In this review, I am looking at a product called 20 Cogs which is a service that provides you with trial offers, surveys and competitions in exchange for a cash incentive. In other words, you can make money from home by completing these types of offers in exchange for money.
This does sound too good to be true, so I joined the service and tested it in order to decide if this membership website will help you make money online.
The following blog post is my opinion only and here is what I think about 20cogs.co.uk
What Is 20Cogs?
As I'm sure you have figured out by now, 20cogs is a website which will reward you for completing offers and certain tasks. Normally these offers include things like:
- registering for websites and completing a very small task, such as completing a survey.
- joining a trial offer for a product or service, such as movie streaming services, online casinos, credit reports, or similar services.
- completing competitions to win prizes.
Whenever someone completes one of these offers, 20cogs are rewarded a commission from the advertiser which they share with you. They provide the platform and the offers, you do the legwork and you both share that commission.
Seems reasonable, right?
There are many websites like this, such as Swagbucks, and they all offer a range of various rewards for small jobs - usually involving shopping cashback offers, surveys, and other similar small tasks.
You can choose different offers if you want?
Are The Offers Worth The Effort?
The offers themselves can be quite tedious, but most of them are quite straightforward. The tedious ones are the tasks which involve completing surveys or any sort of extended period of small task completion. These tend to be very long and the rewards are very small.
The simpler ones are quicker, but they do come at a price. You need to put down some sort of deposit or join a trial period which usually involves a small joining fee. Such as Amazon Prime, Which.co.uk or some paid membership service.
Whether or not the offers are worth your time comes down to personal preference and your attitude towards risk vs reward, or reward vs effort.
However, personally, I find that 99% of all the tasks or trials are a waste of time but I will explain more about that in a minute.
How To Validate Your Offers?
Your offers only become confirmed or valid once you have completed your end of the bargain. So, if you join a 30-day free trial, your reward will only be paid out once the merchant confirms that you have completed your 30-day trial.
This obviously means you need to keep close track of which offers you have joined, and which ones have yet to be validated. Otherwise, you may end up confused and in the process forget about your live subscriptions which will turn into premium monthly memberships once the trial period runs out.
Will You Make Money?
Will you make money using 20 cogs? Most likely not, at least that is my opinion. The reason for this is because you have to complete 20 offers and have them validated before you get paid.
This delay in payment means that most people will never actually complete any of the offers and give up before they complete the 20cogs.
This is fantastic news for 20cogs because they get paid a commission regardless, but you do not get paid anything because you only get paid once you have completed the 20 steps. Let's face it, most people will give up long before they actually complete the 20 steps, and in doing so they will not earn any money using this method.
What Do Other People Think?
Due to the invasive nature of these offers, most of them require a lot of personal information and you have to agree to be contacted by promotional partners and other affiliates of the products merchants, it means that 20cogs do receive a number of complaints. You can obviously opt out of being contacted by advertisers but you will still get a certain amount of spam emails.
Some complaints consists of members being harassed with phone call and emails with promotional offers and advertising from marketing teams.
Others complain about the time delay of getting the cogs validated and also the complexity of the terms and conditions with some of the offers. A lot of people do get caught out with the terms conditions where they get charged a premium price once they're trial offers expire.
An Alternative To 20Cogs?
A great alternative to 20cogs is Swagbucks. This is the largest reward website online, as far as I'm aware, and they have a huge collection of rewards ranging from
- surveys,
- to shopping cashback,
- being paid to watch videos,
- being paid to search and many more.
Swagbucks is completely safe and is the industry leader with good payouts and a much simpler way of making money online by completing offers and completing small tasks.
Do I Recommend 20Cogs?
In my opinion, I would not recommend 20 Cogs. This is because:
- the variety of offers is too small.
- the complexity of the offers is too irritating.
- the payout is not worth the effort of monitoring the trial periods.
- the fact that your money is locked until you complete the 20 steps is unfair.
- the amount of effort involved for the payout reward is just not worth time.
Hi there. Some of these websites like 20cogs are there to waste your precious time. You provided swagbucks as an alternative. Is it open to people from all countries? I think I should give it a try one of these days. The major issue here is time. By the time you complete a survey, another person is doing something more constructive. That’s why I fail at feverr gigs because I don’t find the time worth it. Thanks a lot for this informative review.
As far as I am aware Swagbucks is available in the following countries:
IndiaUsUkGermanyAustraliaCanadaIreland
Yes, I agree with you, the time it takes to do a lot of these types of offers are generally not worth your effort. Which is a shame but it takes too long to complete these offers and the T&C are such that is it s often more cumbersome and confusing than the reward is worth.
Thanks for this great review about 20cogs. That is kinda crazy that you won’t get paid for around 30 days until they know you’ve completed your trial.
Also I’ve never been a huge fan of these kind of sites because like you said the task sometimes are very tedious and time consuming — with the reward being very little.
Thanks again for this review and if I do join something it will probably be swagbucks.
The idea behind these types of reward websites is great but in this case I can see it has been created with 20Cogs in mind, not the customer.
Every affiliate marketer knows that most people who join will not complete enough offers to fill the 20Cogs and get paid. This means that 20Cogs will make a commission from the merchants on every person who joins and completes just a few offers but the customer will be left in the lurch.
It is quite a clever marketing scheme when you look at it that way but quite misleading if you look at it from the customers point of view.
Hello! 20cogs is just a waste of time. Swagbucks is certainly a better alternative. Can I try this program from Albania? Even though I don’t think it’s the best method to make money I think I will give it a try. I’m currently busy with a full time job and an online business, so I hope to do my best to find some time to dedicate to this. Overall, I think that affiliate marketing is a better way to make money as you can also make passive income from your efforts, so it’s not just for the short time. I simply don’t find this worthy unless you are struggling financially and you need some income urgently. Anyways, thank you for this very informative review.
I do not think 20Cogs will work for people in Albania, it mainly focuses on US, UK & Canada I believe.
I totally agree, you are much better off spending your time with affiliate marketing or creating some kind of online business. Completing small tasks and trial like these are fun and some may be worth while but on the whole you will waste a lot time and effort for very little rewards.
Swagbucks is probably the most effective and best micro job website fro the vast variety and simplicity fo the offers and tasks available.
If you compare Swagbucks with 20Cogs then you will quickly see how narrow the potential profit is with 20Cogs. Swagbucks offers a much larger array fo offers and the potential for profit is much bigger.
Thanks for your comprehensive review on 20cogs.
These websites often look like lots of fun and intriguing to start with. And I’m tempted to sign up and give it a go.
But like you said if you have to complete 20 tedious tasks before you can even cash out most people are likely to give up before then and they get your efforts for free. And it would hardly be worth your time at the end of the day.
Thanks for savings me hours of my life that I would never get back!
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. Yes, as you can see it will take some time to complete all the offers and trials needed to qualify all the cogs.
I don’t think there are many people who bother completing these offers because it would simply take too long. Especially when you consider the small reward you get and the possible over laps and extra costs you could encounter if you forgot to cancel a trial membership or something.
I’m always on the lookout for new ways to make more money online, but at the same time I don’t want to be scammed either. I saw mentions of 20Cogs on a Facebook group, so thought I’d do some research and check it out further.
While it might not be a scam, after reading your review I realise it’s just another site that pays people peanuts for doing mundane tasks, basically consuming your time for very little reward.
You nailed it! That is pretty much the general theme of this service.