The internet has no shortage of reward sites where you can make extra money here and there. Once in a while, I like to check out what’s new, in case there’s a brilliant earning strategy that I’m not aware of. Today, we are going to find out if Timebucks is truly worth your time (or not), so if you are thinking of joining, hold that thought for a second until the end of this article.
Timebucks at a Glance
Unlike other reward sites, Timebucks will pay you cash (not gift cards) through performing various mini-tasks online. When you reach a minimum earning of $10, you can cash out through a PayPal account on a weekly basis.
Anyone who has access to the internet and a lot of time doing so can join as a member for free. Upon registering, a $1 bonus will instantly be deposited into your account, but a complete profile is required in order to receive due payments.
So what type of tasks are we looking at and how are the earnings calculated? Let’s dive deeper.
The Nitty Gritty of Micro tasking
There are about 12 types of online tasks inside Timebucks and you can choose whichever one you like. Most are pretty straightforward, but some will need additional work. The easy ones are the common ones like completing surveys, watching videos and shopping with cashback. The instructions are simple to follow and they usually take about 1 to 2 minutes to complete.
The more challenging ones are those that involve Bitcoin money (you need a Bitcoin address for that), creating a promotional video about Timebucks (you need a recording software for that) and prequalifying yourself for free money (do more tasks to earn bigger rewards). Since there are prerequisite actions, these will take a bit longer to reach their money goals should you decide to do them.
However, the main difference between each task actually lies in the earning values. You see, advertisers pay reward sites to bring them traffic so that’s how they get their pool of money in the first place. After taking their share of profits, the remaining will be transferred to micro taskers like you.
Precisely how much will you be getting? Let’s expose the numbers.
- Ad Clicks – Earn you 0.001 cents for clicking and staying on the page for 5 seconds.
- Watch videos – Make 0.01 cents for watching a minimum of 30 seconds.
- Referral program – Make 15% (the highest tier) to 1% (lowest tier) in commissions for referring new users to Timebucks.
- Online jobs – Earn 0.02 to 0.70 cents for performing online jobs
- Social media – Make 0.005 cents for following or subscribing to social channels
- Cashback – Earn between 0.5% to 10% in cashback while shopping at selected retailers.
- Free Money – Earn 0.002 cents to $100 (maximum) by rolling your luck.
- Bitcoin – Make 0.05 cents (one-off) by registering a free Bitcoin account.
- Video Promotion – Earn $3 (one-off) by creating a video to promote Timebucks.
I don’t really need to tell you this, but if you look closely, the earning power of each task isn’t much. So you really need to pick what to do (and be good at repeating them) in order to make the most money.
Are People Making Money With Timebucks?
The first impression I get when browsing through the site is that it looks a bit outdated and there might not be a lot of people participating in the tasks. But when I did a quick check on their Facebook page, there is proof of payment being made by Timebucks periodically to their members.
Looking from the snapshots, everyone seems to cash out the moment they reach a minimum of $10 so even though it’s not a lot, it’s still a valid proof that the reward site does pay.
But is TimeBucks a feasible tool to monetize for the long term? Not quite and I’ll explain why.
What I Dislike About Timebucks
Even though online tasks are flexible in terms of what you want or don’t want to do, each has its own limitations and setbacks that you need to be aware of.
1 – Surveys are subjected to availability and you need to be eligible for each survey before proceeding. Yet, the questions they asked are often redundant and trivial – sometimes, it makes you wonder why companies would create such questionnaires in the first place.
For better quality surveys that pay better, you may have better chances with places like Survey Junkie.
2 – As for watching videos, the selection is extremely limited and the clips aren’t engaging at all. If you want something that’s fun to watch, Swagbucks could offer more interesting videos. At least over there, the clips are of better qualities and they are constantly posting new videos for viewing.
3 – In terms of cashback, again the choices aren’t much. It has outlets like Agoda, Booking, and AliExpress – that is if you are booking for travel or buying something from China suppliers.
But if you are the type of person who shops for daily items or prefers better quality stuff, you won’t be able to find your choice of an outlet here. Chances are, the offers would be better at sites like Ebates or TopCashback where they partner with major retailers like Amazon and Walmart.
4 – One of the tasks inside TimeBucks is called Bitcoin mining and this is basically a process that uses one’s computer to create cryptocurrency using graphics cards. While it’s not a new technology and it’s perfectly legal in most countries, mining on personal PC is considered outdated.
Currently, the standard practice is to use specific equipment that has good cooling and storage features in order to be profitable with Bitcoin mining. Using personal computers can cause overheating and irreversible damage to the hardware because they are not built to run 24/7 like that.
