With the high cost of living, stagnant wages, and the news my council tax will be increasing by 8.5%, I often wonder if there is a way to boost my income without having to take on another job or dedicate my weekends and evenings to side hustles. I am not looking for a “get rich quick” scheme for the very simple fact the only people those schemes enrich are the ones who sell them to you, but I am looking for something that would maybe pay for a weekly food shop every so often. The internet is full of adverts screaming that you can make a considerable amount of money by completing a few surveys or by playing a few games, but I want to know just how much you can realistically make so, in the interest of science (or scam detection), I downloaded a few apps promising big rewards and spent a week trying to boost my income. My screen time increased significantly and my thumb hurt from all the tapping I had to do on my phone, but did the payout payoff?
Free Cash
The first website I stumbled upon promising big gains was the Free Cash website. I immediately signed up and perused the available apps promising payouts ranging from £1 to over £800.
Free Cash has a clever hook that hits you immediately upon signing up. You are not only informed that you can make over £4,000 at the top of the website by downloading the listed apps and reaching various levels within them, but you are also invited to download and play Rise of Kingdoms in exchange for £4. Download an app, play it for two minutes, and immediately get £4? Fantastic! The return on investment on that is incredible and if this is what the rest of the apps will pay then I’ll be rich in no time. Alas, that easy £4 is merely a way to draw you in as it is a feat that you either cannot repeat or can only achieve again by paying in your own money to specific apps. In spite of that realisation, I decided to download a few more apps to see how easy it would be to make some more money.
The first one I went for was Eatventure; a game in which you initially start with a lemonade stand before making enough money to upgrade to a food stand. You then progress through each upgrade until you eventually work your way up to owning a restaurant. Once you have completed the restaurant, you are able to fly to New York to begin the next set of businesses. The first amount you could earn by paying Eatventure was 8p and it was in exchange for reaching the fast food restaurant. The next payment was 40p and that was for completing the restaurant and moving on to the New York level. Once I reached New York, I stopped playing the game as I had spent an extraordinary amount of time watching a bunch of characters walk back and forth with virtual food and had watched a considerable amount of adverts in order to speed up each upgrade. I spent so much time on this app that my average screen time increased from one hour and 39 minutes from the week prior to five hours and 36 minutes; this includes a day in which my screen time was over 12 hours. Those 12 hours were largely a result of me leaving Eatventure open to do its thing since it took so long to accumulate enough coins in the game to actually get you closer to the next level, but spending half of the day on a phone in order to earn 48p seems absurd.
The time required to make pittance is not solely applicable to Eatventure. I also downloaded Merge Blast Numbers in which I made 1p as it took so long to get to level three - which promised a payout of 6p - that I lost all interest. I downloaded Match Jong Zen Tile Puzzle and earned 8p after reaching level 25 before giving up. I then downloaded Word Madness where I earned 2p for playing for two minutes, 16p for reaching level 50 in one day, 40p for reaching level 150 in two days, and 16p for watching an incredible amount of adverts. It took around four hours and 40 minutes to achieve those payouts. There are two additional advert related payouts, one of £4 and one of £24, but my progress on them was so slow despite having to watch an advert after each level that I don’t even want to think about how many adverts you have to watch to earn those bonuses.
I also downloaded an app called Draw It. As Draw It only offered £3.99 for completing all of its requirements, I thought it would be a lot easier to gain the rewards. In reality, it was probably a more frustrating experience than any of the other apps. While the game itself is fun as you are quickly drawing things and trying to beat other “competitors” (despite what the app would like you to believe, the competitors are not other people as you can blatantly see their drawings are all the exact same as each other), you are forced into watching an advert after each drawing session. The drawing sessions last for around 30 seconds or so whereas the adverts will often be over a minute long. You also have to watch an advert for every word pack you buy with your earned virtual coins; something the game forces you into doing otherwise you can’t keep playing. After playing for over two hours, most of which was watching adverts, I made a whopping 30p. I have, however, been picking up Draw It as I do quite like doodling under pressure and I have hit the next reward which was, hold on to your hats, a whopping 96p! I did recently discover though that some of your "competitors" are inexplicably programmed to draw a swastika when they are on the "ceiling fan" prompt which was a disturbing moment that made me quit the game.
There is a way to earn the bigger bucks on Free Cash but it will not only cost you money, it'll also likely lead to you losing whatever money you made and more. There are quite a few apps on Free Cash that involve gambling and those ones will offer you high rewards if you make deposits of x amount and win numerous cash games. Considering the type of people who are more likely to use websites like Free Cash are people in need of some extra money, the promoting of gambling is grotesque and predatory.
Additionally, Free Cash, or rather the apps that are offering rewards on it, are under no obligation to pay you. This was a fact myself and several other users discovered when we downloaded Bitlife, completed quite a few tasks, and mysteriously didn't receive any money. In spite of making $500 million in the game, a task which is supposed to come with a £40 payout, Bitlife didn't track for me so no payout occurred. A few days after realising my game time didn't track, I received a message unprompted stating that I couldn't raise a ticket to dispute the lack of payout because the offer conveniently didn't track. Weird how the only app that promised big bucks in exchange for what was actually minimal effort (but involved watching a hell of a lot of adverts) just so happens to be the only app I downloaded which didn't track my progress...
The total amount I earned on Free Cash in a week was £7.79, however, I cannot cash out unless I do one of two things: reach a total of £16 or forego the £4 reward. Sneaky.
