Tips for Success - How to earn money using CashCrate

            So you’ve put aside your suspicions of CashCrate.com long enough to look for methods you might use to be successful. That’s great! You’re already one step ahead of most members. Many like you have already fallen victim to extended credit pending, denied offers, and other frustrations making them call CashCrate a fraud and scam artist. This isn’t their fault. They just haven’t looked for the right information.
            If you are interested in making more than the minimum payout and getting your check next month then follow these tips! Remember, I’m not here to lie to you. My paychecks are affected by your success and vice versa. Completing offers correctly on your end helps keep me up and running to let you know about better ways to make money. Win-Win.

What you should know first
Method 1 - Cash Offers
Method 2 - Shopping
Method 3 – Referrals
Contests and Prizes
Coupon Codes

What you should know first
1.         There is an age requirement to use CashCrate. All members must be atleast 13 years of age to participate in this site. I’m sure this has everything to do with completing cash offers because if you don’t do it correctly you will receive a large amount of spam in an unwanted mailbox. The good news is that anyone 13 and older can make money, so all of you teenagers out there complaining about your allowances, here’s your chance to earn your own money. I would highly recommend asking your parents first though. 

2.         The majority of offers available are for the United States and other English speaking countries. Does this mean you can’t complete offers from Japan? No! It just means that you will qualify for fewer offers.

3.         Use your real address when you’re signing up with CashCrate.com or you will not receive your paychecks!

4. There is a minimum cash payout of $20. What does this mean? You will not be eligible to receive a check in the mail until you’ve reached the $20 minimum. However, your confirmed offers will remain with you if you don’t achieve the minimum dollar requirement. If you make it to $19 and can’t quite get that last dollar before midnight of the 31st, do not panic. Your balance remains with you until you do reach the minimum cash payout.

5.         The pay period is from the 1st of the month to the end day, whether that’s the 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st. All checks are processed around the 15th and you should receive your check in the mail before the end of the month. If you made more than $20 by June 30th then you will receive your paycheck in mid to late July.

6.         If you have multiple accounts using the same IP address (several accounts using the same internet connection) then you might run into a big problem. This is due to CashCrate’s defense against fraudulent referrals. Once you get past a certain amount of active referrals you start to earn $1 for every person who signs up. If you’ve seen the sign up process, you know how fast this can be. So for all of you living in dorms, you might just find yourself out of luck on this one.

7.         The amount of money you make is dependent on how much effort you put forth. If you plan to just sign up and then spam Myspace for referrals, it won’t work. Oh, and this will bring me to…

8.         Advertising CashCrate.com directly on networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, etc. can get you banned from CashCrate. Getting banned=no money. So don’t do it. There are legal reasons concerning spam content. I’m just learning about this one myself. I will update this as needed.

Method 1 - Cash Offers
            This is the most common way to earn cash through CashCrate.com. There are numerous online advertisers looking for exposure to their products and they use various GPT sites to do so. If you’ve ever played IMVU and had to complete partner offers to earn points and buy new outfits, you already know what to expect. The difference here is that I’m giving you the information you need to be successful and make more money. Here’s what you need to know:

1.         You will want to start making different email accounts with the sole intention of completing these offers. If you don’t, you can expect to find a large amount of unwanted email when you open your inbox. The reason you make multiple emails is because companies are looking for new leads on these offers. If you use the same email for every offer you do, you’ll find that a lot of your offers will not be credited. The trick is to only use each email for 10-20 offers or 1 time for every company.

2.         Do not falsify information when completing these offers. If you’re not Joe Dandy from Sunnyville, USA, do not say you are. This is known as fraud and is illegal. Not only that, but if CashCrate catches you, your account will be banned and you will not receive your check. If you decide to cheat you have a high chance of being caught and your offer will not be credited. Not only that, you run the risk of being banned from CashCrate. It also messes up the advertiser’s data collection which is the only reason they pay GPT sites to have their products listed. If the GPT sites lose their offers, then you lose your way to make money.

3.         Do not click the submit button until you have opened and completed an offer. This helps you keep track of what you have and haven’t completed. If you hit submit on an offer you were part way through and then decide to close before you finish, the offer will just sit in your pending box for 2 weeks and then be reintroduced to your eligible offers page, with the possibility of having expired…which also means no cash for you.

