Sites that offer payment for reading email have been around for a while but do any of them actually work? I've been to take a look at a few sites to see what whether there is any optio
Inbox Dollars has been around for a number of years and started by offering to pay members for reading emails. They offer a payment of a few cents for each sponsored email you read. To entice you in they credit your account with a $5 starting bonus. The catch here is you need to build up a balance of $30 before you can request a payment from them. Seeing as we're dealing here with very small earnings the most difficult task would be reach the cash out limit in a decent amount of time. The site seems to be open to most countries but is very US oriented so I'm probably missing out on a lot of the content US members get (I haven't had a single email for instance).
To boost your earnings they have a referral program and other higher paying offers such as taking product trials or completing surveys. There's also shopping coupons which seem to give you credit back when used (again I cannot investigate this further as they are all US based). Reviews on the internet seem to be mixed with some hating it and others claiming it's okay if you play it right (for instance by taking high paying trials and being careful to cancel them before being charged) and do not have too high expectations.
CashCrate is a similar operation in InboxDollars, minus the paid to read emails. On creating an account and logging in you basically see a long list of available offers and the payment offered. I found the process personally a little long winded and after trying one or two of the offers I seemed to find myself looking at lengthy surveys that seemed to go in circles mostly concerned with bombarding you with the same affiliate marketing. It also didn't seem clear when you actually get the payment credited to your account. The responsibility seems to be on you to click the submit button to say when you have completed an offer and it is then listed as pending until it later gets confirmed and credited to your account.
Personally I had less patience with this than inboxdollars, The idea seems good enough and some of the trials are probably worthwhile but some of the sponsored content I tried almost had me banging my head against the wall.
Yuwie is an upstart social networking that aims to take on the giant of facebook by enticing users with the option of getting paid to do just the same thing. The idea is that users will get a share of the money charged by advertisers on Yewie credited to the people that create the content. This seems like a great idea and doesn't involve the hassles of the other methods as you basically do what you would on another social networking site. The problem however is going to be that large groups of friends will have to move en mass from the other sites to Yewie before you can get any meaningful social networking going.
YouGov is UK based polling and research company. If you join up they will offer you surveys and unlike some other survey sites actually pay in hard cash. Each survey can pay from £0.50 to £1 and they will issue payment when you reach £50 of credit. There is a short term referral scheme for referring friends. Of the survey sites I tried this seems the most professional and I will follow it longer to see how it pans. As usual do not expect to make a fortune but an extra £50 every so often might be useful.
Conclusion
I'll keep my eye out for other opportunities but at the moment I could not really recommend anything to anyone wanting to earn a little extra cash every month. Most methods seem to be excessively time consuming considering the rewards involved, and the level needed before qualifying for a payout is probably beyond most people's patience, inluding mine. Yuwie is an interesting idea, and requires almost no effort to use naturally, so I would rate that as a no lose option but remember to keep your expectations low. Yougov is a decent paid to survey site but the surveys come too infrequently to be more than an occasional dabble.