InboxDollars Review 2022: Is it Worth Joining?

If you’re looking to earn a few bucks without getting up from your computer, InboxDollars is a popular option. This ‘Get Paid To' site is an online rewards club where you can complete surveys or try your hand at different games for the chance to earn extra cash. But how legit is it, and is it worth your time?

Whether you’re just trying to rack up some gas money or you’re looking for a legitimate side hustle you can do from home, our InboxDollars review has got everything you need to know. Keep reading to learn whether InboxDollars is legit, how much money you can make, and what real users have to say about it.

Is InboxDollars Worth My Time?

If you’ve ever used a survey or online rewards site before, you likely already know how frustrating some of these websites can be – while they promise big payouts, hours of completing online surveys or playing games may only actually yield a few cents.

Fortunately, InboxDollars doesn’t fall in this category. Surveys pay anywhere from $0.50 to $5, and their highest-paying online surveys should only take up to 25 minutes to complete.

Their shortest surveys, which only run around $0.50, take an estimated time of three minutes. Playing games, online shopping, or even reading emails can also yield a percentage of cashback on any in-app purchases you make or items that you buy online.

One thing that does separate InboxDollars from similar reward sites that aren’t worth your time is that they never misrepresent your payouts. When you’re completing an online survey, you’ll always know exactly how much it’s going to pay and how long it’s going to take before you begin – so you can pick and choose exactly how much time to dedicate to InboxDollars.

What Does InboxDollars Offer?

While InboxDollars surveys are probably the most straightforward way to make real money, the site has quite a few different earning opportunities to try out. We’ll go into more detail about how earning with these offers work later, but here’s a quick rundown of what you can do on InboxDollars:

• Paid surveys for brands completing market research, with most survey payouts ranging from $0.01 to $5
• Cashback offers when you shop online at specific sites. You can get a percentage of cashback on shopping for hotels and travel, clothing retailers, grocery stores, cosmetics, signing up for subscription boxes, payment plans, and even auto insurance.
• Sign up to receive emails via the PaidEmail program and get paid a small sum for reading them.
• Play games like Solitaire or Monkey Bubble Shooter on InboxDollars for extra cash.
• Get cash rewards when you make in-app purchases on iOS and Android for games that are partnered with InboxDollars.
• Watch videos for certain brands, like new product features or trailers for new content.
• Clip free coupons for items that you might buy online or in real life

Is InboxDollars Legit and Safe?

Survey and GPT sites tend to get a bad rap, and not all of it is undeserved. Some sites may vastly overestimate how much they’ll pay you and then sell your personal information to scammers or even charge you a fee just for accessing their survey database.

The good news is that InboxDollars is both legitimate and safe for you to use. In fact, InboxDollars is one of the first online reward clubs to become successful online – the company has been around since 2000 when it was founded by a computer science student named Darren Cotter.

In 2019, a successful consumer rewards platform, Prodege, acquired InboxDollars along with two of its international counterparts: InboxPounds (UK) and DailyRewards (Canada). Prodege also owns Swagbucks, so it's a large player in the online rewards space.

Besides its long history, InboxDollars also boasts a decent Better Business Bureau (BBB rating), an excellent 4.2 rating on TrustPilot with nearly 20,000 reviews and plenty of Reddit chatter.

So, not only has InboxDollars been around for over two decades, but its reputation speaks for itself when it comes to safety and legitimacy.

How to Sign Up for InboxDollars

Like any site, you’ll need to join InboxDollars if you plan to take advantage of any of their cash rewards and offers. Depending on when you sign up, you may even be eligible for an additional $5 sign-up bonus when you create your account and confirm your email.

From start to finish, signing up shouldn’t take you more than a total of 15 minutes, and here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. On the homepage, enter your email address and a password.
2. Once you click “Sign Me Up,” you should receive a confirmation email from InboxDollars, and as soon as you confirm your email, you’ll automatically receive the $5 sign-up bonus.
3. On your homepage, you should have several offers available to you, but you’ll want to fill out the Profile Survey first to figure out which surveys your demographic is eligible for.

During the sign-up process, the profile survey is the most time-consuming part and includes questions about your demographic. This includes your income, education, race, marital status, and even your medical history.

While some questions may not seem relevant, they do determine which surveys you do (and don’t) qualify for. In some cases, your answers could even qualify you for special, high-paying surveys that are worth $10 to $20 if you’re in the right demographic.

