Wondering if Inbox Dollars is legit or a scam? Check out this review to learn what you’re really getting with this program.
Inbox Dollars Review
PRODUCT NAME: Inbox Dollars
Price: Free
Overall Ranking: 30/100
Our Recommendation: When it comes to most survey sites, the story is the same: You put in hours of work only to earn marginal pay of a few cents or dollars. The only one that has tried somewhat successfully to stray away from the norm is Swagbucks. However, instead of wasting your time on survey sites, I recommend you build your own successful online business.
An Overview of Inbox Dollars
For starters, I am NOT an affiliate of Inbox Dollars. This completely honest and unbiased review was written with the sole aim of providing you enough information to determine if this program is worth your time.
Speaking of time, I understand that some people do not have the time or the patience to stick around for a long review. If you are one of such people, don’t fret I gotcha!
Here is a point-form summary of the stuff you must know about Inbox Dollars:
- The program is legit…but don’t get excited just yet
- You will get paid if you abide by their terms
- Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Ipsos i-Say, Inbox Dollars pops up with a more ridiculous payout. $0.25 for a 25-minute survey, really?? Swagbucks has the best rewards for a survey site that I’ve seen.
- They tried to do their best Swagbucks impression by trying to be diverse, but the pay is beyond abysmal
- Some days, you will get surveys. Other days, you won’t. How are you supposed to make any reasonable money when surveys are not regularly available to you?
- If you have started having second thoughts about spending your time on this program, maybe you should switch your focus to building a business that will make you real money.
Build Your Own Successful Online Business Now
What is Inbox Dollars?
Inbox Dollars is a survey site that has been operating since 2000. They are a huge company that have acquired and launched other companies in other countries.
Like I mentioned earlier, this program tried their best to do the same things as Swagbucks. I cannot tell you who the copycat is here because I don’t know who got the features first, but I know I was not close to impressed with what I saw in Inbox Dollars.
Like with Swagbucks, you can make money (or pennies) through taking surveys, playing games, participating in offers among other things.
Is Inbox Dollars a Scam?
No, it is not. They do not promise to make you rich and what you are paid is usually what you have earned. The low payout is a simple consequence of it being a survey site.
If my memory is not failing me, I think the only survey site I have called a scam at the time of writing this review is Take Surveys for Cash. The only reason I called them a scam is because they charge $39 to access their survey site and it is still not as good as other survey sites that are free to sign up for.
The truth is Inbox Dollars gives you what you should expect from a survey site: low pay for long boring hours. This is the nature of the survey business, so it is definitely not a scam.
How Does Inbox Dollars Work?
There are a few ways to earn money with this program:
Take Surveys
This is one way and probably the most popular way to earn money on Inbox Dollars.
The process is supposed to be simple: You sign up to the program, fill out a general profile and interests survey to help them determine eligibility and have surveys sent to you regularly.
The problem is you still have to answer pre-qualification questions before you get to take most surveys. These questions do not take 1,2 or 10 minutes. They could take 20 or 25 minutes!
Imagine answering pre-qualification questions for 3 different surveys and not qualifying for any of them. Well, that’s what happened to me. 75 minutes I’m never getting back.
Not only could you spend time for little pay, you could spend a lot of time for no pay! If you do not qualify for a survey, there is no compensation for the time you spent taking the pre-qualification questions.
The highest payout I’ve seen for a survey so far has been $0.50. Majority are $0.25.
Play Games
These are betting games. Put in money to stand a chance of winning more money. If you play and lose, you lose your money.
Trial Offers
Here you earn money for participating in some trial offers.
Depending on your answers in the interests survey, you may or may not have trial offers. They pick out trial offers based on your interests. Each offer has its own set of rules for you to get rewarded. If you adhere to the rules, you get paid at the end of the trial period.
Search
They have an in-house search engine at Inbox Dollars. How this works is you conduct searches using this search engine and you are awarded points at random.
The company’s objective with this is to get people to use the search engine naturally and not just search for the sake of getting points. The best way to check that is by awarding points randomly instead of for every search.
I don’t know what company powers the search engine though…Yahoo maybe?
When You Get Paid
You can request a payment as soon as you reach the $30 threshold. Frankly, this could take a while.
What I Liked
- They use a cash system rather than points
- The company is a leading survey company
What I Didn’t Like
- The pay is atrocious, even for the standard of survey sites
- It’s bad enough that the pay is bad but imagine having just two surveys in a week. It’s something that happens very often
- The threshold is too high, relative to the average earnings per survey
- Pre-qualification questions are too long in my opinion
- There is no reward for the time spent in taking these pre-qualification questions if you fail to qualify
My Problem with Survey Sites
Let’s do some math to put your possible earnings with Inbox Dollars into perspective:
Let’s assume the world is perfect and you get 1 survey every day that you will qualify for. I know that’s a lot of assumptions 🙂
Let’s use our generous average and say you will earn $0.50 per survey. Based on this and our other assumptions, you will earn $15 a month.
It takes about 20 minutes to complete a survey (without accounting for pre-qualification questions). To earn $15 per month, you will have to take 30 surveys.
Based on this perfect scenario we have painted, it will take you 600 minutes to complete 30 surveys. If 30 surveys earn you $15, this implies you would be earning $1.50 per hour!
People are usually so blinded by the idea of free money that they forget to take a step back and compare time spent versus money earned. I am sure most of these people know they deserve better than $1.50 per hour but they just have not realized this is the return they are getting on their time.
An Example of Good Time Investment
At the time of writing this, I have created 4 websites (currently own three, sold one). With the exception of this very website and the one I sold, all my websites are mini-niche websites.
If you do not know what a mini-niche website is, check out this post.
I can give you a rough estimate and say that I have spent around 40 hours cumulatively on my mini-niche sites. The less profitable one brings me an average of $600 per month and it even has occasional spikes when it brings a couple of thousand dollars.
40 hours of activity with Inbox Dollars would make you $60 in a very good month!
Would you prefer to take surveys for 40 hours repetitively every month for $60 per month or a system where you could work $40 hours cumulatively for $600 per month? Only one looks like good use of time to me.
I hope you are not freaked out with all this talk of building websites and all that. It sounds harder than it really is. If you have access to the right training and available support, it will become second nature to you.
Closing Thoughts
My problem is not with Inbox Dollars, but with survey sites in general.
I cannot help but feel that time spent taking surveys is wasted time – time that could be spent building a business. If for some reason you still insist on spending time on surveys, at least spend it on one that would compensate you accordingly.
You might not realize it but you are capable of achieving so much more with your time. Do not waste any more time and start taking action.
If you’re serious about making money online, I strongly recommend you get started with building your own online business.
If the prospect of owning your own successful online business sounds appealing to you, check out the program that taught me.
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