Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Make £200 a month in your spare time
Reading Time: 3 minutesWant to make £200 a month in your spare time, and top up your income without leaving the house?
Of course you do! Any extra income is likely to be very welcome, especially if we can do it without much effort, from our own computers or smartphones. And luckily, we’ve got a solution that might be just the thing.
Let us introduce you to 20Cogs, the online platform that allows you to earn money through online surveys, competitions, sign-ups and games.
Sound too good to be true? We promise you that it isn’t.
What is 20Cogs?
20Cogs is a website that can see you net a cool £200 a month (or maybe even more) by answering questions and taking part in competitions for brands.
Brands will then use your answers as part of their market research, making this a win win situation for everyone.
So, how does it work? The 20Cogs site earns money as an advertiser, by hosting the competitions, survey content and so on, and engaging readers (ie, you). The money that they earn is then shared with you, as a potential customer who has interacted with the site.
Sign up for free, and you’ll be guided through the “offers” (games, surveys, competitions, etc) that are available to you. Once you’ve completed 20 of them, you’ll be paid by BACs or Paypal. Payments go through three times a week, meaning you’re never going to be waiting long before your cash hits your bank account.
There’s serious money at stake here: the company has paid almost £2 million out to its members so far. It’s time you got a slice of the pie…
How can 20Cogs help you make £200 a month in your spare time?
Sign up, and you’ll receive a welcome email that will offer up a few hints and tricks to start you on your journey. At the moment, there’s also a £5 welcome bonus available.
Answer an initial survey, letting 20Cogs know a bit about yourself, that will help them tailor the content that they send your way. Answer this survey and you’ll get another £5 added to your account.
Alternatively you can refer a friend, and you’ll get another £5 straightaway.
Once you’ve started using the system, you’ll have to complete another 19 offers before you can get your money (referring a friend or answering questions about yourself counts as your first “cog”.) After your 20th offer, the money will start coming in.
You can skip offers you don’t fancy, ensuring that you can always work with brands that you’re interested in.
The money that you earn could easily end up in the hundreds. The average member earns just over £200 per month, but £700 a month isn’t unheard of. All for (at the very most) answering a few short questions!
Here are a few specific things you can do…
There are various opportunities available on the site at the moment. Here are just a few of them:
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- Earn money watching Disney+: You’ll get paid £2 for signing up for your free trial of Disney+, letting you watch old classics like Cinderella and newer favourites like Moana whilst earning money
- Earn money with Pouch: Pouch allows you to add the best voucher codes from across the internet to your shopping baskets, making sure you’re always getting the best deals. You can earn £1 by simply adding it to your browser
- Earn £1.50 by signing up as a product tester. The Product Testing site is working with 20Cogs, and you can add £1.50 to your account just by signing up (that’s before you even start testing products, of course!)
- Earn £5 for every survey you complete via Life Points. Sign up via the site as one of your cogs, and this one could end up pretty lucrative
There are all offers that were available on the site at the time of writing, and all will bag you one “cog”.
Mystery shopping
There are also offers available that you don’t need to answer questions for. You’ll find these under the “bonus offers” section. They might include mystery shopping opportunities with top brands like McDonalds, Primark and Asda, where you’ll get to keep everything that you “buy”.
Think that 20Cogs might be a good way to give your income a bit of a boost? We hope we have you convinced. Sign up and start getting these offers today.
This is a lie. You ciuls perhaps earn £200 eventually, but many offers require you to subscribe to sites for a month BEFORE you can get access to the next cog, so it’ll take more like 10 months or longer…
Haven’y had much luck with 20 cogs yet but will persevere.
I signed up but never earned any money and the offers were of no use so don’t bother anymore.
I have actually completed all the cogs, a few times they didn’t turn amber, and the online ticket support system sorted the issues out, but one I had to redo as the survey company I registered with and took surveys, the cog was red, so I took another offer. You have to if you sign up for trials set reminders to cancel, and be persistent, but eventually you will complete it. However it’s taking quite a time to see all the cogs turn green, I still have three left. For the small amount of money, less than £60, I think… Read more »
Thanks for this, really interesting to hear!
It is not as easy as it sounds. I was once registered with 20cogs. I filled so many offers some didn’t even register. I had I believe over £1k in there but the system didn’t let me cash out. For reasons best known to them, they deleted my account. Never again
Thanks for sharing, it’s good to hear all our readers’ experiences. How long ago was this?
Some good ideas here.
Why give us these daft (and not helpful) ways of making money?
Hi Meg,
As I mentioned to another reader, everyone seems to have different experiences. For example, the Trustpilot score for 20Cogs is still ‘excellent’ – https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/20cogs.co.uk
Obviously everyone’s experience varies, but we’re looking to collate as many user experiences as possible so we have a better idea.
I tried 20 cogs for 1 month and completed about 3 to 4 surveys a day. Some taking 30 mins. It takes a ridiculous amount of points to reach before you even make £5. And because I’m 51 with no children, I didn’t qualify for a lot of the surveys. I wouldn’t do it again, I would have had to complete 50 plus surveys, perhaps even more before I made a fiver.
I didn’t try the mystery shopper so that may be different. I found it a complete waste of time and effort.
Hi Linda,
Thanks for letting us know. People seem to have different experiences – some seem to make a few hundred, other struggle to make much at all. I think it depends on demographics, but it would be interesting to get a breakdown of what the average earn per user is, wouldn’t it?