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When you’re looking for additional ways to make money – a little here and there – it all adds up. And 20cogs is great as you can do it alongside your usual commitments. Armed with all the information you need below, 20cogs is an easy side hustle you can do from home. Here’s my full 20 Cogs review.
Table of Contents
Is 20 Cogs a Legitimate Site?
Yes, it’s 100% legitimate. When managed properly, can result in some additional money for you to pay off debt or put towards savings. Or, cover a treat for you and your family!
It’s not a scam, and they have a 4.2/5 rating on Trustpilot, with an average payout of £200.
So, What is 20 Cogs?
Competitions
Offers
Gaming
Surveys
20Cogs is a website where you complete signup offers of your choice, enter competitions and take part in surveys and games. You earn a payout for each task you complete. From this perspective, I would say it’s very similar to how cashback sites work.
There’s no cost to actually join 20cogs, but there is some work involved in completing the offers.
How Can I Make Money with 20 Cogs?
Basically, you are rewarded for signing up for free trials OR special offers on various products or services.
Some examples include LifePoints (survey panel – earned me £5), Readly subscription (earned me £7), GoHenry free trial (earned me £10). If you don’t like the look of a particular offer, you can ask for a different one.
Some offers may not apply. For example, if you’re already a subscriber to a service, or if you have no need for something.
How Much Can You Earn with 20 Cogs?
Though they have an average payout of £200, it depends on the offers you choose and whether you’ve already signed up for a service prior to using 20 cogs.
For example, if you’ve ever tried matched betting, you might already have accounts with certain bookmakers, so may not be able to complete those offers. Or you might not want to be tempted by those kinds of offers.
(And if you have a tendency towards gambling then I strongly suggest you ignore those ones and choose “or give me a new offer!”).
I did matched betting when I first began my journey into side hustles and earning extra money to pay off debt/increase income. Because of this, a lot of those offers aren’t available to me.
Do You Have to Spend Money on 20 Cogs?
Some of the offers do require a little outlay in order to earn the reward. As an example, one of my most recent cogs for The Republic of Cats paid out £6.
However, the task was to sign up for a 2 week trial of cat food for £2.50, so my true earnings for this task were £3.50.
However, I have a cat and she needed feeding, so it wasn’t wasted money!
Other examples might include trialling a Graze box for £1.00 (£4.50 reward). It’s a case of working out which of the offers work best for you.
Is 20 Cogs Worth it?
Our time is precious. That’s why when a new money-making opportunity presents itself, we want to know whether it’s going to be worth our while.
Ultimately, you can’t get something for nothing, and anything that requires earning money is going to require at least some effort.
How Much Time Do I Have to Spend on it?
It depends on which offers you choose. But most of the offers I’ve completed involved the basic requirement to sign up and confirm your email address.
One of the offers to sign up for a survey site also needed me to complete a survey of my choice. Unfortunately (due to not filling out my screening profile) I was screened out repeatedly and spent far too much time on it. Once I’d filled out the screening profile, I completed a survey within less than 10 minutes.
It took me 30 minutes to 1 hour a couple of times each week to get to 10 cogs. Based on that, if it takes 4 hours to make just £100, that’s well worth the hourly rate (and worth a lot more than doing surveys for a few pence!).
As long as you’re organised (see tips below on how to make the most of 20 cogs), it should be more than worth the few minutes you spend on it each day or week.
What Are the Best Offers on 20Cogs?
The higher-earning cogs are usually the ones that require you to sign up to lottery sites or bingo/free spins. At the time of writing, signing up to Foxy Bingo pays £15. (Though you do need to deposit £5 into your account and play through it first in order for the cog to complete).
Any wins are yours to keep, but there’s the chance that you might not win anything, so would only make £10 on this offer.
Another offer (at the time of writing) involves signing up to a trading platform to earn £20, though you will need to invest £10 to start trading. Of course, if investing and trading isn’t something you’re familiar with, then you might want to choose a different offer.
Something as simple as signing up for a free 7-day streaming trial could earn you £5. (Just remember to cancel if you don’t plan on subscribing.)
Top Tips to Get the Most Out of 20 Cogs
To be successful with this little side hustle, it takes a little more than simply signing up to free trials. For starters, (like most things money!) it pays to be organised. Trying to complete too many offers in one day and not tracking them will cause frustration and confusion. Here’s how to make your experience with 20Cogs a smooth and easy ride.
- Treat this like a job. Use a dedicated notebook to log everything dedicated to your 20cogs progress.
