InboxPounds Review
Online survey sites are a big deal in the world of online money making. One, they don’t require users to have any specific skills. Two, users don’t need money to start earning money. And three, you can do online surveys anytime and anywhere, be it at home while watching TV or on the subway while commuting to work.
However, not all online survey sites are completely safe to use. Some are a bit scammy, which is why it’s important to do your due research first before signing up on one.
In this article, we’ll discuss InboxPounds in detail to see if it’s actually worth your time!
What Is InboxPounds?
InboxPounds is an UK based online survey site first established in 2010. The company that runs the website, CotterWeb Enterprises, also runs a couple of other survey sites similar to this one. Some of the more popular ones are Daily Rewards, a Canadian-focused site, and InboxDollars, which opens itself to the US and International residents.
As of today, the company claims to have already released a total of over £40 million to its hundreds and thousands of members combined across all its various survey sites.
How Much Can You Earn With InboxPounds?
As with all online survey sites out there, it’s impossible to say exactly how much you can earn with InboxPounds. Earning potential is technically limitless, though it does take some time to earn enough money for the payout.
Keep in mind that surveys pay differently depending on the length, which means longer surveys pay out the most amount of money. And of course, it goes without saying that the more surveys and offers you complete, the more you’ll earn as well.
Who Can Use InboxPounds?
Just like what its name suggests, InboxPounds is only available to residents who are living in the United Kingdom. If you’re from outside the UK, you can try registering for Inbox Dollars instead, which is the international version of this site.
Also, unlike many other survey sites that allow anyone over the age of 13 to register, InboxPounds is only open to those who are at least 18 years of age. I have no idea why this is the case either, but that’s just the way it is.
How Do You Sign Up For InboxPounds?
Signing up on InboxPounds is easy, and you even get a bonus £1 just by doing so.
Upon visiting the site, you’ll immediately see a sign-up box to the right of the home page. You just have to input your email address and password, agree to the Terms and Privacy disclaimers, and hit the sign-up button.
Be sure to keep your email on standby since a confirmation email will be sent to your email address. It might take a while to receive the email though, but typically not longer than 10 minutes. If 10 minutes has passed and you still hadn’t received the email, you should also check your Spam or Junk folders since the email could’ve been automatically rerouted there instead.
How To Earn Money On InboxPounds?
There are many ways to earn money on Inbox Pounds, in addition to answering surveys. Here’s a list of the most common methods:
Answering surveys
Obviously, answering surveys is still the main way you can earn from InboxPounds. Every day, you’ll see a list of available questionnaires on your dashboard. If you’re qualified, and if you manage to finish the survey successfully, you’ll get a certain amount of cash in accordance with the difficulty and time it took to answer the questions.
Surveys can take anywhere from 5-20 minutes to answer and can pay up to £5 each. Based on many users’ personal experiences though, including mine, the average pay per accomplished survey is merely around £0.5-£2. Personally, I’ve never encountered a survey that paid higher than that.
One problem with answering surveys on the site is that you’re not always qualified for the questionnaires on your dashboard. Unfortunately, Inbox Pounds won’t let you know until you’re already a couple of minutes into the questions. This leads to a lot of wasted time and effort and a lot of frustration for users. It’s not uncommon to hear people give up after answering several ‘not qualified’ surveys in a row without knowing in the beginning.
Do take note that it’s not just InboxPounds that suffers from this problem. Many other survey sites are criticized for this practice as well.
Completing random offers
You’ll come across random offers occasionally while browsing through InboxPounds. Sometimes, you’ll even see the offers sent straight to your email. These offers often include promotional links to different products and services. If you purchase using the link, you won’t just get a discount, you’ll also get a cash back credited to your Inbox Pounds account.
That said, do be careful when signing up for these so-called deals. Some users have reported getting spammed by offers, whether they wanted to or not. Others have also noted that a lot of these external sites look rather sketchy, oftentimes requiring one’s home address and credit card details.
Remember, if you’re unsure whether a website is a scam or not, it’s always better to err on the side of caution and assume that it is.
Completing various tasks
You can also access a list of tasks on InboxPounds that you can do for additional cash. For example, you can take on work related to research, data entry, data organization, product labeling, and more.
The amount you’ll get as a reward from completing these depends on the specific task, but it’s still a good way to earn additional income and reach your payout goal much faster.
Opening emails
You don’t always have to do something for InboxPounds to reward you with sometimes. Sometimes, just opening emails is enough.
That’s right – you can get money just by opening an email. It doesn’t happen often but opening special emails from famous brands could earn you some extra cash. It’s most likely just a way to get users to open emails from the company’s sponsors or partners, but what can I say, it’s working.
As mentioned above though, emails can sometimes get automatically filtered to your Spam or Junk folders. If this happens to you, just add paidemail@inboxpounds.co.uk to ensure that your email service provider won’t mistake the emails as spam again.
Keep in mind that you’ll probably only receive a couple of these paid emails per day. Plus, it’s only a penny for each one – not really something worth getting excited about. Then again, it also doesn’t require any legitimate effort on your part, so I don’t see any reason not to open these emails.
Playing different games
InboxPounds also has a list of games that you can play every day in order to earn extra money. The games are mostly casino-type games like slot machines, bingo, and digital scratch cards.
