Join Date: 9/12/2010
Status: Paying
Recommended: High
Prizes: Cash
Payment methods: Paypal
View Site/Register: Instant Cash Sweepstakes
Instant Cash Sweepstakes is one of my favorite/fun survey sites. The site is owned by a market analysis company which uses this site as a recruiting source for their client’s surveys. The concept is simple – answer a few short questions and win various amounts of “tickets”, “coins” or a few cents. You are allowed to take a set number of surveys before you are “locked out” for a 3 hour break. After the 3 hours, you are free to return to play again.
You are typically guaranteed to receive some cash prize at some point during your collection (example, if you are allowed 5 surveys, at least one of the 5 will reward with a cash prize).
The site holds various drawings – $2 drawing every 4 hours, $50 drawing every 24 hours. Each ticket you win is an entry to the 24 hour drawing. You can use coins earned to enter the $2 drawing, or convert them to tickets for the $50 drawing.
The referral perk on this site is quite nice – for each ticket/coin/cash your referral wins, you win a matching prize. This can be super beneficial if one of your referrals is lucky enough to win one of the $2 or $50 drawings, as you will get that prize too – how sweet is that!
To make things more fun for people, you can create surveys that will be displayed for others to take. Each survey has a voting bar, where if you like a survey, you can vote for it. You receive a ticket prize for creating a survey, and more if yours is voted most popular within a given time period. They’ve also added some fun free games to play (no prize involved with these that I can see).
As you take surveys, you are given a “TS Level” – or a “trust score”. This level determines how many surveys you can take, and the minimum prize levels (tickets and coins) per survey. This score increases each time you take a survey. Sometimes you receive the same survey you’ve taken previously – if you answer the same on the repeat, you typically get increased rewards, and a boost on your trust score.
When I first started, the site was only paying between $0.01 and $0.03 each round of surveys; but as the site has grown, I’ve seen the cash reward increase up to $0.10 rewards. You don’t earn a lot on this site, but when I played it consistently 3-4 times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime) – I was able to make the $2 cashout within a month.
Occasionally, you will receive a real sponsored survey (not one of the user generated ones). These typically have a unique header added and extra warnings about being honest in your responses – so you can’t miss which these are. Sometimes if you are required to write a response, the survey may provide an extra cash bonus for thoughtful answers (an extra cent or two). When receiving these, do take the survey seriously as your answers are reviewed. How I know this is on a couple occasions I was sent a special “thank you” email from ICS on behalf of the survey sponsor who was appreciative of my response they wanted ICS to notify me of their gratitude for taking the survey seriously. So be sure to take some care and consideration when answering those type of surveys – you can make a difference in someone’s business or idea!
The key to making this site a little more profitable would be to recruit referrals. Due to the simple nature of the site, most people should be able to recruit a few friends/family to try it out. I look at this as a substitue for some of the free trivia games or solitaire games.
Another way to earn more cash is by becoming a “Pro User”. This is an offer once you reach the 5th TS level (if I recall correctly). If accepted as a “Pro User”, you will receive notification of surveys which you respond by using a webcam to record a response. Then you are paid for your submission. These earnings come from the parent market research company, and not through ICS – so these earnings are not subject to the “Prize Match” – but these earnings are more along the lines of survey rewards received on other survey sites.
I have recently obtained a webcam, so I have not had the opportunity to register to become a Pro User to analyze/verify how this aspect works yet, but intend to at some point in the future.
I found this site was very handy to get me into the habit of doing surveys because the surveys are quick and easy to do – minimal time investment. If you are new to surveys, or looking for something fun to do and make a little cash on the side – this would be a perfect survey site!
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