My Money Making Journey

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More About Me..

I started documenting my money making journey a little over a year ago, and while I don't always keep up with it (especially between school and work), I love to learn and blog about ways to make money online. I want to help others who are trying to make money online. Come follow me on my Money Making Journey! View the programs that have worked for me and see some earnings. Join Me!

Another Tid-Bit

With the way that the economy is going, more and more people have found themselves with free time on their hands to do things they never had the time for before: spending more time with family, cleaning out the garage, getting to all those movies you haven't had the chance to watch. But as for me, I've taken the time to really begin focusing my efforts on utilizing the internet for money making!

Paid Surveys: Payment Proof

First I want to start off by saying that any website that is asking you to pay to make money from surveys is the scam site of the century. Paying to take surveys online is the equivalent to paying to start a job, which is absolutely absurd in the real world, but thousands of people get taken by this ploy everyday online. What these sites are offering instead is a view of a webpage that has a database of survey companies that you can sign up for. To their credit, the only advantage they add is the convenience of seeing all of the companies in one place, but that convenience is not worth the $35 bucks they charge you for it.

Moving on, I just wanted to post some payment proof that I received today from Lightspeed Panels today. This paypal payment is from about the last 3-4 weeks of surveys. What I like about Lightspeed Panels is the many different prizes that you can get. In addition to paypal they have a ton of popular DVDs and other small gadgets. But money is my favorite thing to redeem my point for. Which brings me to my next point...Lightspeed Panel operates on a point system. The smallest about you can redeem (for Paypal anyway) is 575 points for $5 in paypal. I am telling you this to give you an idea of the payment per survey. Looking in my account for the last 5 surveys I've taken this is what I see:
Ok, so the last 6 surveys I've taken since the start of the month. Sometimes you will have invitations for the larger surveys that payout 500 points, but mostly you will get invitations to the smaller surveys that payout an average of 75 - 200 points. So the next question you probably have is about the time it takes. The 500 point survey required about 30 minutes but in general, the surveys will take about 10 - 20 minutes to take based on the topic. From this picture you can also tell that Lightspeed Panels is pretty good at sending invitations pretty often. These are just the surveys that I have qualified for and taken, but there are many others that I have received invites for, but I have not fit into the demographic of people they are looking for. If you have a family, this is great because anyone in your household can take surveys so that if they are looking for a particular group of people (for instance a child, a parent of a minor, or a female over the age of 40) they might be present in your family. Any who, enough of that, here is my payment:
If you are looking for other survey companies that help me earn some extra cash, check out

Opinion Outpost is another really good company. In general they pay $2.50 - 3.00 for surveys and they use a point system as well that is a little easier to understand than Lightspeed Panels'. 230 points translates to $2.30 and so forth. I can say that the majority of surveys that I receive are right around this range or higher. The one thing that I do not like about Opinion Outpost however is the payout, which is only in checks. I wish that they would make the move to online payment and I look forward to that change in the future. Where I cannot fault Opinion Oupost is the amount of survey invitations that I receive. I will get about 4 - 5 invitations a day and while I may not qualify for all of them, I am glad to be given the opportunity to make more money. Check out a screen shot I took of my backoffice:
Granted this was a time when I had not signed in for some time, but regardless they ar
e pretty good at sending invitations often. One thing that sets Opinion Outpost apart is the termination rewards that they give, while another company that I take surveys with has termination rewards (I'll talk about it later), Opinion Outpost gives you three options. If you have started taking the screening portion of the survey that you find that you do not qualify you will be taken to a page that offers you three options for your termination reward - a thank you for taking the time to come to the site and try to take a su
rvey. You can 1. Make a donation to a charity 2. Enter into the sweepstakes 3. Play an instant win game. You would think that many people only choose the instant win or sweepstakes, but I often find myself clicking the donate button and something like $40,000 has been donated by members (at $0.10/click thats pretty great), although I most certainly try the instant win every once in a while. And the great thing about the Opinion Outpost is that they give you enough surveys to do both. Here is another shot of my backoffice and and idea of the money I've made with this company:

Sorry, no nice pictures of these next few companies, but they are still great earners for me

