A QUICK ASIDE: Just to keep full transparency, I won’t include any affiliate links or sweeping endorsements here. This whole thing is me just trying to detail my view and experience with these sorts of apps. As a result, I get to be as honest and critical as I like.
I found myself using an app this past weekend. Specifically, it was a mobile game, something I would otherwise never touch. Yes, I had indulged myself in Scrabble Go for a couple of days as I found myself more glued to the screen of my OnePlus 10 5G in my attempts to keep finding more words and level up.
Would it surprise anyone to find out that I abhor mobile games and have for quite a long time now? So why would I even bother playing them out of the blue now of all times, especially considering I even tried switching to a dumbphone?
InboxDollars, that’s why.
InboxDollars and Other “Beer Money” Apps I’ve Used
My girlfriend had linked me to this InboxDollars app a little over a week ago so we could get started raking in little amounts of “beer money” in this case. Not literal beer money, of course (she doesn’t drink at all and I consume alcohol perhaps once every two or three months), but because we could all use a little extra money now and again for small purchases, right? While I’m not sure where exactly the phrase originated, I do know there is a place on Reddit called “beermoney” dedicated to these apps and finding the best offers for them, or so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t know, as I don’t use Reddit and don’t care to start anytime soon.
However, of all the apps I’ve used that served this purpose, InboxDollars strikes me as a little creepy (privacy-wise) while simultaneously doing just about everything I’ve seen a cash back app ever do.
It rewards you:
- Chump change for checking out free or small-scale offers (like signing up for emails).
- A few bucks for playing mobile games.
- Larger amounts of money for applying for apps to manage money (Stash, Acorns, SoFi, Albert, Chime, and many more to list).
- For shopping at stores and submitting receipts.
- For showing up to stores and checking in with the app to confirm you’re there.
It’s a little like a Swiss army knife of getting small scraps of money. The only thing is that while it can do all of those things, it seems you get less money overall for doing the same things in other similar apps. For instance, I’ve used Ibotta for a long time and have gotten money through cash back with it. I typically get offers for $0.50 or $1.00 back, although sometimes, offers can be greater with occasional BOGOs. Unfortunately for me, the BOGOs are almost always for something I never want to buy. I find this sort of app typically works best if I only use it to buy things I was already going to get rather than curating my shopping list around it.
Anyway, once I finish shopping with Ibotta, I submit my receipt and there’s the cash back in minutes. InboxDollars does the same, but they tend to have a much more limited range of items overall compared to Ibotta OR they merely go with any brand of blank item for a measly $0.02 instead of anything substantial. You would have to decide whether or not the effort to submit the receipt would even be worth it unless you stack several offers together.
But yes, InboxDollars has a bit in common with Ibotta as well as Shopkick, another app I used to use when I was sent a referral link by a family member so many years ago. The way it works it that you would go to stores and scan things to get small amounts of points. You could also enter stores to get points (a waste of gas if this was all you wanted to do), although the one thing that got you the most points, no surprise, was actually purchasing something and then scanning the receipt. Count how Shopkick would want you to go find the items and physically scan them to get just a few points, and it seemed as if the app were designed to convince you to buy the items instead of just scanning them.
The reason I stopped using Shopkick a long time ago dealt with how it would lock me out if I dared to switch phones and login on the new device. My account would be disabled and I would be forced to send an email to support and wait several days for them to unlock it. It happened to me more than once, so I decided to simply stop using it.
Which Apps Have I Used?
Outside of the aforementioned apps (InboxDollars, Ibotta, and Shopkick), I’ve used Prize Rebel (a friend sent me a referral link), Bing Rewards, UpSide, and Rakuten (formerly eBates when a family member referred me).
I’ve had mixed results with all of them. Prize Rebel becomes stingy with giving me actual surveys and saying that I’m not a good fit for a single one, while UpSide becomes worthless once gas prices drop. Rakuten is something I tend to use only if I’m already going to buy something on a given website (going out of my way to buy things just to get cash back seems like a bad idea, to say the least), and Bing Rewards has given me the best experience out of all these apps I just listed, surprisingly.
Which Ones Are the Worst?