So, as tedious as the profile survey may seem, it’s worth your time to do it, and you’ll get an additional $0.50 just for completing it.

Different Ways to Earn With InboxDollars

Once you’ve confirmed your email and made it through that initial profile survey, the options for earning extra cash with InboxDollars open up. Here’s exactly how to make real money with the site.

Taking Paid Surveys With InboxDollars

The most popular way to make money with InboxDollars is by taking a paid survey. These actually aren’t InboxDollars surveys – the site is just connecting you with survey providers and brands that are paying for market research insights.

Your job as a consumer is to provide feedback on services and products which may help certain brands with their product development and marketing.

Once you’ve completed the profile survey, InboxDollars automatically matches you with several different surveys, and most of them have different payouts. From your notification dashboard, you’ll be able to see how much each paid survey is worth and the estimated time it’ll take for you to complete it.

For instance, one survey may take a minute and earn you $0.01, while another could take up to 20 minutes but pay you $2. Keep in mind that the surveys don’t last forever – the longer you wait to take them, the greater chance that they’ll expire.

Depending on the survey, you may be able to tell what the subject is (like “entertainment” or “media”), but not all of them include this detail.

Besides the actual payout that you get, InboxDollars has another way to incentivize you to keep filling out surveys – the more surveys you complete, the more chances you get to win money with virtual “scratch-off” tickets too. These scratch-offs function just like real life lottery scratch-off tickets, and they give you another opportunity to win a little extra money.

InboxDollars Referral Program

Like many survey and rewards sites, InboxDollars offers a solid referral program. To refer friends, log in to your InboxDollars account and click the Refer Friends link located in the grey menu. Copy your referral link and read the instructions on how you can share it with others. Send it via email, through Facebook, other social media accounts or by word of mouth. When someone signs up through this referral, you will be rewarded as well!

Other Ways to Earn With InboxDollars

While completing surveys is the most straightforward way to earn money with InboxDollars, there aren’t always a ton of surveys to take – which is why a lot of users like to use these other methods to get payouts from InboxDollars too.

Online Shopping

If you’re already an avid online shopper, InboxDollars offers an easy way to earn small percentages of cash back on brands you’re already shopping for. Some of the brands that InboxDollars has partnered to provide cash rewards with include:

Target Groupon Lowe’s

Kohl’s JCPenney eBay

Cabela’s Walmart Sephora

Best Buy QVC Bed, Bath & Beyond

Since its start in 2000, InboxDollars claims that they’ve paid out over 1.8 million dollars in their cash back shopping program. The way the cash back shopping program works is simple – InboxDollars has a list of stores and brands that you can earn cash back from; and using their affiliate links, every purchase you make should earn you a few cents to a few dollars.

Keep in mind that the cashback rate can vary from brand to brand. While some brands might only give you as little as 1.5% cashback for your purchase, you could earn up to 15% cashback with others.

Playing Games

If arcade games are more your speed, InboxDollars allows you to earn cash while playing from their games library too. The InboxDollars arcade includes a large selection of card games, strategy games, and even word games that may provide opportunities to earn cash, but you can also branch out to GSN games like poker, Casino, or Wheel of Fortune.

Depending on the game, you may earn scratch-offs, get cash, or even win Amazon gift cards.

Reading Emails

While it’s not the most direct way to earn money online with InboxDollars, reading emails is an additional earning opportunity. Reading email for InboxDollars works like this: Large brands and companies that have partnered with InboxDollars send emails (named PaidEmails) to your account, which usually entail information about new products or services.

While there’s not a flat rate per email, you will unlock scratch-offs for every email you read, so you won’t directly be getting a payout, but you will have the opportunity to win cash.

Besides the scratch-offs, there are a couple of other earning opportunities that come with the PaidEmails program:

• You may get small $1 to $2 payouts for downloading new apps to iOS and Android
• You can get special free 7-day trials for certain movie or TV streaming services
• You can get an InboxDollars member discount with certain brands or clubs

By itself, PaidEmails may not earn you as much as taking surveys or playing games, but if you’re looking to earn money online in as many ways as you can, signing up can’t hurt.