- Set up an exclusive email address for your new offers. I used a simple Gmail one. The reason for this is that you’ll receive lots of follow up/marketing emails from the trials you’ve signed up for, and you won’t want them clogging up your inbox. Don’t forget to make a note of your email address and login details in your 20cogs notebook!
- Write down the numbers 1 – 20. List each offer you complete in your notebook, making note of the date you started the offer, your reward amount once the offer has completed, and any outlay you have had to make (e.g. £1.99 postage). This is so you can determine the true value of your earnings.
- Take a screenshot of the confirmation of EVERY offer you complete, such as an email confirmation, or a confirmation on your screen. Save these in a dedicated folder on your computer or phone (e.g. 20cogs screenshots). This is in case you need help to move your cog to “complete” via the Helpdesk (see below for more information on this).
- Track your progress by checking the colour status of your cogs. Grey means it’s waiting to track (similar to when you use a cashback site for purchases). Amber means it has tracked, and Green means it’s confirmed. Once all 20 cogs are green, you can cash out.
- Aim to complete 1-2 cogs a day to keep things simple.
How Do You Complete 20 Cogs?
You have to complete all 20 cogs before you can cash out. Your cogs will turn green when they are complete. They will be grey while waiting to track, then turn amber once they’ve tracked, which can take up to 2 working days. The screenshot below (which is from when I first started doing 20cogs) states that the offer will track within 71 hours. You can see in the screenshot further down the page that it has now turned green.
You may have to wait a few days or perform a required step with the vendor before the offer is confirmed. In this situation, a cog may remain amber for up to 30 days while the advertiser checks you have fully completed the offer.
For example, with my Republic of Cats trial, I must stay signed up for the full 2 weeks.
Each time a cog completes, your reward balance updates, so you can see this growing as you work your way through them. And for every cog you complete, another cog is unlocked.
How to Cash Out Your 20 Cogs
Once all 20 cogs are green, a ‘claim’ button will display and you can cash out via PayPal or BACs. The money will appear in your account within a few working days.
What To Do if There’s a Problem
If there are any issues that you need help with, the Helpdesk is on hand to support you. Most of the issues that you might have to deal with will just be a case of progressing the offers. One of the most common ticket queries is “Why is the Cog still Grey?”
You’ll need to provide evidence of your offer sign-up/progress (hence why it’s important to take screenshots of confirmation and date if applicable). If there’s a delay in your cog turning Amber (status: tracked), you can ask the Helpdesk to move the Cog along when you provide your confirmation.
I also had an issue with a system glitch where an offer had changed before I’d completed it, and the Helpdesk rectified that for me. This was a one-off and has never happened again, so it could have been user-error (me)!
Proof of Payout
***UPDATED*** April 2022: The screenshot below confirms that I have now cashed out my £100 from 20cogs, which was paid into my PayPal account as shown in the subsequent image. You’ll notice from the screenshot below that I have the option to continue completing more 20cogs offers if I choose to.
Image below shows status of having unlocked all 20 cogs prior to cashing out.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I have now completed all offers. I have one cog left to turn green (currently tracked, but pending), after which point I’ll be able to cash out the £100 I’ve earned.
£5 Bonus When You Sign Up
I hope this full and honest review of 20 Cogs has given you everything you need to know to make an informed decision.
To get a £5 bonus when you sign up, click the button below (affiliate link).
FAQs
You can do more than 20, if you want! Once you’ve completed an offer, you can ask for another offer. I would suggest completing all 20 cogs, then request any new offers before you cash out if you want to earn more. It might be more difficult to set up a new account if you’ve already completed some of the offers, as this could reduce the amount of offers to sign up to if you’ve previously signed up.
If your account has been suspended, the 20Cogs website states that if your account was created more than 12 months ago, it has been closed because the majority of offers that were available to you have now closed.
However, I joined 20Cogs back in early 2020, and abandoned my progress when the pandemic hit. However, I have been able to sign in periodically with the intention of keeping my account active. Now I’m revisiting it and am close to cashing out – with 18 cogs progressed as of 11/11/21. Note – it definitely shouldn’t take this long! If you follow the tips above and stick with it, it’s likely you’ll cash out in a few weeks.
If you forget your password, you can simply click “I forgot my password”. If you can’t remember the email address you signed up with, it’s worth contacting the helpdesk, which you can do so here.
Sign up to 20 Cogs today and see how much you can earn.
If you’re looking for a longer-term view to making money, take a look at 17 UK Side Hustle Ideas You Can Start for Free in 2022.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to write for a living? If so, read my full honest review of the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy’s Filthy Rich Writer Course.