I did take advantage of recently though…

Inbox sent an email advertising a company that personalizes and monograms gifts called Gifts for You Now.  You’d get the 2 cents just for reading the email but if you made a purchase, Inbox would credit you $8.  When you signed up on the site, they  were having a 20% off sale and a $5 coupon for new members.  I thought this was a pretty good deal and I found an item that would make a nice Christmas gift for just $16.00 after the 20% off and my $5 coupon. After Inbox credited me the $8 I paid just $8 for the item plus shipping.

The next simple way to make money through Inbox Dollars is by listening to their online streaming radio channels.  They pay you 2 cents every ten minutes just for listening.  You do have to enter a code or answer a question that pops up on your screen every ten minutes so you can’t leave the house and let it stream all day.

Inbox also has its own search engine and will pay you 2 cents and 2 sweeps (more about sweeps in a minute) for every 4 searches you do. Again, don’t think you can just type in anything and rack up money all day. It has its limits and requirement for valid searches. I don’t use it very often because Google is my go-to search engine, but when I’m not having luck with surveys I go do some searches just to get a few cents in that day.

The biggest way to make money is by answering surveys. Surveys range anywhere from .15 cents to $1.00, sometimes more, and can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. The amount you get for each survey and the estimated length of time is always listed. There are various surveys available each week that often expire if you don’t act right away, but there are also some survey offers that are available every day.

You might not qualify for every survey either.  But don’t worry, you don’t have to enter any personal information other than your age, sex, number of kids, zip code, or other classification things like that.  Some days are better than others for me when it comes to qualifying for surveys so don’t think your $30 will stack up overnight.

One good thing is that for every survey you click on and didn’t qualify for will earn you a spin on the Spin and Win wheel.  This is a wheel that you can click on to win various prizes like cash, sweeps, or survey tokens.  The cash is an extra 5 cents, $1, or $5 added to your account automatically.  I’ve won the 5 cent one quite a bit.  I’ve never won the $5 though!

The survey token is 25 cents that gets added to your account after you complete another survey.  So if you completed a 50 cent survey you’ll get 75 cents instead.  And the sweeps are extra chances to earn other prizes.  I’ll talk about those in a bit. I usually take advantage of all of my spins each day but you can save up to 100 spins on the wheel if you want but you are only allowed around 20 spins per day.

Now let’s talk about sweeps. Think of sweeps as entries into raffles. Like I said, you earn then from doing searches, or from spins on the wheel, and other various things on the site. They do add up quick. You can spend your sweeps in the Rewards Center which is a listing of prizes like cash and gift cards. Each entry will cost you a number of sweeps.  Here’s a snapshot of my current Rewards Center.  I have 40 sweeps available and I usually go for the largest prize though I have not won one yet. The largest prize right now is a $250 prize added to your account. It costs 50 sweeps to enter each time and I have 23 entries so far. Maybe I’ll win some day!

I’m only showing the top 3 current sweep offers but there are lots more available including a sweep to get just 25 cents added to your account. That one only cost 1 sweep per entry.  Another one I like to enter quite a bit is for $1.50 to be added to your account which costs just 3 sweeps per entry.

And that’s pretty much it.  It’s not going to make you a lot of money, but if you stick with it the site definitely pays off some.  Like I said, I made $130 doing it last year. My goal for this year is to try to get to $250.00!

If you’d like to sign up and try it out yourself, just click here!

Tomorrow I’m going to share two other fun ways to save money!