Why I Don’t Promote or Recommend 20 COGS

Nick Making Money reviews 10 Comments

Over the last few weeks I’ve received several queries about 20 COGS. I’ve also seen people asking about it on Facebook. Some of my fellow UK money bloggers have been promoting it as well.

I did try 20 COGS myself about 18 months ago. I didn’t like it and have therefore never written about it or promoted it (and I’m not now, so there are no affiliate links in this post). As it still seems to be generating a lot of interest, however, I thought I’d share my experiences (and opinions) about it here.

I guess I’d better start with a word of explanation, though…

What is 20 COGS?

For those who don’t know, 20 COGS is a home money-making opportunity. The way it works is that you undertake a set of twenty online tasks. Once you have completed all twenty as specified – and not before – you receive a cash reward. This is generally between £150 and £200, but you are likely to incur some costs in completing the tasks (e.g. paying for trial subscriptions) and these will need to be deducted from your reward to calculate your net profit.

The tasks are, of course, the twenty COGS in the name. COGS stands for Competitions, Offers, Gaming, Surveys. A typical task might involve signing up with an advertiser for a free or low-cost trial subscription (which you have to remember to cancel before they start charging the full monthly amount). Or it might involve signing up to an online casino site and wagering a set amount of money on their slot machines. It might also just involve filling in a (long) survey, but quite a few tasks do involve some financial outlay (with the risk of more if you don’t cancel in time).

My Experience

I saw 20 COGS recommended by a few bloggers I generally trust, so decided to give it a go. Unfortunately I didn’t prepare as well as I could have done, which was my first big mistake. In particular, I made the rookie error of giving out my own email address and mobile phone number.

I soon discovered that this was a serious mistake, as after the first few tasks I began getting spammed mercilessly. The spam emails weren’t so bad, as they were generally filtered out by my email program. However, my mobile phone became unusable due to the torrent of marketing calls and text messages I received. In the end I had no alternative but to bite the bullet, cancel my mobile number and get a new one. In my defence, I naively assumed that this wouldn’t happen due to GDPR and data protection rules – but when you sign up with 20 COGS these appear to go out the window.

I also had problems with some of the tasks. To start with, I couldn’t do quite a few of the gaming ones due to previously being a matched bettor. This meant I had already signed up with many of the websites concerned so I wasn’t eligible for the tasks in question. In those circumstances you can ask for a substitute task but this all takes time and in my case there weren’t enough replacement tasks available (although over time new ones do of course get added). As I mentioned earlier. this was about 18 months ago, so it’s possible there are more alternative choices available now.

I also had major reservations about the amount of personal information some of the survey-related tasks asked for – from holiday plans to dates of renewal for home and car insurance. Pretty obviously, this information was likely to be used for (unwanted and intrusive) marketing purposes.

Eventually, after completing about half a dozen cogs, I decided enough was enough and closed my account. That didn’t stop the spam, but at least I could breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to do any more tasks. Of course, I got no money for the ones I had done, which I assume is one major way 20 COGS make their profits.

My Recommendations

As I said at the start, based on my experiences I don’t recommend signing up with 20 COGS at all.

It is an awful lot of hassle to go through for a probable net profit of £100 or so after costs are deducted. And you can easily end up with less than this if you forget to cancel a subscription (which is very easy to do).

If, despite all this, you are still tempted to give it a try, here are my recommendations…

1. Sign up via the link on Top Cashback. This will earn you an extra £1.20 cashback (at the time of writing).

2. Before starting, create a disposable email address and use this for all tasks. You could set up a new email address on Gmail or use a free disposable email service like ThrowAwayMail.

3. In addition, don’t use your real mobile number. You could use a pay-as-you-go SIM, or pick a number from https://fakenumber.org/united-kingdom. They have a list of UK mobile numbers that are not in use currently.

4. Keep detailed records of everything you do and when you do it. To avoid unwanted charges, it is clearly essential to cancel subscriptions before you have to pay the full amount (but after the qualifying period required by the advertiser). You might also want to set up automated reminders on your phone or computer to do this.