Watch Videos

If gaming and reading don’t appeal to you, watching videos for InboxDollars might. The videos that you’ll be watching for InboxDollars are content that comes from the brands they’ve partnered with – whether that’s an ad for a new product or a trailer for a new movie.

Watching videos works the same way that reading emails does. You won’t get a flat rate or a direct payout for every ad, but you’ll get more scratch-offs – so you have the potential to win a few bucks or a gift card every time you watch.

Free Coupons

Similar to the online shopping program, InboxDollars offers free, printable coupons that you can redeem when you go shopping in real life. Once you print out the coupons and the offers that you want to use, all you need to do is use them. There are a couple of different earning opportunities with the coupon program:

• You’ll save a little money once you actually use the offers
• Every time you use the coupon you should see a small percentage of cashback in your InboxDollars account
• You’ll also get paid up to $0.25 a day just for printing the coupons off

Using InboxDollars Search

InboxDollars has its own search engine called InboxDollars. You can use the search engine to earn cash when you switch from a different one like Google. You can use it on any website or mobile app.

As you complete more search queries, your progress bar fills up. Once the progress bar is full, you can unlock scratch cards with rewards in each tier.

How Much Can I Earn With InboxDollars?

In addition to the $5 sign-up bonus that you get just for signing up for the site, the money you make from InboxDollars may not be able to cover your rent, but it could put extra cash in your wallet.

How much you earn can depend on a variety of factors, including what online surveys you’re eligible to take, how often you take advantage of cashback from online shopping, and how many coupons you can use.

However, most of the time, it’s hard for users that are taking full advantage of the offers to earn more than $60 per month on the site. Keep in mind that if you read the emails or watch a lot of videos, you may potentially earn more if you win real cash or gift cards with the scratch-off tickets.

How to Redeem InboxDollars Rewards

There are two main ways that you’ll see your InboxDollars rewards: Through cash that’s paid out with PayPal (which you can then transfer to your bank account) or by redeeming a gift card for trusted brands like Amazon. With cash, you’ll need to wait until you’ve got a minimum balance of $30 before you’re allowed to get your payment. This is quite a high threshold in comparison to similar online survey sites. Gift cards don’t need a minimum balance for you to redeem them.

Ways to Redeem

Once your cash balance has reached $30, you can hit the “Request Payment” button to cash-out. You’ll need to verify your PayPal account and make sure the info on the PayPal account matches the info that you’ve given InboxDollars, or your payment may not process correctly.

Keep in mind that with a minimum balance, InboxDollars has a $3 processing fee that they’ll automatically subtract from your balance. This can erode your earnings. However, if you wait until you’ve got $40 in your account to request a payment, they’ll waive the fee.

If you’re redeeming a gift card, the process works a little differently. When you win the gift card, you’ll get a claim code. Say you're redeeming a gift card for Amazon, or a prepaid Visa card. To redeem it, you’ll enter on the site when you’re ready to use the gift card.

How Fast Does InboxDollars Pay Out?

Most of the time, InboxDollars aims to make their payouts within three business days of you requesting your payment. However, you may see a delay in the processing time. This happens when you request a payout when there’s a large volume of people also making requests, or when it’s a holiday.

Obtaining Gold Membership

At this point, it's worth noting that InboxDollars offer a premium account upgrade, known as the “Gold Membership” once a member reaches a $30 USD account balance. Obtaining Gold Membership will net you more generous cash rewards and faster processing of payments – but it is optional. You will receive more benefits if you upgrade to Gold Membership status, including:

• Faster Payment Times. General site users have to wait up to two weeks for their money, but as a Gold Member you get paid the following Wednesday.
• Unlock exclusive Gold Member offers
• Earn double search loyalty rewards and double sweepstakes entries

InboxDollars Advantages and Disadvantages

Like any site that promises payouts, InboxDollars has a few pros and cons that come with signing up.

Advantages

The advantages of InboxDollars include:

You earn real cash, not points. Many survey sites operate with point systems that they convert into cash later on. These schemes can be shady. At worst, they can be scams that mislead some users about what they’re actually earning. InboxDollars only uses cash, so you’ll always know what your balance is.

There are multiple ways to earn real money online. Unlike some survey sites, you don’t need to rely on just online questionnaires or games to earn rewards. Even when there aren’t any surveys left to take, you can always watch videos, shop online, or do scratch-offs to earn money.

