I just saw this post on John Chow’s blog. It is about a game to win money online, namely Incredible Cash Machine. In most cases, I will decide it is a scam when it says winning money or something similar as I thought there’s no free lunch in this world – but then Incredible Cash Machine is different. They doesn’t require any registration or information for you. All you have to do is play, and only provide contact information if you win (which wouldn’t be easy at all as there will only be one winner chosen every 24 hours). Winner will be granted $50. Not too much but is enough to make someone jump up and down if they win.

How to play

This part is interesting. I will call it the CAPTCHA game. Why so? To describe how to play this game in one sentence, “Enter the word correctly and be lucky“. In a few sentence, type the word shown in an image like the one below – correctly.

Example word that you need to type. This is easy, some are harder to identify

After typing them correctly, hit the enter button and it will tell if you’ve type the wrong words, or if your words are correct, or it is not the time. Why luck is needed? Everyday, a certain time will be chosen and the first person who get the right answer after the time is activated will win. Even entering the word correctly thousands of time but it isn’t the time, you don’t win. But if it is the time, only one submission will win you the $50. I have not won any from them, so I’m not sure how it is like if you’ve won the game, the $50 as well. To be honest, only very few people will play the game if it’s not money. It wouldn’t be fun at all if it’s not the money.

Business model

John is right that they monetize their website with 2 units of AdSense, but only if people don’t play the game. Every time you submit your answer, an ajax pop-up (no worries, pop up is done on the window itself, will not open in new window) will appear and tell you if you’ve get the wrong answer, not winning etc, and on the ajax pop-up itself there is a link unit AdSense. So in total they three AdSense units to fund their business model.

The ads are placed in strategic places that’s custom made for AdSense and they should be performing quite well and should be earning enough to pay the winners. While other AdSense unit just looks cool, the link unit in the ajax pop-up might violate AdSense’s TOS.

While playing around the website to review it, I found an small little easter egg on it. The $50 icon can be moved around, but when you let go your left click, it will be back to its original position. Wondering what is it for. If you won something from the website, please share some with me. Will you?