The CashCrate Blog

We’re adding Direct Deposit as a new payment method that will be available to Silver+ members starting on Monday. This is a great way to get paid faster–rather than waiting for a check to arrive, you can choose to have your CashCrate payment deposited directly into your bank account!

Starting on Monday, all US members with a referral level of Silver and higher will be able to select the new payment method under ‘My Account’. Simply enter your Direct Deposit information through our secure server and your payment will be processed this way automatically starting in August. This includes earnings for July, so you’ll have about one week to make sure your information is entered and up-to-date. Enjoy!

If you have a Twitter account, you can now follow Cratey to get the inside scoop on new updates and take advantage of promotions only available to Twitter users. Infact, we’ll be debuting our new coupon system there–exclusively for those following us!

If you’re not on Twitter, it’s a really cool (and free) tool to keep up on what your friends are doing. You can head over to Twitter to get an account, then visit CashCrate’s Twitter Page to subscribe to our updates.

Also, you may have noticed the coupon redemption form in the ‘Earnings’ section of the Members Area. Whenever you get a hold of a coupon, make sure you enter the coupon code in that form. They’re good for extra points and cash.

See you on Twitter!

We’re going to be releasing several cool way to interact with CashCrate.com over the next couple of months. The first is here–it’s a handy way to track offers so you’re updated automatically when new offers are added. For those of you familiar with RSS, you can add our feed URL to your current reader and you’re set.

If you’re not familiar with RSS, don’t worry. It’s really easy. RSS is a simple way of keeping up with your favorite blogs and other content without having to go to individual websites for updates. If you have a Google account, you can use Google Reader to get started.

Once your account is setup, just click ‘Add a Subscription’ then add our New Offers Feed URL: http://www.cashcrate.com/rss-offers.php. If you’re logged into Google right now, you can just click the link for our new offers feed and add it automatically.

While you’re at it, you may as well add the CashCrate Blog to your reader as well. Now, whenever we add new offers or make new blog posts, you’ll be updated automatically via your Reader!

We’re excited to announce CashCrate Games, a project we’ve been working on for a while that will be a lot of fun for our members, not to mention our staff. We have a bunch of cool games available, like Solitaire, Pool, Mega Stars, and several others.

Players use CashCrate points to enter tournaments against others and the winners get a bunch of points added to their account, which they can then use to buy cool gifts in our Prize Shop. The games are totally free to download, so check them out! We’ll see ya in the tournaments.

We’ve had a lot of requests for an “Ignore Offer” feature that would allow users to unclutter their offers list by hiding offers they weren’t interested in completing. Well, we just added it. You can remove an offer from your list by clicking the “X” next to the Submit button. If you decide you desperately miss seeing an offer after it’s ignored, you can unhide it by removing it from your “Ignored Offers” list.

We have a few payment changes that we want to bring everyone up to speed on. First of all, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be bringing PayPal back as a payment option starting September 1st. We’ve had a lot of requests for this addition over the last few months, and it should make it easier on those of you who simply can’t wait for your check to arrive. Best of all, we won’t be charging any fee for the service above and beyond what PayPal already takes out of the transaction.

To receive your payment via PayPal, you must have a Verified account. Then just login, go to “My Account”, select “PayPal” under “Payment Options” and enter your PayPal email address. Your monthly earnings will then be sent to your PayPal account instead of by check. Earnings from September and onward will be available through PayPal; payments from August and before can only be paid by check.

The other payment change going into effect September 1st is the minimum payment will be changed to $20. This won’t affect most of our users since our average check is well over $20, and it should help out your referral commissions by encouraging your referrals to more offers.

That’s all for now. Take care everyone!

UPDATE (09/04/08): To clarify, the minimum payout change will not affect the $3 bonus you receive when one of your referrals reaches $10–that’s still in place. We’re also aware that this is a significant boost from our previous minimum payout, and we definitely understand your concerns.

That said, we do have our reasons for raising the minimum payout. For starters, encouraging users do more offers not only helps their referrers make some extra cash, it helps us keep processing costs down so we can keep both PayPal and check payments free of charge. Also, as we said, the average check for a user is well over $20, so for most this won’t affect them at all. Many of our new users take advantage of the offers and daily surveys and make $50-$100 during their first month, so it’s not that difficult to reach $20 in a month given the options available.

Add that to the fact that we have alot of new offers and earning opportunities on the horizon (we just added a bunch of new offers last week), and we think there is no question our program is still the most attractive around, especially considering some of our current promotions and upcoming contests. Over the course of the last two and a half years, we’ve paid out roughly two million dollars, and evidence of checks received is all over the web. We’re going to continue to do just that, and bringing new opportunites to our users is still our main focus.

As CashCrate members your feedback is always welcome and appreciated, we consider it an invaluable resource to have so many users who are looking to make our company a little better everyday. Keep an eye out for good things to come this month!

Yeah, seriously. It might be hard to believe, but we’re actually giving away free gas cards–no strings attached. Here’s how it works:

Any member who earns $100 or more in a 90 day period will get a certificate, courtesy of CashCrate.com, that entitles them to $250 in free gas cards. After you get your certificate, just keep your gas station receipts and send them into the redemption center when they total $100 or more in a given month.

Then, campout by the mailbox, because your free $25 gas card will arrive within a few weeks. The gas cards work like a credit card and are redeemable at your favorite gas station for fuel or goodies inside. You can do the same thing every month for ten months and keep collecting your gas cards, for a total of $250 in free gas!

With gas prices being what they are, who couldn’t use the extra help? Most of us spend more than $100 at the pump each month without breaking a sweat, may as well collect on the free gas while you can.

All you have to do is earn $100 or more on CashCrate in any 90 day period, and your certificate will automatically be awarded to you. Between offers, daily surveys, and referral earnings, this should be a piece of cake. Take advantage of this promotion now, because it definitely won’t last forever!

UPDATE: For clarification, since this is a new promotion, the 90 day period for earning $100 starts today, and past earnings do not count. That way it’s fair to everyone (since we only have so many of these things).

We just launched a cool new feature — CashCrate Coupons — that brings a whole new meaning to free printable coupons. These are pretty much the best coupons you’ll find on the web, and it’s incredibly easy to use. Right now you can save on name brand products like Cheerios, Hershey’s chocolate, Dannon Yogurt, Fruit of the Loom, and much more.

Just head over to the Coupons section, print all the coupons you like, then take them along the next time you go shopping to save a few bucks. New coupons are added all the time, so be sure to check back frequently. Right now we have over $100 in savings available at your fingertips. In fact, I think I may need to do a bit of shopping..

Today we launched a new survey called the CashCrate Profile. After you login the site will invite you to answer some questions about yourself. This information will be used to better target offers as well as special surveys to you. US Members earn $1 for completing the simple two page survey. As always, please take the time to provide the most complete and accurate information possible.

This is just one of many new features coming soon, stay tuned!

Let us introduce you to a great new feature. The Contest Leaderboard, linked here, is our new automatic way of keeping members up-to-date regarding current contests. It’s available in the Members Area under “Contests” and will tell you all the juicy details on what you need to do to get your hands on some of the cash and prizes we’re giving away.

You’ll also be able to tell how you rank compared to other users, so you can tell how much extra work is needed to win. Cash prizes are automatically credited to the winning accounts at the end of the contest, and prizes are shipped soon after.

So, head over to the Leaderboard and see what we’ve got going on for March!