Review: CashMagnet Part 1

Attribution: Author’s Own Work

CashMagnet is currently one of my favorite GPT apps right now. This is due to the fact that’s it’s one of the only truly passive apps that actually work. This app is specifically designed for passive use, as interacting while it’s in passive operation will reduce or stop your earnings. So this is definitely an app you should look into if you want some passive earnings. But it’s not without its quirks and hiccups, which I’ll discuss in the following series of blog posts.

How CashMagnet Makes Its Money

I’ll be honest. I don’t fully understand how CashMagnet works at the fundamental financial level. With most GPT apps, we get paid for watching ads and letting companies search our phones and monitor our Internet searching habits. I know CashMagnet makes money this way, but I know it makes money in other ways.

For example, I believe it makes money by having its users download games and other apps. Then when CashMagnet runs in passive mode, it opens those apps and runs them (by Level 6, CashMagnet downloads these apps on its own). Presumably this makes them (and the users) money, but I don’t quite know how that financial arrangement works. I assume app developers pay CashMagnet for app downloads and having users run the apps?

I notice that CashMagnet will seem to browse the web autonomously while in passive mode. How this makes them and the users money is something I don’t quite understand yet. One thing I do know is that CashMagnet is monitoring all the Internet traffic that goes in and out from your IP. I remember searching for a lawn tractor on Lowes.com one day while CashMagnet was running and the next day, I saw a Lowes.com lawn tractor ad on my CashMagnet phone. On the one hand this creeps me out a bit. On the other hand, this still happens when I’m on my laptop and I'm not engaging in any GPT activities. I’m also pretty sure it happens when I run other GPT apps, like those from Perk and Swagbucks.

Device Requirements

Any smartphone that can use Android 4.2 or later and has at least 8GB of storage should be able to run CashMagnet. 8GB should be enough if the phone is only used for CashMagnet. But if you use it for anything else you like to run on that phone, like Perk or Swagbucks, then you'll probably want 16GB of storage as it's a bit tricky to get 8GB to work.

The website also says the phone must have “root rights.” I assume this means it must be capable of being rooted, because none of my phones are actually rooted and they work fine. When CashMagnet first came out, I believe they required phones to be rooted, but this requirement is now gone. However, I have read that rooted phones earn more than nonrooted phones. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense.

I’m currently running CashMagnet on four Samsung phones: two J1 Luna phones (each running 6.0.1 Marshmallow), an S6 Active (running 7.0 Nougat) and a Galaxy Core Prime (running 4.4 KitKat).

The Galaxy Core Prime works as well as all the others, except the CashMagnet app pulls a lot of juice, running down the battery pretty fast. The result is a fairly warm phone while running CashMagnet. Even when taking extra steps to avoid battery bloat by running it on battery for a few hours a day, I can foresee battery bloat in a matter of months. But to be fair, this is my old daily phone and I’ve been using for the past 18 months or so and I got it refurbished and haven’t replaced the battery once.

How to Use CashMagnet

When you first start up CashMagnet, you’ll need to build up some passive earning time. You’ll start off with several hours of passive earnings potential available, but you’ll want to download as many game apps as you can to not only maximize your time available for passive operation, but to get more points. As of their writing, you get 20 points per app downloaded.

Over time, you may have more opportunities to download apps and get points and more passive time, but don’t expect more than a few apps every few months. One thing to keep in mind about the apps is that you’ll need to make sure you give permission in the apps to do whatever it needs to do, like turn on the microphone, manage calls, access your contacts or whatever. Not doing this (according to CashMagnet) will slow down your earnings.

Leveling Up

You will begin at Level 1, but after downloading several apps (3 as I write this), you’ll be eligible for Level 2. The more you level up, the faster you should be able to earn points. Also, each time you level up, you get a predetermined amount of points. For example, getting to Level 4 should get you 500 points (which is about 50 cents, in case you were wondering)

Getting to Level 3 requires you to run CashMagnet in passive mode for a set period of time. I’ve noticed this period of time changes. Sometimes it’s 24 hours, other times its 50. And after you reach this required amount of passive running threshold, you’ll still need to adjust some settings or grant some permissions to CashMagnet, such as making CashMagnet your default browser. It might take a little bit of trial and error to figure out exactly what CashMagnet is asking you to do, but you should be able to figure it out after a few minutes, depending on your Android version.

Going from Level 3 to 4 is tricky. It requires you to complete 5 “Watch and Install” tasks. The reason it’s tricky is that it’ll take a few days (CashMagnet says it takes “some time” for these opportunities to appear) of operation to get this first opportunity. And when you get it, it doesn’t always work properly. You’ll see a yellow “Watch and Install” star on your Home tab in the CashMagnet app. Simply click on the yellow star and follow its instructions. Don’t be surprised if the Watch and Install process doesn’t always work. It took me months to finally get 5 to work and credit properly. One good thing about these Watch and Install tasks is that you’ll get some points (around 100) for each completed task.

Getting More Time for Passive Mode

Besides downloading and installing apps, the only way to get more time in passive mode (that I’m aware of) is to simply shut down CashMagnet for a while. How long, I don’t know. I don’t know if there is rhyme or reason to how you build back up passive mode time, such as one hour off gives you another hour of passive mode running time.

More of the review in Part 2.