Now, before you start thinking, “Hey, that sounds fun!” do know that you have to, more often than not, shell out something in return just so you can get to join the games.
For example, in order to get the chance to win a variety of prizes in the sweepstake competitions, you might be asked first to verify your contact number. Doing so allows them to do whatever they want with the information that you provided. This effectively opens you up to third parties who might spam you with texts or even calls.
For slot machines and bingo games, on the other hand, you’ll usually have to make a minimum deposit first in order to play. The usual amount is £10 although amounts could also vary depending on the specific site.
While some people claim that they sometimes won back the money they deposited, I noticed that it’s always just one of these two: either you get your money back or you lose some. Never have I heard of anyone actually winning (if you have, please feel free to share your experience in the comments!) anything substantial from the games.
Again, if you’re not sure of what you’re getting into, it’s always better to err on the side of caution.
Listening to the radio
This is something that’s quite unique to InboxPounds. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an online survey site that offers this as a way to earn from the site.
Then again, you don’t really earn from listening to the radio alone. You still have to do something in order to actually earn money. In this case, a captcha actually appears every 30 minutes while listening, and if you enter the captcha correctly, you earn £0.01. It’s definitely not much, but if you like listening to the radio anyway, then this isn’t really a hassle to do especially if you’re doing something else while waiting for the captcha to appear.
Referrals
Referrals are possibly the biggest reason why online survey sites are worth your time. For every user you refer to the site, you’ll usually receive a percentage of their earnings as commission, at no extra expense to them.
Some sites even have a tiered referral commission percentage, though InboxPounds uses a single-tier system. It’s 10% weekly for every user you refer, added to the total earnings that you’ve yet to withdraw from the site.
Here’s a concrete example. Let’s say you referred three users, User A, User B, and User C. For this week, User A earned £10, User B earned £5, and User C only earned £2. Meanwhile, you’ve earned a total of £18.3 so far. If their earnings are considered by InboxPounds as qualified, then you’ll receive an additional bonus of £1 for User A, £0.5 for User B, and £0.2 for User C. Take note, you won’t receive any notifications for this bonus. Instead, you’ll just see your total earnings on your dashboard get updated to reflect the new amount, which in this case is £20.
One important thing to keep in mind is how InboxPounds determines the meaning of “qualified earnings”. According to the website’s terms, there can only be one account registered per computer, IP address, and house address. So if you and your sibling both want to have an account with InboxPounds, you won’t be able to refer each other since you’ll be using the same IP address and house address.
How Does InboxPounds Release Payment?
For the longest time, Inbox Pounds has released payments in the form of a cheque. There’s a minimum payment threshold though. You’ll need to have earned a total of £20 before you can request for a cheque. Afterwards, you also have to wait for roughly two weeks before your request can be processed.
If you’re familiar with other survey sites, you might think that two weeks is a long time to wait, considering how other sites already allow instant cash-outs via PayPal.
Once you cash out for the first time, your account will automatically be upgraded to gold. Gold members enjoy additional perks including faster payments, more sweepstakes entries, more loyalty rewards, and additional referral rewards.
When your account reaches a balance of £20, you can request a cheque. For non-Gold members, it takes around two weeks for payments to be processed. For gold members, payments are processed weekly. Cheques are voided after 90 days so make sure to cash them out as soon as you get them.
The good news is that Inbox Pounds has recently started releasing payments via ePayments such as Prepaid Mastercard and Merchant cards. You can also claim your payment through several gifts card options.
Is InboxPounds A Scam?
Strictly speaking, Inbox Pounds is not a scam, as it does release payments when a user has reached the £20 threshold. It also offers different ways to earn money, which allows users to reach the payment threshold much faster than if they were simply doing surveys. Furthermore they are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), you can read more on them HERE.
However, there are also several reports from users detailing sketchy behavior from the company. For example, while InboxPounds itself never fails to compensate its users, some of the outside offers don’t always seem to be legitimate. Many users also complain about the company’s unhelpful customer support, saying that they hardly received any help for issues that they brought to the support’s attention.
In summary, here’s a list of pros and cons when using InboxPounds.
Pros
- easy site navigation
- fully optimized for mobile use
- effective referral program
- plenty of paid surveys available
- shorter completion time for surveys compared to other sites
- more ways to earn money such as sweepstakes, bingo, etc
- better rewards for Gold members
Cons
- very limited payment options
- no PayPal cashout available
- unhelpful customer support
- opens up users to lots of spam email
- most surveys only pay around a few cents
- some email offers lead to questionable sites
- surveys will get marked unqualified even after you’ve answered half the questions
Should You Sign Up On InboxPounds?
Like many other online survey sites, InboxPounds certainly has its issues. Most of the complaints point to low pay, lack of helpful customer support, and lots of unpaid questionnaires. Then again, in comparison to other survey sites, I could safely say that InboxPounds is one of the more decent ones. It does pay real money, it does have a sufficient number of surveys available, and it does allow users to earn extra money through many different ways.
You shouldn’t expect a large nor quick payout with this one, but if you have enough time on your hands and aren’t too fussy with the kind of tasks offered to you, then InboxPounds is certainly worth a try.
If you enjoyed our Inboxpounds review, check out our other reviews. Paribus helps people to get cash back on price dropped items or if you’re US, Canada and/or Australia