So before you turn on the task, be aware of the consequences and if you don’t know what it’s all about, avoid performing this task altogether.
#Note – Soon after publishing this review, I noticed that the mining feature has been disabled due to some issues, so at least that’s something you don’t have to worry about for now.
5 – Besides performing online tasks, there are also a couple of features that let you boost traffic to websites, videos or social pages and this is done through purchasing clicks and social sharing. Depending on your budget, you can buy one click between 0.002 cents to 0.012 cents and spend $100 for up to 10,000 subscribers/likes/followers.
The links will then be advertised on Timebucks to gain the type of the desired action. Now, while paying for traffic is a legit practice, there are risks associated with the way these traffics is acquired.
Firstly, asking to view a page for 5 to 60 seconds will increase the bounce rate of a webpage. You see, when people are generally interested in READING your content, they are likely to spend more than one minute and may even leave some comments on the site. When they leave too soon for whatever reason, it will show a high volume of disengagement and that’s not a good sign.
Secondly, asking to like or follow a social page without any true engagement is as good as fake. You are merely boosting the numbers here to make them look nice on the analytics, but it’s not like the visitors are genuinely sharing your content.
As you would imagine, the cumulative effect of these types of ‘purchased’ actions will result in poorer quality traffic. Yes, you do get some boost of traffic, but if they come from unreliable sources and are not consistent, they can actually do more harm than good. For websites, your ranking on the search engines could plummet and for social accounts, you could be banned from certain platforms.
Knowing this, do you think it’s still a good idea to purchase clicks and shares? I wouldn’t even think about it if I were you.
So, Is TimeBucks Worth It?
Looking at the time to value conversion, TimeBucks is probably the lowest that I’ve seen so far in terms of reward paying sites. Their offers (money and task variations) aren’t the most attractive in the market and it’s clearly time-consuming just to earn the minimum payout of $10 after doing the math.
As for gaining clicks and shares, this isn’t the right place to generate online traffic. If you are new to online marketing, start with content creation first to establish a strong foundation for your site and then later, move on to proper channels like PPC or Facebook Ads for paid traffic. That way, you will be better equipped with keywords selection skills and know what type of audience to target for your ad campaigns.
Overall, I think your time is worth much more investing in a value-based online business that can generate good quality traffic and long term passive income versus doing minute tasks with very little return.
That’s why I always recommend my favorite training platform for this purpose. Choose a niche that you like, create a ton of helpful content and watch your business grow from there. Connect with me from inside and I’ll be more than happy to show you around.
If you have any questions regarding this review, feel free to leave some comments below.
charles39 says
I don’t mean to harsh on this TimeBucks platform, but it’s not worthy anyone’s time for those surveys. You spend a lot of time for pennies before getting that 10 dollars. Those hours could have been better spend on building a more profitable business in the future that will surely make you more money.
Kevin says
Hello Cathy,
As I read through your review, I was thinking that this way of making some money online would be great for someone who has the time to spend on their PC. I could see a person who plays games all the time and exchanging that time to do the surveys. Sure, it isn’t a lot of money, but if someone is very determined, I think they could manage to earn $10 a day. That would probably work out to be $50-$70 a week. Theoretically speaking, of course.
Dancinscot says
I appreciate your detailed review. My experience was with Swagbucks, and after a while and earning a few $5 Amazon gift cards, I tallied up the time taken, and quit.
So if TimeBucks is not as good an opportunity, I’m glad to be informed! The time can be so much better used researching and writing blog posts on one’s own site. I think most of my time was wasted on qualifying for surveys. Sometimes that took as long as doing the survey itself.
Now that I’ve learned how to write a blog, at least I’m spending time developing skills that can bring better rewards down the future.
Jeffrey Meadows says
I have tried websites like this, but also found them to be not worth my time for the low paying functions. I came across TimeBucks the other day and wonder how it works. It seems like you need to do a lot just to get to the $10 minimum. Not the kind of monetary goal that I want to achieve, to be honest.
Ayodeji says
Timebuck sucks, I have literally wasted my precious time on the site and I regretted ever being there in the first place. Everything you wrote about them is so true. You earn so little for doing huge tasks – it will literally take you a very long time to actually make something out of there, if that’s even possible. There are more sites out there that are similar to this, but have better returns, in my opinions.
Sujandar Mahesan says
My friend was using this platform the other day and I wasn’t sure if I should also do it. Well, I am glad that I came across this review. Seems like there is not much return of money that you can get from this platform. You’ve saved me a ton of time from testing it out. Thanks!