Survey Savvy is similar to the last two companies discussed, where they are different is in the earning system, the surveys that they send are based on dollars and cents so that you know automatically how much you will be earning when a survey comes along. I like that this Survey Savvy generally has short and sweet surveys that take about 10/15 minutes to take. Also Survey Savvy spends some of its own revenue on incentives for its members, so that in addition to the surveys they also send different booster surveys, and other tasks that its members can use to earn. Looking at my backoffice since my last payment I have taken 9 surveys and I have a balance of$18.50, so that is generally about $2.05 per survey. Although Survey Savvy does not send invitations as often as Opinion Outpost, they are paced with Lightspeed Panels, but what I can say is that they invitation that they do send are pretty accurately matched based on your profile surveys so that you have a pretty good chance of qualifying for the surveys that you are invited to take.

Nothing really to say about this company, they are again the same as the other companies. They utilize a points system as well, but it is much harder to understand, so that a 20 minute survey will be something like 8 points. Like Opinion Outpost, Ipsos also has termination rewards, but instead of just clicking a button they have fun games to play that result in extra points or more recently entries into sweepstakes. The game that they have running currently is a "Guess the Percentage game". They ask a question like: "What percent of American males smoke a cigarette in the morning?" You guess the percentage and based on where your guess is to the actual amount you are given sweepstakes entries that can be spent on a number of 4 different sweepstakes prizes that have been anything from a backyard makeover to $1000 AMEX gift card. What I will say about Ipsos is that the prizes on which you can redeem points are excellent. They have anything from gift cards to just about every major online retailer from Amazon to Sephora to Target, figurines, and electronics that range from small stop watches to 52" Plasma TVs (which I am currently working toward, lol).

If you are hoping to get involved with surveys online I would say that it is best to open a separate e-mail account separate from your personal account and use that to sign up with the companies. Be careful now, the compulsion here is that you will begin to use this e-mail account for other things, its so fresh and new, unadulterated by spam, and it will be that way if you use it just for the survey companies as well, but when you start to use this new e-mail for other things, spam will slowly begin to flood your inbox and can crowd out your survey invitation so that you might miss some good opportunities.

Please subscribe to keep informed of new companies that help me earn and comment if you have any questions!! Thanks

Writing Good Reviews Pays Off: LinkReferral.com

When I signed into LinkReferral.com today to check some of the reviews of my site, I noticed this box on the main page! My site is listed under the Top 5 Member Reviewers!!

For all of the times that I wanted to write simple one lined reviews or not complete all of the ranking requirement, I'm glad I didn't. If you are not familiar with LinkReferral, it is a traffic building website that is just more than typical traffic exchange. Websites are given a 24 hour locked in ranking based on the tasks that webmasters complete on the site.

For example, when I sign in today my website might be ranked at 60 in its niche category and 300 in the general listing, but after completing my tasks it may be listed at 13 in the niche and 120 in the general. What are the requirements you ask? Well you have to visit 30 website, review 5 of those 30 (or others if you wish), add a site to your favorites and post in the forum. Don't be intimidated by the list, it is actually not very hard to complete and it takes about 20 minutes tops. Once you have done this your rank is locked in for 24 hours.

From doing this, my website receives anywhere from 30 - 60 visits a day and more than that, the time that members take to review my site means that it is getting even more targeted traffic as opposed to the glimpse that it would receive from other traffic exchanges.

Anywho, by writing detailed and helpful reviews, LinkReferral has given my reviews a A grade and I've been ranked in the top reviewers gaining even more exposure for my site!


PayPerPost v4.0: Get Paid to Promote Other People's Blogs!


For all of the bloggers out there looking to monetize their blog, or bloggers who wish to increase the buzz around their blog, PayPerPost offers a structure that can help you do both. For those who are wishing to make some money, they can sign up and essentially pimp their blog out. Whether it be ad space on your blog that points to the advertiser, or a review of a blog, many blog owners out there are willing to pay to have you write about their blog to help get the word out. As a blog booster you will get paid on many different pay scales, that is per click, per review, etc.