4.         Make a note of what offers you have completed, whether it was through CashCrate or other GPT sites. If you run across an offer you’ve done previously do not attempt to participate in it. You will just go through the trouble of filling out your information on a duplicate form. It will be thrown out and not credited.

5.         Take your time! Fill out all offers sincerely. Don’t complete “What Twilight Character are you?” as fast as you can with randomly selected answers. Let all offer pages load fully and read before you click any buttons. This is to ensure you don’t make a mistake and sign up for something you don’t want. This is also to make sure you are not seen as an offer bot by the ad agencies. If you go too fast your offer will just take longer to be credited and possibly be thrown out.

6.         Always fulfill the offer requirements! If an offer states that you will only be credited if you participate in one of their partner offers and click on two links from the final page, participate in one of their partners’ offers and click on two links from the final page. This will help your offers confirm faster. If you don’t fulfill all of the requirements, you might not see the cash credited to your account.

7.         During cash offers that require participation, do NOT repeatedly complete the same 1-2 offers. If you’ve filled out Colorado Vacation on the last offer, don’t complete it again on the current one. Doing so can count against offer participation and you may not see your cash credited.

8.         When an offer says “Fill out quiz with valid information and complete survey” you have to make it past the relentless walls of partner offers to a page that has something like “FINAL STEPS” and a mention of silver, gold, and platinum offers. If you haven’t made it to this page, you probably aren’t finished. There is, however, the occasional offer that tricks you into completing similar offers, but the pictures on the website usually change so just keep an eye out for that.

9.         You need to clear your internet browser’s memory before every offer. By clearing the cache, cookies, and history you trick the advertising sites into thinking you’re a new face. This follows along with tip 1 about companies wanting new leads. Clearing your browser’s memory also speeds up your computer so it will run a little bit smoother which is always a plus.

10.         Before you switch emails to complete more offers, go into the current email’s inbox and click on any Confirmation or Verification links you see. This will guarantee you get your credits in a timely manner if you’ve completed offers that require an email confirmation.

11.         Do NOT email CashCrate members with spam or any rude, harassing behavior. You can be banned if a member proves you’ve been harassing them or others.

12.         Take breaks every few hours. Get up, stretch, go for a walk. You don’t want to burn yourself out. These offers can be tedious, but by this point you already knew that.

Method 2 - Shopping
            Yes ladies and gentlemen, I said shopping. You can earn money by purchasing products online through any of CashCrate.com’s affiliated stores. You receive a rebate of .5% to 56% for goods and services bought using one of CashCrate’s store links. Some stores included are Apple iTunes, Microsoft, Office Depot, and Walmart. I believe that you can also use online coupons to reduce the amount you actually pay as well, but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t bought anything through their links as of yet.

Method 3 – Referrals
            Another common way CashCrate members earn money is through referral links. You’ve seen plenty of them on this blog. Basically, you make money when you get new members to sign up and reach certain goals. You receive a percentage of the cash offers they are credited taken from CashCrate’s profits, not the new member’s. The percentage of cash you receive is increased depending on how many members you’ve recruited. The amount of cash you earn is also dependent on different kinds of referrals. There are 2 types of referrals, level 1 and level 2. Level 1 referrals are the members who you recruited directly. Level 2 referrals are the members who signed up using links from your recruits. The more you recruit, the higher your rank becomes. The referral ranks are broken down like this:

1.         Bronze - 0-49 referrals. You earn 20% of the offers completed by level 1 referrals and 10% of those completed by level 2 referrals.

2.         Silver - 50-149 referrals. You earn 25% of the offers completed by level 1 referrals and 10% of those completed by level 2 referrals. You also receive $1 for every Level 1 referral. Your checks are processed sooner as well. They are printed on the 1st instead of the 15th and are usually in your mailbox before the 10th.

3.         Gold - 150-299 referrals. You earn 25% of the offers completed by level 1 referrals and 15% of those completed by level 2 referrals.

4.         Platinum - 300-499 referrals. You earn 30% of the offers completed by level 1 referrals and 15% of those completed by level 2 referrals.

5.         Elite - 500+ referrals. You earn 30% of the offers completed by level 1 referrals and 20% of those completed by level 2 referrals.