5. Read and follow all instructions carefully. Every advertiser on 20 COGS has its own specific requirements and you need to follow these carefully or you may not be credited for the task in question.

6. Take screenshots as you complete your tasks. If an advertiser disputes whether you completed a task correctly, you will then have visual proof that you did.

Finally, bear in mind that 20 COGS is a once-only scheme. After you have completed it, you won’t be able to do it again. It is not an ongoing money-making opportunity like matched betting or Prolific Academic, to take two random examples from the many I have covered on Pounds and Sense.

In Conclusion

As I said above, based on my experiences with 20 COGS I am not a fan and don’t recommend it.

It’s an awful lot of hassle to go through in order to earn £100 or so. And there is a very real risk of earning less than this if you make a mistake such as forgetting to cancel a subscription. There are also privacy issues, and you are potentially opening the door to a torrent of spam emails, texts, phone calls and more (though using fake/disposable mobile numbers and email addresses as recommended can reduce this).

Of course, this is just my opinion. I do know of people who have completed 20 COGS and (eventually) received a payout. If you are still on the fence about it, I recommend reading this comprehensive 20 COGS review by my colleague Adam who blogs at Money Savvy Daddy. Adam did actually complete 20 COGS and says he made about £100 from it. He is honest in his review about the time it took and the obstacles he faced along the way, however.

As always, if you have any comments about this post – or 20 COGS more generally – please do leave them below.

Get the Best Cashback Deal Every Time With CashbackAngel

Nick Making Money reviews 0 Comments

Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of cashback websites (see my post on How to Save Money With Cashback Sites, for example).

Cashback sites give you money back when you shop with a wide range of online retailers. In the UK the two best known are Quidco and Top Cashback, but there are others as well.

All cashback sites offer different deals which change frequently, so it can be hard to assess which has the best offer at any time. However, a new comparison website called CashbackAngel promises to make this task much easier.

CashbackAngel

CashbackAngel allows you to quickly check and compare deals on offer from cashback sites for any online retailer you may be planning to purchase from. It is therefore much more than just a website that lists and compares cashback sites.

I have posted a screen capture of the CashbackAngel front page below.

The main search box is at the top of the screen and lets you search for any merchant. Below this are example merchants showing the best deal currently available for each one, both in terms of percentage cashback and travel points (should this interest you).

Let’s say you want to find which cashback site offers the best deal for purchasing from Marks & Spencer. Enter the retailer’s name in the search box and click on the search icon. When I did this, the results below were displayed.

As you will see, in this instance CashbackAngel displays results from four different cashback websites: Top Cashback, Quidco, Kidstart and Virgin Money Back (If you’re not familiar with Kidstart – I wasn’t – it’s a site that pays cashback into a dedicated children’s savings account).

In this example, Top Cashback (along with Kidstart) looks as though it might offer the best deal, with cashback of up to 2%. Obviously you would need to check on the Top Cashback site to find out their exact terms. You can do this by clicking through the link on the CashbackAngel results page (shown above). When I did this myself, I found that new M&S customers arriving via Top Cashback get 2%, returning customers 1%.

As you can also see from the screenshot above, cashback is by no means the end of it. If you are collecting Air Miles, CashbackAngel lists a number of providers who are offering these in exchange for shopping with the retailer in question. And you can also earn Hotel Points for various hotel chains if that is your preference.

My Verdict

Overall, I was impressed with CashbackAngel. In particular, I like the way it compares offers in real time, so you can always see which cashback site has the best deal at the time of asking.

It is also good to see a wide range of cashback and rewards sites included – though slightly disappointing that the new My Money Pocket website (which I reviewed here) doesn’t appear to be included currently. Hopefully this will be added soon. [UPDATE: I just heard from CashbackAngel that they intend to add My Money Pocket by the end of January 2020.]

If you use cashback sites – and in my view everyone should! – CashbackAngel is well worth checking out and adding to your online bookmarks.

As ever, if you have any comments or queries about this post, please do leave them below.

