Apps for Micro Jobs: Earn Money with your Smartphone
Earn money easily with your smartphone or tablet with micro jobs. Be warned though; Some of these apps are threatened with aggressive advertising.
The essentials in brief:
- Micro job apps advertise that you can easily earn money for small tasks with your smartphone or tablet.
- But an investigation by the market watchdogs shows that this promise is wrong in some cases. The payout does not always work and you only get very few points for most orders.
- However, users of certain Micro job apps receive masses of advertising after completing tasks.
How do Micro job apps work?
The range of so-called micro job apps sounds tempting: You can use your smartphone or tablet to do small tasks – so-called micro jobs – in apps such as “Goldesel”, “Cash Pirate” and “Gift Wallet”. For example, if you take part in short surveys, download apps or watch advertising videos, you will earn points for doing so. You can later convert these into vouchers or credits, depending on the Micro job app, once you have collected a minimum amount.
If you have collected enough points to have them paid out (e.g. a $5 voucher for 5000 points in the “Goldesel” app), this minimum value of collected points for the next payout can increase with some apps for micro jobs. If you then want to convert the points you have earned next time, you may have to collect 10,000 points (for a $10 voucher) for the next voucher, for example.
Warning of dubious apps for micro jobs
But complaints in the early warning network of consumer advice centers show that not all apps for micro jobs seem to be serious. Against this background, the market watchdog team in Rhineland-Palatinate put three micro job apps to the test:
- Gold Donkey
- Cash Pirate
- Gift Wallet
All three apps are quite popular and have been downloaded by users more than a million times each from the Google Play Store.
Collecting points is very time consuming
The review shows: Collecting enough points for a voucher or credit is very time-consuming. For example, at least 5,000 points are required for a payout of $5 for the “Goldesel” app. However, most tasks only bring points in the one or two-digit range. For example, users often only get about 30 points for downloading a given app. In addition, the points for completed tasks were not always credited – the reasons for this remain unclear to the microjobbers.
It’s similar with the other two micro job apps “Cash Pirate” and “Gift Wallet”: Collecting the points is even more tedious here. In the test period of several weeks, it was not possible to get a number of points that could have been used to redeem a voucher.
App data used for aggressive advertising
For many micro jobs you have to disclose your data. E-mail address and telephone number are often mandatory information for completing tasks. Shortly after participating in sweepstakes and surveys in the “Goldesel” app, the market watchdog team received aggressive advertising calls. In addition, over 10,000 promotional e-mails accumulated in a single e-mail account set up specifically for this purpose within four weeks.
The advertising emails come from email marketing companies that the micro-jobbers have not given their consent to use their data. Because the data protection declarations and conditions of participation of the competitions or surveys do not cover a transfer to these advertising partners.
Micro job apps: tips for making money with your cell phone
If you want to earn a little extra with micro job apps or money making apps, find out beforehand whether the apps are serious or not. Otherwise you risk your personal data ending up with companies that misuse them for advertising purposes.
- A good indication of the seriousness of an app can be critical comments and ratings from other users in the app store. Please note, however, that reviews can also be fake. It therefore always makes sense to also look for reviews outside of the app stores.
- In general, you should always use your own data sparingly with apps for micro jobs.
- Micro job apps do not offer a real and plannable additional income. But if you want to earn vouchers or small amounts of money with small orders, you can do this with serious micro jobs.
- In any case, before registering with apps for micro jobs, it is worth researching what value the respective provider offers for completing the micro jobs. This is the only way you can estimate the cost-benefit ratio.
