1 BTC Project - The Case for Cambly just got worse.

As faithful readers may know, I have been using Cambly for quite some time now. The reasons for my continued use are as follows. Over the years I have made $3,285.65 USD while using Cambly. This platform has served me well.

I keep coming back for the following reasons.

Monetize free time
Double dip
Earn in USD
Free Money
Unlocking Receipt Hog funds.

Cambly is a great way to make some money in your free time. The priority hours feature is a nice way to book an hour into your calendar and make at least $2.50 USD. Most often in a priority hour I would get a 30 minute call and be paid $5.00 USD. 4 Priority hours per week would typically get me to the $20.00 USD payment threshold.

Obviously, point 3 is a currency play. $10.10 USD per hour is not a great payrate. This is in American Dollars. I live in the third world country of Canada, so at today's exchange rates I am being paid $14.15 CAD. Cambly has never issued me a T4 and I have yet to claim any of my Cambly earnings this means I make a the pretax equivilent of $30.45. This is would made it tolerable.

My total earnings pre-tax would have been $10,006.60 which is nothing to turn your nose up at.

It was not often that I would teach a full hour though, unless I had 3 priority hours back to back to back. Often I would log in for my priority hour, wait a few minutes to receive my first call, have a 30 minute conversation and the would only have 25ish minutes left. I would not be forced to take another 30 minute call if that extended past my priority hour. Sometimes people would call in with short blocks of time. I would take them if I was feeling up to it. If I wasn't I would take my 5 minute break to skip the call. Often if I only had 19 minutes left in my hour I wouldn't get another call.

When I first started tutoring on Cambly, a priority hour would be chalk full of students using a $5 for 5 minute free trial. 5 minutes is not enough time to do anything. Also many of the free trial users have poor internet so they would get disconnected and I would get paid for nothing.

Then meetings with students got longer in 2024. Which was a blessing. 15 minutes is just enough time to get through all the easiest small talk topics. Priority hours were easy to come by. I built a repour with a Chinese woman and spoke with her twice a week. Having those easy mid work day priority hours in addition my regulars made Cambly a fun, and productive side hustle. At this point I would book the 8:00 AM slot 5 days per week. Typically, no one would call in and I would get $2.50 each morning for getting to my desk early. At the end of the work week I would have at least $12.50 - or more than half of the weekly withdrawal amount. 1 or 2 calls on the weekend and I would be there. It was basically free money.

In 2025 the students began booking in for 30 minute meetings. This is fine, with the students that know how to hold a conversations. But holding a 30 minutes session with someone who is fiercely ESL is difficult. Paired with the loss of week day priority hours makes Cambly close to more work than faucet.

Today priority hours are even more difficult to come by. I have to really work to get to the minimum withdrawal level each week. Cambly, most of the time, is no longer free money. Unfortunately, the priority hour calendar is basically empty and I have nothing to book. I can typically book an hour or 2 on Sunday, but I don't want to spend 4+ hours on a Sunday in the summer to make $20.

Years ago I was able to pickup atleast1 or 2 priority hours during work hours. So I was being paid, and being paid. This was the double dip and it hasn't happened in a really long time.

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The last piece was that I have been using my Cambly to unlock my Receipt Hog funds. When I achieve 1000 points on the receipt hog app I am able to redeem them for $5.00 CAD in my PayPal. The hitch there is that $5.00 is lower than the minimum withdrawal amount. Even with the degredation of earnings, Cambly helped with this issue. Cambly was paying out weekly into my PayPay, the Receipt Hog money would have to sit for maximum a week. This too has changed.

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I will now have to get a Stripe account which is an annoyance, but not the end of the world. The (very thin) silver lining is that I am now forced to save up higher amounts of point in Receipt Hog. I can't count on Cambly to unlock the RH money. I was cashing out every 1000 points, now I am shifting to the maximum amount. I will cash out at 6500 points, actually will make me $7.50 more because of how they set it up.

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