I’m fortunate enough that I haven’t fallen prey to it more than the example I brought up at the start, but I would say this: any offer that wants you to play a mobile game for money and gift cards is a complete scam. While you may not lose any money if you’re disciplined enough, you are ultimately still wasting an inordinate amount of time on such a small return.
I only fell victim because the other games they listed on InboxDollars looked like complete garbage and Scrabble is a game I’ve always found myself feeling a little good at. Of course, the game has to be filled to the brim with paid boosters and other garbage, but you can still do reasonably well if you actually have played Scrabble more than once, so it felt easy to win games without having to actually buy or use boosters that suggest words or highlight possible spots on the board.
…any offer that wants you to play a mobile game for money and gift cards is a complete scam.
But I only wanted to play at first to reach level 7 to get one dollar. After that, it would be 17 to get 2 dollars, then a level in the 20s (I forget which) to get 3 more dollars, and so on. The leveling and rewards didn’t seem consistent, but I thought getting to at least level 7 to make a literal quick buck would have been painless.
I found myself unable to stop playing for several hours days ago on Saturday, and on one of my few days off from work as well. I just kept telling myself that I would get more money, so it seemed like I was productive.
The key word is seemed.
In reality, I was anything but productive. After throwing away three or four hours just to hit level 7 and get a dollar, I realized that my time is worth so much more. I felt so bad that I did several chores around the apartment that my girlfriend normally has to remind me to do.
I spent several hours I could have easily used to do something more productive playing the game. I thought the money was closer than ever and tried to justify having to get rewards from chests and sitting through video ads that would play every so often (usually where I would place the phone face down somewhere until it was over).
But the ads were the worst part of the game. Some of them seemed like borderline trendy and hip TikTok videos of grown adults acting annoying and trying to promote other apps that give people money for playing mobile games. The adults acting in these videos came off as childish and unsettling; were there other low-achieving adults out there watching these ads who found this kind of behavior normal?
That’s when I stopped and thought about that very idea. Would anybody want to throw away such valuable time just to get a few gift cards for playing a trash-quality, pay-to-win phone games for casual audiences and little kids who don’t know any better? I can only imagine how sad it must be for kids out there who think this is some sort of sustainable way to keep the lights on. There’s likely more than one little boy at a school somewhere being asked by his elementary teacher what he wants to be when he grows up only to say, “I’m going to play games on my phone for money for a living!”
Once I realized going from level 7 to 17 just to get one more dollar was a tremendous waste of my time (the idle time I would otherwise spend playing the game would have easily been spent anywhere else doing more productive things in general), I uninstalled the game and didn’t look back.
My Way of Looking At These Apps
I think that these types of apps boil down to two things:
- Apps that let you earn a few cents at a time without the need to spend money or excessive time.
- Apps that let you earn much more money at once if you spend money upfront.
Going back to InboxDollars, it’s one of those apps that tries to do both. However, the reality is that you’ll get next to nothing if you do things that are free or fast. You can get a few bucks for playing mobile games, I guess, but many of them tend to be full of predatory monetization and chock-full of ads. While you could feasibly get more than just a few cents playing games, it can become such a time sink that it’s not a meaningful return of investment at all unless you really do not value your own downtime.
…these “beer money” apps can be worth using if you have realistic expectations and only bother with offers that interest you.
However, I have around $60 pending on said app right now. The largest part of it, $50, is pending for another month because I earned it from trying an investing app called Stash, which seems an awful lot like Acorns, an app I was already using. Speaking of Acorns, they, too, are also on InboxDollars and they will also give you a large amount of cash back for opening accounts and investing upfront. Both apps also charge a monthly subscription for their services, although the fee seems negligible unless you manage very small amounts of money with the apps.
I’ll report back once I actually have the money on my balance and see what happens if I try to withdraw it, although I have to admit: having both Stash and Acorns feels oddly redundant in some ways.
Still, I would say these “beer money” apps can be worth using if you have realistic expectations and only bother with offers that interest you.
Have you used any “free money” apps that let you get money or cash back by using these sort of apps? How was your experience using them? How much did you get, if anything?
Sudo Science 