Earn Money by Completing Surveys

CashCrate.com is a well-known website that offers money in return for your opinions polled through detailed surveys.

Although the site itself has been in existence for over 7 years now, it’s not unusual to hear people question the legitimacy of its business model.

“Is CashCrate a scam?”, one of the most often asked questions by interested survey takers is a testament to that.

I have been using CC for close to 5 years now and can vouch for its legality and the fact that it indeed pays you for taking surveys; although the pay per survey is on the lower side at around $1-$5.

The Company

CashCrate is a Las Vegas-based company that has been in business since 2006. The site claims they have over 2 million members worldwide which from the increasing popularity of it, it seems about right.

I also looked at the company profile on Better Business Bureau as I do with any reviews I do. I was pleased to find out that they have an A rating with BBB.

I also noticed they had about 5 Product / Service related issues of which all were closed. Which means the company does have a good support system in place and does care about its reputation. While that alone is no guaranty of its legitimacy, it is a good sign of its reliability.

CashCrate Review: What It’s About?

As far as the working is concerned, CC is similar to any other popular online survey website out there. Companies need consumer opinions about their soon-to-be-launched products.

Active consumers like you, on the other hand, have an opinion to give but just do not have a platform to do so.

This is exactly the gap that is filled by CashCrate.com.

However, it is important to note that CC is not an actual market research firm. They work with other research firms helping them conduct online surveys.

The site is a kind of online rewards site much like Swagbucks where members can earn money in a variety of ways such as shopping, playing games, and of course participating in paid surveys.

What tilts the scale in favor of CashCrate is the fact that it’s been around for close to 6 years now. That is a long time that even the smartest of scammers can’t hope to endure.

The site is also quite popular among online survey communities for the extra freedom it gives members to claim their compensation. With this site, you have the choice of claiming your remuneration through different mediums like gift cards, cash, reward points or even contest entries.

Getting Started with CashCrate

Using CashCrate is quite straightforward and I’m going to illustrate the same by taking you through a detailed setup of its registration process and other working innards.

Signing Up is the first thing you are required to do. The site is offering a bonus of $1 for all new registrations so now is the time to grab that account.

The registration form will ask you a few questions related to you, your family, your income, and other details.

Your answer to these questions will help the site create a profile for you which they can use to match specific surveys to you.

This is standard procedure and used by all survey panels including Isay by Ipsos and others popular sites.

Once you have jotted down all the details the form asks for and click on the ‘Join Now’ button, a confirmation email will be sent to the email ID you provided. You can start answering surveys as soon as you confirm your new account through that email.

The moment you log-in with your credentials, the site will show you all the offers available to you.

It’s important to note that the pay from these surveys is not going to put you on the Forbes rich list. However, I’d say it’s quite worthwhile since the time spent in filling out these surveys doesn’t stretch beyond a few minutes.

As for getting paid, once you have reached the minimum payout of $20.00 you can request a check which will be processed by the 20th of the following month.

For example, if you make $300 in June, you get your check by mid-July.

One of the nice things about the site is that they have a section called “CashCrate Payment Wall” where members can post pictures of checks they have gotten from the company.

Last time I checked (May 10 – 2013), according to the company, it has paid out $3,910,841.32 to its users since 2006.

Here is a screen shot of some of the latest checks members have received:

On June 26, 2012, the company announced on its official blog that it was going to offer PayPalpayments to members.

However, the option is only available to Silver+ members who have cashed at least one check.

To reach Silver Status you have two options:

1. Just refer 50 Active Members to the site.
2. Earn $500 or more by doing offers, surveys, watching videos, performing paid searches with the CashCrate Toolbar, Cash Back from Shopping Purchases, Checking In, Contest Winnings, etc.

Tips and Tricks

Of course, there are no “hacks” or cheats for using CashCrate, but there are somethings you can do to make your job easier and increase your earnings:

• Opt for high paying surveys: It would be quite unreasonable to expect every survey on the site to pay the same. Discrepancies will appear every now and then whereby you are paid generously for answering only a handful of questions but are paid peanuts for sitting through an hour long survey. This is why it’s important that you learn to distinguish between different surveys. The sooner you learn this; the better will be your ROI.

• Concentrate: It’s not unheard of people entertaining themselves with things like YouTube, Twitter or even music when filling-out surveys. This is a really poor judgment as the better you concentrate; greater are your chances of making more dollars every hour.

• Don’t quite your day job: Let’s be real, you are not going to get rich using this site or any survey panel for that matter.

• It takes work: I know the company and everyone who does “reviews” of the company insist on it being an easy way to make money, nevertheless, you have to do something to make that money, be it taking a survey for 10 minutes or what have you.

• Refer friends: The site has a somewhat decent referral system that rewards you for referring your friends. So be sure to take advantage of that.

• Don’t forget to cancel the trials: First of all, I only recommend you do the shopping and free trial offers in cases where you were planning to try the product regardless. That said, I know the lure of making more money may tempt some people to complete trial offers. If you are going to do that, please do make sure to cancel before the trial period ends, otherwise your credit card will get charged.

• Offers will be inevitable: Writing an honest CashCrate review, I should also mention the fact that CC does send lots of offers to your inbox. There is no way to work around this as it’s how the business works. If you think that this is something you would not be able to tolerate, you can try using a different email ID during the CashCrate sign-up procedure. This would ensure you are not bothered by offers you don’t want to take-up anyways. If, however, you do run into some trouble there is always the ‘Contact Us’ page that you can refer.