Friday, June 29, 2007

Hiatus Help

I'm thinking that maybe if I take a hiatus for the weekend my earnings will seem spectacular once I get back. Since I'm going out of town and won't have Internet access until Sunday evening anyway, that's what I'll do.

Of Note: I have maintained my "Hot Member" status at Triond and while my earnings stayed at $0.19 for awhile they have once again skyrocketed, this time to $0.34. Why? Well, 73% of those earnings are from one article about weight loss. I thought it looked like a popular subject, so I shared what I do. It was really easy, and legitimately fun.

Of Further Note: I have added SurveySpot
to the Stats. I joined awhile ago, but since I wasn't certain whether they were a scam or not I didn't want to link to them. They're a legit survey company. The only drawback is that most of their surveys don't offer direct rewards. Rather, they offer chances at winning prizes. That's all well and good, but it's not what I or this blog are about. However, they do sometimes offer paid surveys, and so far I've been told that I've earned at least $13.00, just by taking two surveys. The drawback there is that it takes up to six weeks for those earnings to be posted. Oh well. If I needed the $13.00 that badly I'd probably be in another line of work.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Hitting the Big Time

The Good News: I've made it to the top. Triond is listing me on their "Hot Members" list under the "Popular" section. (Pen name: Samantha Enns)

The Bad News: What made me popular? A total of 78 views which has garnered me $0.19. That's what it takes to be a "Hot Member"? By those standards the hottest members are earning maybe $1.75 a week. Oh well.

Other News: Those numbers mean I'm earning 1/5th of a cent per page view. Of course they have their own algorithms and whatnot, but that's with a mix of articles and photos. I couldn't find a site to give stats on this, so I'll supply them myself.

Other other news: Agloco has had a lot of downtime today. I'm wondering if they're having far more success and traffic than they had anticipated, or if they're just poorly managed.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Something I Actually Do Anyway

Yes, I waste my time online as a matter of course. But I wouldn't be choosing to waste it like this unless I were looking to earn money, right?

Well I found a site that pays you to use it as a search engine and to use its forums. They do a pretty good job, from what I can tell, and I like that they give you a preview of the site before you click on it, so you can browse more effectively. The money's not bad, from what I've been able to learn by researching. Go ahead, try it out. You know you want to.

The other thing I'm looking at is AGloCo. You surf the web with their toolbar installed, which sends info to advertisers, and they pay you in cash and shares. I'm not sure I buy their business model, but it's free and right now they're just building their network anyway. They're going to release the toolbar to people in the order they signed up, so get in line!

Edit: whatever website referred me was WAY out of date. The toolbar has definitely already been released.

Various Updates

I added Constant Content yesterday. They're more of a freelance service, which means writing tailored articles, but also getting paid more ($20-$50 per article). You can also just post content and wait for someone to buy rights to it.

I joined GlobalTestMarket awhile ago, and this morning I got my first survey offer. While I didn't qualify for the survey they offered, or the one listed on my homepage, GlobalTestMarket did give me the equivalent of $0.25 for trying to take each survey. They use a points system where 1 point is worth $.05. Their minimum to cash out is 1000 points, or $50, which is a lot, but I'm earning more there than anywhere else. It looks like it will take about as long to get to Triond's minimum payout of $0.50!

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Mitigated Success

I logged into Helium to check my earnings for the day, and they had skyrocketed to a whopping 17 cents! Why then don't my Stats reflect that, you ask? Because an "adjustment" was made which took 8 cents off my total! After much searching and digging, I eventually found a grain of factoid in their discussion forums which said that adjustments can be because articles which have earned money have been deleted. Problems with this system:

1) If an article has earned money (i.e., acheived financial success), why is it being deleted?

2) Any money earned is because of advertising. That money is earned by Helium, regardless of whether the article later becomes deleted. So when they delete your article and rescind your earnings, they're just keeping that money for themselves.

It gets better. The article that was deleted? The title I wrote under was "How long should Helium articles be?"

My article?

"Like a girl's skirt: long enough to cover the subject; short enough to keep it interesting."

The reason they deleted it?

"It was meaningless content."

Excuse me? I answered the question and the answer encapsulates its own message in its length, which is the subject proposed to be addressed in the first place! That's meaning on two distinct levels people!