Disclosure: Some links in this article include my affiliate code. If you click through and make a transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect any rewards you receive or terms you are offered.

Make Money From Your Shopping With ShopandScan

Nick Making Money reviews 2 Comments

For about three years now I have been a panelist with ShopandScan. This is an ongoing market research programme run by a company called Kantar Worldpanel.

I got an invitation to join ShopandScan in the post, but you can also apply directly if you wish (see below). I now receive £10 reward vouchers every few weeks just for scanning my shopping and my till receipts.

How it Works

After accepting the invitation to join ShopandScan, you receive a membership pack in the mail. This includes a User Guide and a barcode scanning device or ‘clicker’ (see picture above).

As a panelist, you use this to scan all shopping with barcodes coming into your home. You also scan barcodes in the User Guide to indicate who in your household did the shopping, the store concerned, and how much was spent.

There are also barcodes to scan for items that don’t have codes themselves, e.g. loose fruit and vegetables. Finally, there are barcodes to scan when an item is on special offer or part of a multi-buy offer. You can see a sample page of the User Guide below…

You have to upload the scanned data via the ShopandScan website once a week (at least). Full instructions are provided, but it isn’t rocket science. Basically you plug the clicker into a USB port on your computer and follow the instructions in the User Guide.

For doing this, you receive points. You get 1100 points a week for uploading the data from the clicker. In addition, you get 500 points a week for uploading scans of all your till receipts (unfortunately you don’t get points for each individual receipt). So each week that you do these things, you earn a total of 1600 points. Occasionally (e.g. at Christmas) they award extra points, to allow for the fact that it’s easy to forget at busy times of year.

The points accumulate in your account and once you get to 10,000 you can redeem them for a £10 electronic gift voucher. These are available for a variety of online retailers. I normally choose Amazon, as I buy stuff there all the time. However, you can also get vouchers for Waterstone’s, Halfords, W.H. Smith, and many more.

As well as getting points for uploading your data and submitting till receipts, you can get them in various other ways. One is by completing questionnaires about some aspect of your shopping.

Recently, I was offered a questionnaire regarding my purchase of own-brand almond milk from Morrison’s. They wanted to know why I bought it and when and how I intended to consume it. It only took a few minutes to complete and I got 300 points for this (equivalent to 30p).

There are other point-earning opportunities as well. Right now I am signed up to another project which involves allowing access to the browsing history on my smartphone. I know not everyone would feel comfortable about this but I don’t object personally (all data is anonymised) and it means I get an extra 500 points every week for no effort (it’s all done via an app).

You may also be offered the opportunity to take part in other studies. I did one a few months ago that involved completing a food diary listing everything I ate and drank for a week. Although I got points for this I found the task rather tedious, and declined when they offered me the opportunity to do it again. There is never any problem if you decide to turn down an invitation in this way.

How to Apply

As I said earlier, I got my invitation to join ShopandScan in the mail. I don’t know how they chose me or got my name and address.

However, you don’t have to wait for an invitation. If you wish to join ShopandScan, you can register for free at https://www.volunteer4panels.com. There is no guarantee that your application will be accepted immediately, as they aim to keep the panel balanced across age groups, locations, domestic circumstances, and so on. From what I have heard, though, once you have applied there is a good chance you will receive an invitation within a few weeks, or months at most..

Closing Thoughts

Clearly nobody is going to make a fortune from ShopandScan but it can be a great addition to your portfolio of sideline-earning opportunities. Once you get used to scanning your shopping before putting it away, it really isn’t much of a hassle. If you do some questionnaires and so forth as well, you can easily make over £100 a year.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post (or ShopandScan in general), please do leave them below.

Review: The Best 10 Low Cost Home Business Plans

Nick Making Money reviews 0 Comments

Today I am reviewing an e-book (and bonuses) titled The Best 10 Low Cost Home Business Plans by my UK blogging colleague Gerri Spiers. Gerri was kind enough to send me a free review copy.

