I’ve started looking for more ways to side hustle and make a few extra pennies. And when the option to make free money with 20 cogs popped up a few times I thought I’d take a look and see what the fuss was about.
I haven’t spent too long doing it but have made almost £100 of pure profit. If that’s enough to convince you to sign up then you can use my referral code here. If you want to find out more then keep reading.
It’s a pretty new website where you complete offers and get some money back as a reward. These include competitions, signing up for offers, testing online games and completing surveys.
There are 20 offers (or cogs) that you need to complete before you can cash anything out. Now you could sit down and do these all in one go or take them gradually as I’ve done. Some of my cogs included signing up for a taste card trial, or signing up for a free Hayu trial and then streaming one show.
There are plenty of free offers where you don’t need to spend anything. But some of them require you to spend a small amount to get a much bigger amount back. And these can be the most lucrative payouts. The average payout to users is over £200 which is amazing for the very little inlay or work.
Once you sign up you’ll see the first cog. You can either complete that offer or go through a selection of alternative offers. I usually find there to be 5-8 different offers per cog so there’s always something I’m happy to do.
For some offers, you do need to spend some money. For example, put £10 deposit into Sun Bingo and play through your money and any bonus’. But for doing this you may get £25, which means £15 clear profit. There are still quite a lot of free ones, but for these, you’ll earn less for example £1-4 per one you complete. I did a mixture of paid and free ones to try and keep my initial spend as low as possible.
Once you’ve taken part in the offer your cog will turn amber which means it’s pending or processing. Once the advertiser approves it your cog will turn green. For some, this can be within a few days, but for others, it might be up to 30 days. This could be if you need to stay signed up for the trial for the whole 30 days for example.
If you’re signing up for free trials (which a lot of the offers tend to be) keep an eye on the terms. For some, you only need to stay signed up for a week, but for some, you need to be signed up for the whole 30 days.
Keep a reminder handy to cancel the trial as early as you can otherwise you may end up being charged. As long as you’re on top of your trials and deals you won’t get stung for any money.
Once you have completed all 20 cogs, and they’ve all been approved then you can payout. Payments are run 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And you can choose to be paid via Paypal or BACs.
I’m just waiting on my final cogs to turn green and then I’ll be cashing out which I can’t wait for. It’s worth taking screenshots of you completing the deals just in case it doesn’t track properly. It means you can go back and show evidence you’ve completed a cog so it can be manually validated.
Just down to a lack of time it’s taken me about a month to work my way through 20 Cogs. But in that time I have earnt £120 with only about £25 of spending. If you decide to sign up then use my referral code here.
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I think I might have to give this a go! Anything to put in the savings pot is a bonus.
That’s right, I’m just waiting for my final ones to turn green then it’s withdrawal time for me x
Oooh, this sounds really cool. I will give it a go for sure!
Going to be forwarding thi sto my husband as it sounds a really cool side hustle 🙂
Yep, super quick and easy for the money x
20 Cogs looks like an easy way to make a little extra money and you might discover some new offers or sites that you didn’t previously know about!
How fabulous! I’ve got a massive stack of prints that need framing so I’m gonna sign up for this and try and earn the money to get them all done!
Katie xoxo
What great motivation to do this x
Ohhhh never heard of this before! I’m going to take a look. Every little helps.
Sounds like a nice way to earn extra cash!
I like the sound of 20 Cogs, this is new to me. Great advise about checking out the terms on the free offers though. Mich x
Wow, I have never heard of this one, but it sounds pretty simple and effective too. Excellent advice on remembering to cancel these things afterwards too!
I have reminders in my diary to make sure I cancel these things before they start charging x
You’ve done well eaning this amount in a month. I may have to give it a try. Sounds like a great side hustle
It really didn’t take long to do and the extra money all adds up x
I completed 20 Cogs a few weeks ago. It took me about 6 months because I refused to take offers that cost more than £1. In total I got £141 and they paid me within the week.
You have to be careful to unsubscribe the trials and such or it’ll end up costing.
I would also recommend researching how to cancel the subscriptions to some of the trials cause some of them (particularly lotto syndicates) are quite sneaky and it turns out you have to email them or phone them or something.
I totally agree, for the guardian trial I had to phone them up which wasn’t fun x