Approved!

Blogsvertise has approved this blog! That was really fast! That means that I will occasionally be posting paid entries. Don't worry though, they can't pay for my integrity! I won't lie about the company or product, at least not anymore than I already lie to all of you!

Unfortunately, I don't have any assignments yet, so we'll see whether this site ends up being worth my time or not. Even so, I am updating the Stats table accordingly.

Slight Progress

I'm making four cents a day between Helium and Triond, which isn't half bad, and will only increase if I keep writing and submitting content. Submitting pictures to Triond hasn't earned me a cent yet, it's all from the two articles I've done.

I signed up for MyBlogLog today under retrogradesonnet. I think it's the first thing I've signed up for in this experiment that doesn't directly purport to make me money. I'm still not quite sure how it works. It seems pretty obvious that it's a giant community of networking bloggers, but how it could possibly succeed I'm not sure of.

I also signed up this blog for Blogsvertise, a site which pays bloggers to talk about certain advertised products on their blogs. It's one of the only ones that might take me even though my blog isn't 30 days old, so I've given it a shot, but I've yet to be approved, even on a probationary status. We shall see.

In the meantime I think I'll be focusing my efforts on writing articles for Triond which I will then post on Helium. Triond is better, but you can do both with barely more work, so why not?

Monday, June 25, 2007

Harder Than It Looks

Well, after getting all seven of my tips rejected in less than a day by DayTipper, I'm officially giving up on them. I did my research, tried to write well and on a variety of topics, but alas, no luck.

At least I've earned four cents on the content sites.

Normally at this point I'd get discouraged. But since I have the time to do this when I'm on the clock, I might as well, right? Four extra cents per week is more than I would otherwise be adding to my income.

It's funny, I'm now at the point where these pennies seem like Monopoly money or points, rather than spendable cash. Who would do this for the spendable cash? It's a crazy lot of hoops.

Publicity

For any of this to work at all, I have to be on a radar screen, right? So I'm going to blitzkrieg the web and try and get page views in the following ways:

-- Blog Listings: Earn Money on the Web has a great post with a whole bunch of blog listing sites where it's free to add your blog.

-- Link-backs: GaryConn.com is a big site with all sorts of info on how to make money online. He offers a link-back system (which I'm fulfilling the terms of at this very moment!) which is pretty sweet.

-- Ask and Ye Shall Receive: I'm also going to ask for link-backs to other respectable money-making info blogs like JesseBlogsItAll, which I adore already.

-- Offer and Ye Shall Receive? I am also extending an open link-back invitation. Link me and I will link you. Tit for tat. Mention me in a post (and let me know about it) and I'll do the same. Add me to a links list on the sidebar, and I'll put you in my "Free Lovin' Links" section.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Reluctant Opening

I have an addiction to starting things. I start websites and blogs and craft projects and novels on a regular basis. This addiction often prevents me from finishing anything. Ever. Which is why I am reluctantly writing the opening post of yes, a new blog.

I always want a summer project. This summer my project-on-the-side (you know, next to the paying job) has been to see if I can actually make money on the internet! I've pored through reviews and FAQs and wikis all to see what the best schemes are and what the best ways to go about them are.

I ran across this article which gives a pretty good overview of lots of ways to make money online, some of which I'd heard of, and some not. One new one was the idea of being paid to review something on a blog. Unfortunately, this requires (surprise, surprise) a moderately well-established blog. In my enterprising nature I thought, "Sure, I could have a well-established blog and do this and make money on the side!" but I realized that such was not the case and that in my desire to forever begin projects anew, I will never follow through.

(Sorry, didn't mean to rhyme that one.)

The one thing I have kept up with is my work through Google. Google is so EASY! You just sign up for the one account, it's only one password to remember, and you have all sorts of applications at your fingertips! Including Blogger!

So we'll see. I've got lots of time to kill at my job, and I'm trying to put it to good use. Basically the idea is to see if I can bum around online and accidentally earn some cash along the way, which is better than none!

To keep myself organized, so I don't forget to check my earnings anywhere, links to sites I'm currently using (and my username, in case you want to look up my work, or I forget what my login is...) will be to the side.

Could this be... off in the distance ... is that what I think it is? My goodness yes!

A PLAN!