The site is designed to be user-friendly. Some reward or survey sites can be tricky to navigate, but InboxDollars has a clean, organized design that’s user-friendly. Different ways to earn real cash are separated from each other on your homepage.

You can keep track of your ongoing balance. Since you don’t have to convert points into cash, it’s easy to keep track of how much you’re earning on your account until it’s time to payout.

You get a bonus for signing up. Not all survey sites offer bonuses just for making your account, but InboxDollars gives you a $5 sign-up bonus just for confirming your email.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of InboxDollars include:

You can’t get a payout until you’ve made $30. While some online survey sites allow you to take your money out once you’ve hit $5 or $10, InboxDollars has a very high minimum balance on cash payments.

Not all payments may process within three days. While InboxDollars tries to get payments out within three days, they often face delays with a high volume of requests.

You may need to take qualifying surveys, which don’t pay. These questions are ‘screeners', and they function as a way to determine whether your demographics and behaviors qualify for the site’s higher-paying surveys. A high screen-out rate is possible.

Some surveys may take longer than the estimated time. While InboxDollars does offer a time estimate on surveys, it's fair to say that the estimated completion time isn’t always accurate.

You may run out of surveys to take quickly. Once you’ve made it through the site’s initial five or ten surveys that it has for you to take, you could be waiting a little while until a new online survey opportunity pops up.

Who Should Join InboxDollars?

While anyone can sign up for InboxDollars, that doesn’t mean everyone should. If you’re a college student with a little extra free time, a stay-at-home mom, or just someone looking for a side gig, InboxDollars could earn you a little more spending money.

However, if you’re trying to turn InboxDollars into a full-time gig or a significant source of income, you’ll probably need to look elsewhere. Even people who take full advantage of what InboxDollars has to offer may struggle to earn more than $50 per month, so you can’t rely on it to make you big bucks.

Which Countries Does InboxDollars Operate In?

Currently, InboxDollars is available to online survey enthusiasts living within the United States. But if you’re in the UK or Canada, you may want to check out InboxPounds for the UK or DailyRewards for Canada. If you're further afield, in Australia, it's worth checking out Survey Junkie or Swagbucks.

Similar sites like InboxDollars

If you’re considering signing up to InboxDollars, you might want to consider other leading survey and rewards sites. Here’s how they compare:

Branded Surveys

With Branded Surveys, you can easily earn money online from the comfort of your home, on your work break, or even on the go. All you need is internet access and a little bit of spare time.

Survey Junkie

When it comes to paid online surveys, Survey Junkie has a high profile globally. And as with many research companies, they have a website as well as an app. Like all online survey sites, you'll need to take the time to complete an extensive profile in order to have the best chance of receiving online survey opportunities.

InboxDollars Reviews

While we’ve researched how to make money online with InboxDollars, a second opinion never hurts. Here’s what other users have to say with an InboxDollars review:

“Love how reliable InboxDollars cashout process is. Could use a little more attention In regards to the time it takes until the actual award is received but other than that, it's a fantastic service and I would recommend InboxDollars to anyone.”

Mike Sickmade, InboxDollars review on TrustPilot

“I've been using Inbox Dollars for a couple of years mainly on the laptop computer and now on my mobile app. I love making money by answering surveys, emails, or via search. It's so easy to cash out when you reach $10 or more to win great gift cards.”

Kristen, InboxDollars review on TrustPilot

“Inbox is a great way of making extra money. You do have to stay in it and it might not be much to some people but an extra 20-30$ to be is great.”

Linda, InboxDollars review on TrustPilot

“I really like InboxDollars however, the amount of time it takes to actually receive a redemption after claiming one needs improvement. That's really my only complaint.”

Tommi Mathis, InboxDollars review on TrustPilot

In Conclusion: Is InboxDollars Worth It?

If you’re looking for a true side hustle or a lucrative way to make extra money, you’re not going to see that kind of cash from InboxDollars surveys, regardless of the time commitment you put into it. Like most survey and reward sites, InboxDollars is designed to earn you a few bucks here and there. It's not designed to hold up as a reliable source of income.

But if you’re looking to make an extra $20 or $30 per month and you don’t mind spending a couple of hours sifting through online surveys, InboxDollars is probably worth it. As far as survey sites go, it’s got a good reputation, a solid history, and enough ways to earn money to keep you from getting bored.

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InboxDollars Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)