Have you ever wanted to make money by playing games? Freecash allows just that. Freecash is an online platform that allows users to make money by completing tasks, surveys and offers. Payouts can include gift cards, cryptocurrency and bank deposits. Upon first look, this seems like the perfect side hustle until you actually become involved with the website.

Freecash gives you a list of games you can play to earn some money. There are some free games available, but others require a premium subscription. I decided against the subscription option because it made no sense to pay Freecash to pay me – I would just be losing money in the end.

One free-to-play game that I found on Freecash was “Idle Bank.” It seemed easy enough, the user just has to upgrade the bank’s appliances using the money that the bank earns over time. Freecash offered to pay me 30 cents just for downloading the game. I downloaded “Idle Bank” and found that Freecash would pay me 10 cents for watching advertisements in the game. The first day, I sat and watched advertisement after advertisement, earning booster after booster. I eventually gave up because it took forever to reach the ten cents.

Then, Freecash offered me $75 if I could reach a “level three” bank in three days. To reach new banks, users must complete various tasks. The first bank’s tasks were easy to beat, but the second bank was much more difficult. Earning money took forever as I just sat and watched the money icon crawl into the millions to upgrade appliances and beat tasks. After two days, I decided making it to the third bank was not worth staring at my phone for hours on end – I gave up on the $75.

An offer popped up on Freecash not long after I gave up on “Idle Bank.” The offer was for $5 to download three new apps, so I scrolled through Freecash’s offerings and found “Domino Dreams” and “Homescapes.” I had seen “Homescapes” through advertisements in the past, so I decided to try that first.

The game itself was not bad; however, I ran into the same issue with this game that I did with the last. I had to reach a certain level in so many days. I went through the game rather quickly, but I ended up getting bored of routinely completing levels all day. I did not make any money from “Homescapes.”

“Domino Dreams” was a problem in and of itself, as completing levels on that game was difficult. I kept running out of coins, so I could not advance to the next level, meaning I wasn’t making anything from Freecash. To be rewarded on Freecash, I needed to unlock worlds in “Domino Dreams” and I couldn’t unlock worlds without beating levels.

Safe to say, I was tired of playing games, so I only made $8 on Freecash that whole time. However, Freecash requires users to have made $20 before cashing out.

I moved on to trying the Freecash surveys. The platform asks for personal information, including age, gender, race and tax bracket. With my demographic (as a white, 18-year-old female student with no job), every survey I tried to complete flagged me for being an unfit individual to answer questions on the topics. Oftentimes, I was able to spin a wheel for coins, but I’m not sure where those coins went after winning. The surveys did not seem worth the extra money to me.

I ended up deleting my Freecash account and all of the games I downloaded after five days. I made a total of $9.91 after wasting away a full week of my time, which I was unable to cash out.

If you are someone who can sit and play games from sunrise to sunset, this side hustle may be for you; however, as someone who rarely plays games on my phone, Freecash just simply felt like a waste of time.