            You also receive a $3 bonus for every level 1 referral who completes their first $10 in cash offers. Not bad at all.

            In case you are having troubles with math, let me show you a few examples. If you don’t like reading about figures, I’d suggest skipping to the section after the examples to save some time and confusion.

A.         You sign up your first referral and complete $10 in offers. Your referral then recruits 2 more people under his referral link and they complete $10 in offers. You will receive a $3 bonus since your referral completed $10 in offers. You will also get $2 in commission for his completed offers as well as $1 from each of his referrals for the offers they completed. This brings your earned cash to $7 and assuming you completed $10 in offers and had one other referral who did the same as your first new member, you would be at a grand total of $24. Your 1st levels will have a $3 bonus for each referral as well as the $2 commission bringing their total cash earned up to $20. You can easily reach your minimum payout within a few hours.

B.         Say you reach 50+ referrals for the extra $1 bonus of each level 1 referral and the added 5% commission. At this point you will be receiving cash from more members than when you first started so let’s bump up the number of new level 1 members to 10 and cash earned up to $20. You completed $20 in offers as well. Your $20+10 people ($3 offer bonus+$1 sign up bonus)+10 people ($5 commission). This turns into 20+40+50 for a total of $110. Let’s now assume that each of the new members recruited 2 others like in example A. Your $110+20($2 commission) turns into $110+$40 for a grand total of $150.

C.         Taking our total from B we will now add in all of the active level 1 and 2 recruits linked to your account. Starting at $150, let’s assume that you have 50 active, level 1 members as well as 10 active, level 2 recruits linked to the 1s. To make it easy, all active members completed $10 in offers. That’s 50 level 1s and 500 level 2s making $10 each. Your $150+50 first levels($2.50 current raised commission)+500 second levels($1 commission) turns into $150+$125+$500 for a total of $775.

D.         Last example for this section. Let’s assume you reached the Elite rank of referrals which would have netted you $450 on the $1 bonuses alone (referrals 50-500). From here on you receive a commission rate of 30% 1st/20% 2nd. You recruit 10 new members who in turn recruit 2 more a piece, all new members completed $10 in offers. You didn’t complete any offers yet. Your $0+10 1st levels($3 offer bonus+$1 sign up bonus+$3 raised commission)+20 2nd levels($2 raised commission) which turns into $70+$40 for a total of$110. You also have 500 active 1st levels and each of them has 10 active 2nd levels, all making $10 in offers each. Your $110+500($3)+5000($2) turns into $110+$1500+$10,000 for a grand total of $11,650.

            I do have to tell you, results like this are extremely unlikely. You would really have to search out people willing to continue using this site actively. Example C is much more reasonable, but still difficult to achieve. Like I have said before, your paychecks are affected by the effort your referrals put in. Quality is better than quantity.

Contests and Prizes
            You can do more than earn money through CashCrate.com. While you earn cash through the different offers and surveys, you also earn points. The points you earn can be used to play several different games to be entered into a pot and potentially win more points. The top 5 winners receive points according to Daily entries and Weekly entries. These two categories are for each individual game, so don’t be scared of losing your points in Snake Fish if you see someone has a higher score than you through Tri Peaks. You can then redeem the points you’ve earned for prizes such as gift cards and electronics.
            Another way to earn rewards is through the different contests that CashCrate and different members hold. There is currently a contest running simply called Holiday Giveaway 2009 which lasts from September 1st to December 15th. For this contest, you earn Crates by completing offers, signing up referrals, playing games, and doing daily surveys. The top 10 people get their choice in electronics and gift cards, the 40 people below them will receive $10 to $25 Amazon gift cards.
            There are other contests run in the forums by CashCrate members to reward the community for various activities. One contest currently running is to earn referrals. There’s a thread with a list of rules and rewards, all you have to do is read the rules, participate, and wait to see if you’re a winner for the week. It’s a great way to stay engaged with the community while earning more rewards.

Coupon Codes
            CashCrate.com will occasionally give out coupon codes for cash and points on the forums, Twitter and other participating sites. You participate in a short activity such as being one of the first 10 people to retweet a twitter update, if you post the update in time you are credited the reward. Other times they will post a coupon code on Twitter that is valid for the first 10-200 people. You can redeem these coupons on your Earnings page on CashCrate.