Test ‘Em All
The more adverts I was forced to watch on my Free Cash apps, the more I was presented with a bearded gentleman calling me “homie” and telling me to download an app called Test ‘Em All. Like Free Cash, Test ‘Em All allows you to download additional apps and complete various levels in exchange for coins, only this time the coins are virtual. Once you have earned enough virtual coins, you can exchange them for either real money or coupons and vouchers.
Upon signing up, you are immediately given 3,599 virtual coins which you cannot exchange for money; you actually need 3,999 coins in order to cash out 29p via PayPal. In a bid to earn that 29p, I downloaded Match Triple Goods, played a few levels, watched even more adverts, and then earned 1,540 coins. That not only meant I could cash out my 29p, it also meant I had the option to cash in my coins for things like a Spotify free trial or an Amazon Prime free trial; things that are already freely available.
If you are dedicated enough, you can use Test ‘Em All to earn more virtual coins and exchange them for real money or a Starbucks gift card, but you could also spend your precious time doing literally anything else.
Similar Apps/Websites
I was also advertised another app which seemed similar to Test ‘Em All. The advert involved a woman being approached by a man who asked if she lived in the building to which she said she did and lived in the penthouse. Of course she was able to afford her penthouse apartment by using one of these tester websites and earning all of the available rewards. Another advertised app promised to pay you £200 just for downloading it and claimed to pay out high rewards the more you played. The reviews on the app store tell me every claim is a load of nonsense which is hardly a surprise. At what point are we allowed to call these adverts’ claims misleading and, dare I say, scams?
Surveys
During the advertisement bombardment of the aforementioned apps, one advert in particular caught my attention. It was for an app called “Five Surveys” and the big promise given by the man with the disturbingly white veneers in the advert was that you can earn £5 for every five surveys you complete. My “too good to be true” alarm bell immediately started ringing so I downloaded the app straight away.
Upon first glance, the app looked perfectly reasonable and the promise of £5 for every five completed surveys seemed legitimate. There was an abundance of surveys with the time required to complete them available and it seemed like you could easily rack up a considerable amount of money within a few hours. That first impression, however, was quickly destroyed when I clicked on my first survey. After entering a few details such as my age, gender, household income, occupation, and, alarmingly, my postcode, I was asked which of the listed brands I had heard of, how much money I spent on luxury goods in the past year, and whether I planned on buying from another list of brands. After completing this section, I was immediately informed I was not eligible to complete this survey and thus no money was obtained. This exact scenario occurred on every survey I selected until I received a pop up informing me I had qualified for a survey and was taken to complete it. As it transpired, I did not in fact meet the criteria to complete the survey I had just been informed I was eligible to complete; a fact I did not discover until I had filled out around three pages worth of questions.
There was one single instance where I did manage to pass the pre-screening checks and was allowed to complete the survey. I managed to get a few questions into the actual survey before suddenly being booted from it as I was no longer eligible. I have somehow completed one survey according to the Five Surveys app, however, I have no idea which one it was and have zero recollection of this occurring. I am of the opinion that such a claim has been completely fabricated in a bid to get me to keep trying to complete more surveys.
Five Surveys may be an adequate way to boost your income if you are willing to figure out what answers you need to input in order to pass the pre-screening checks, but it is largely a game of luck and a total waste of time. I am also of the assumption that a decent number of these pre-screening questions do not lead to actual surveys and are instead solely designed for data harvesting. Due to this assumption and because I have no idea which companies are supposedly issuing these surveys and what they are doing with the obtained data, I gave fake answers to each question and would strongly recommend you stay clear of this app.
Prolific
Finally something that you can actually earn money on and help out researchers along the way. Prolific is a website in which researchers - usually academic researchers but you will also receive surveys from brands conducting consumer tests - post surveys with specified criteria and guaranteed payouts if you complete them. You are asked to answer various questions when you sign up to Prolific and you can answer more questions every time you log into your account. The answers you give to these questions will then lead to you being matched up to surveys you are eligible for and they will appear in your account with details such as the amount you can earn and the expected length of time each survey will take to complete. Additionally, and unlike Five Surveys, you will actually know who is conducting the research, what will happen to your data, and you will typically be given contact details should you wish to have your data removed from the research or if you have any concerns about the ethics of the survey.
Prolific isn’t new to me as I have had an account with it for six years but I felt it belonged in this post as it can be a beneficial way to earn a bit of spare cash. The most I have earned from a single survey was £5.25 (I tend to fill in the ones worth less than £1 or so as they take a minute to complete) and, although I tend to go months at a time without even thinking about the website let alone using it, I’ve earned £131.70 through Prolific. I usually let my earnings build up and withdraw when I’ve made enough to cover my car insurance payment for a month. Is it a way to make a lot of money quickly? No, but if you do enough surveys during your downtime, you can let your earnings build up and withdraw them when you need them most.
Conclusion
If you are interested in playing some of the games available on the likes of Free Cash, Test ‘Em All, and others like them then you may as well sign up for accounts through these websites and apps to earn while you play. Bear in mind you have to be a new user for each game otherwise you cannot earn anything and the rewards are only available for a limited time. Should you wish to use Free Cash, I have an affiliate link generated by the website which you can click on here, but I am very much of the opinion this website is a waste of your time and don’t expect you to sign up. If you are looking to make a bit of extra cash and otherwise have no real interest in any of these games, steer clear unless you are willing to dedicate a ridiculous amount of time to watching advert after advert in hope you’ll hit the big rewards.
