CashCrate Raises Minimum to $20, Offering PayPal Again

I was a little surprised to discover overnight that CashCrate has made some big changes in payment process... as well as another issue I might write about later.

On the plus side, CashCrate is now offering PayPal as an option starting this month - apparently they did have that at some point before. That's always a plus, being able to offer payment via PayPal.

Also, as of September 1st, CashCrate has raised its minimum cashout level to $20. I see a lot of discussion about it going on in the forum there right now - mostly negative - so I guess we'll see if they stick to that or not.

As anyone here reading for very long knows, I don't promote many sites here that have a cashout above $10. There is one that I enjoy a lot and am pretty active on, but don't get to cash out every month; a couple of others I am semi-active on, but not very active; and a few more that are $20 and $25 that were some of the first GPT sites I joined and they are part of networks with a good reputation, or have paid me, so I've kept them listed on the site.

I have a couple others with cashouts around $15 that I have yet to make since March, one I'm pretty active on but I'm also active on an associated site with a lower payout and tend to do more activity there. The other one, other people seem to have luck getting their offers credited but I don't have much luck there; however, the site has a good reputation and reputation for paying, so I've kept it on as well. I've been holding there around $13 for about two months now and thought I might be able to cashout in August, but looks like it will (hopefully) be September.

And at this time when advertisers seem to be getting pickier and pickier about crediting offers, when a site has a higher cashout level it's often hard to get to nowadays. Even the sites I frequent daily or just about, I have more offers denied lately it seems.

I was contacted last week by the new owner of a site I used to be sort of active on, and it sounds like there are some positive changes being made, and I had mentioned I probably would re-review the site here soon. But then when I re-read the e-mail, I noticed that the owner had (admittedly apologetically) also raised the minimum cashout level there to $20. I think I said a couple of months ago here that I would no longer promote sites with cashouts above $10 here on the site, other than the ones I already have listed (which, technically, this one used to be listed). But given the $20 change, I'm not sure whether I will add it back now or not.

But by far, probably the most stellar reason NOT to raise the cashout level for any site out there now is twofold...

One, not only do potential members tend to lose interest, but so do many of their potential referrals. It's not the easiest thing in the world getting referrals nowadays, so that kind of hurts that too. High cashout levels are not much of a referral magnet.

And readers here at Miss Money Hunter's Guide definitely don't much care for the higher cashout sites. I also only have to take a look at my stats on the GPT sites I have listed here to see that $20 and above cashouts are just not popular. I have bunches of referrals at almost all the sites listed here that have $10 and under cashout minimums. With the exception of two sites (and one of those, only a couple of active referrals), I have only one or two or three referrals at all the GPT sites I have listed that cashout at $15 or above - including the higher cashout sites that have paid me in the past. In a couple of cases, zero referrals at $20 and up sites.

The referral activity that is coming from here, this site, is just not signing up much for the sites that only pay out at $15 and above. Again, GPT offer sites with $20 and $25 cashout levels are just not big referral magnets.

That said, and second, there's two sites here that actually lowered their cashout from $10 to $5, and another that is now paying twice monthly instead of once a month. One is by far my most popular site with the most referrals that have signed up through me, and the other is very popular with Miss Money Hunter's Guide readers as well.

I'm sure there are more sites around that I'm not a member of that have done much the same lately, and in fact, not too long ago I saw that one of the largest and longest established sites was considering lowering their relatively high minimum as well (I wish they would).

So I'm not sure this is a real good time to be a high cashout level site, especially if you are not a brand new site and you are raising or doubling your cashout level.

CashCrate is pretty popular and also happens to be part of the Marketing Pond suite of moneymaking opportunities, so since I do most of my promoting aside from here with the Pond network of sites and ops, I was kind of disappointed to see CashCrate move in this direction. Especially since I think ALL of my CashCrate referrals came through my Marketing Pond promotion efforts.

For me personally, I find lately I'm actually tripling or at least going over minimum cashout at the $5 and $10 sites I do frequent a lot as it is, but at least I know I don't usually have to sweat making cashout at those every month. And I think those policies just attract more activity anyway, both for that reason (not having to sweat making cashout) or just because people tend to put more effort into supporting sites that make it easier to earn and cash out.

In any case, I guess we'll see what happens with CashCrate. I'll be interestedly watching the continuing discussion about it in their forums, in any case, and will post if there are any changes to the new policy.