As the name suggests, this is a guide for anyone hoping to set up their own business, whether to escape a job they dislike or simply to provide a route out of unemployment. Many of these businesses could also be run part-time to provide a sideline income and/or to fit in with childcare or other caring responsibilities. They could also work for older people or people with disabilities who may not want (or be able to cope with) a full-time job.

The Best 10 Low Cost Home Business Plans is a downloadable 112-page ebook in the standard PDF format. It is professionally written and presented, with illustrations where appropriate. There are also clickable hyperlinks to relevant websites and resources (this is a particular benefit of the ebook format, of course).

It wouldn’t be fair to Gerri to reveal exactly what all the businesses are. However, what I can say is that they are generally the type of business I see many ordinary people in my area running today, and they address a large target audience that clearly needs such services. These are not, for the most part, online businesses, but real-world local services for which there is a proven demand. They are definitely not get-rich-quick schemes. You will need to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and put in some hard yards – but if you do this, the rewards should definitely come.

Although (as per the title) these can be run as home-based businesses, many will also involve going out and about to meet clients, provide services, negotiate with suppliers, and so forth. As the title indicates, none of these businesses would be expensive to set up.

For each plan, Gerri sets out what the business involves, whom it is best suited for, the skills and/or qualifications required, and how much you may be able to earn. She also sets out a range of useful resources, organisations to join, and so on. The resources are predominantly UK based – not surprisingly, as Gerri lives here – but many of the plans would work just as well in other parts of the world too.

Gerri also goes into some detail about how to market the business in question. The book is particularly strong on this, with sensible, practical suggestions that will raise awareness of your business and help attract more clients to it.

In the opening chapter the book sets out some general advice about setting up a business. This is concise but sensible, and links are provided to additional resources for further information. Finally, the book closes with a chapter of useful websites, and some inspirational final thoughts that will have you champing at the bit to get started 🙂

One small criticism is that, while there is a table of contents at the front of the ebook, it is not hyperlinked to the chapters in question. For ease of reference and navigation this would have been helpful.

Bonuses

In addition to the main ebook, buyers get two bonus items.

The first of these is a 92-page PDF ebook titled 50 Tried and Tested Hacks to Help Grow Your Online Business (see picture below).

I was slightly surprised that the title of this ebook refers to online business, whereas the main guide is more about running a ‘real world’ business. It is, however an in-depth guide to promotional techniques that can be used to promote any type of business.

Each of the 50 ‘Hacks’ takes up one to three pages. In them Gerri sets out a particular marketing strategy or tactic followed by a single paragraph ‘takeaway’ which sums it up. For example, one suggested strategy is to offer a number of differently priced upsells. The takeaway for this is: ‘Offer a range of differently priced upsells to customers to increase the total of each sale. Upsells are complimentary or additional options on an offer a customer is already purchasing. Include at least one.’

I thought there were some great tips in this bonus guide, and some – such as using the word ‘only’ when quoting prices – that seemed to me rather stating the obvious. But then again, I am a 63-year-old semi-retired copywriter, so maybe what is obvious to me isn’t as obvious to someone who is just starting out!

One thing I did like about the bonus guide is that (unlike the main ebook) the table of contents at the front has active links.

The third and final bonus is a downloadable cashflow forecast spreadsheet, in Microsoft Excel format. Anyone who is planning on starting a new business should have one of these, as it will indicate the predicted flow of money in and out of the business, and highlight when and how any possible cashflow problems may occur. In addition, if you are applying for a loan from your bank or a grant (if you can find anyone offering these now!) you will need to provide one of these as part of your business plan.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I was very impressed with The Best 10 Low Cost Home Business Plans. If you are considering setting up a business from home and looking for some realistic ideas that won’t cost a fortune, there is no doubt you will find much to inspire you here. The plans are varied and don’t generally require any special skills or training. Whatever your background, whether you are male or female, old or young, you are bound to find one idea – and probably more – that could form the basis of a successful, money-making business for you.

The guide (and bonuses) should also represent a valuable resource once you have started your business, with lots of practical tips and techniques you can use to attract more clients for your business and grow your income.

For more information, click on any of the links in this review or click here to go to Gerri’s website.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.