If you fall on the other side of this line, that it the blogger who wants to increase their blog's reach, they offer a great database of ready and willing bloggers that want to write about your blog and advertise for you. With the large list of sites, it will be easy to find blogs that are related to your own that pull a decent amount of traffic.

The interface is really nice and easy to follow and makes it very simple to complete transactions whether you are a blogger accepting an opportunity to promote a blog, or a writer hoping to increase your site's popularity; and the great thing is that you can also be one in the same.

Check it out here: PayPerPost

QYAO: Final Update = Bad News!!

Those of you that have followed by blog for some time will remember me getting involved with a program called QYAO, and while it has not gone under like so many other programs on the internet, it has suffered from some problems that led to a lot of member distrust and changes in the structure of QYAO that caused disinterest.

So for this post I just want to take a retrospective look at the course of QYAO to try to see some of the things that caused it's changes so that I can be more aware next time and hopefully not fall prey to the same pitfalls if and when I do decide to create a membership site of my own. Here are some of the problems that plagued QYAO.

1. Premature Launch
There are many programs out there that have membership open for a while before the program or website launches and while this is a great way to create interest and to allow the initial life blood of your site to enter, there are problems that arise when the site is not actually ready. QYAO suffered from problems of this nature. While there was a large member base, there was not a lot of leadership in the form of an administrator that knew all the intricate ins and outs of the site and could provide answers to any and all questions. Instead everyone had questions and it seemed as if no one had the answers.

2. If it's too good to true, IT DEFINITELY IS!!
No ifs, ands, or buts on this one. I was one of the members with rose colored glasses on. I had doubts but convinced myself that it couldn't be all bad if all of these people were investing money. QYAO made a lot of big promise. It seemed as though month after month there was a special on top of a special on top of a special and more and more they demanded money from their members for upgrades, or site creation and various other things. And while I lost less than $50 on the entire process, my stupidity in believing some of the crazy promises that QYAO made was not worth the money.

3. Middle Management
Not only an offline problem, QYAO was bogged down with all of this middle management. There was a different person to pay to upgrade membership. Someone else to teach recruitment, someone else for site development and so on to the point where I would be trying to keep track of 5 different people for 5 different things, who in turn had absolutely no communication with each other or upper management. More than that questions had to be asked in a chain of command so that 3 people stood between you and your answer, greatly increasing the time it took for my questions to be answered and often times because of problem 1, they were not answered satisfactorily.

4. No Transparency
I think this is the most damning problem that QYAO had. There was an illusive Jane that was the seeming owner and moderator of QYAO, but half-way through, her name and profile changed. Questions could not be asked directly to her and had to go through other appointed people and information was often given in bits and pieces. This is the most important thing to look for. If there the administrator is not available for questions, or cannot explain areas of the site of quell your concerns then run in the other direction as fast as you can. Make sure that all of your questions are answered by the information on the site or by the admin before you get deeply involved in anything on the internet.

On the upside QYAO continues to be a community of people that is willing to help each other. There are other structures set up that allow members to earn within the community that can be helpful for people who want to earn some extra money. If you are looking for something new, you can check out the new QYAO and see if it is something that you will be interested in.

So if you are thinking about joining a site, or shelling out some money keep these things in the back of your mind and make sure that you are completely comfortable with your decision. Remember that there are a lot of people that want to take your money and make you promises, but you cannot be taken advantage of unless you allow yourself to be. There's no rush to spend your money jumping from program to program.

BE INFORMED CONSUMERS!

NeoBux Success: $2500/month in pure profit!!!

As I was going through the Neobux forum I came across the topic heading of success stories. Clicking on the link, I was expecting the usual fare of $10, $20, and $30 payouts, 100s of referrals and the like. But instead I saw a topic that read "$2500 Per Month Pure Profit". Obviously not believing what I was seeing, I clicked in the topic and read through the post, and surprisingly it was no joke.

For this member and many other in the forum, Neobux has been a legitimate income for them on a monthly basis. This poster explained how he diligently logged into Neobux twice a day and clicked on all available links, reinvested his earnings, upgraded his membership and grew his income to the astounding amounts described. It seems that this program has provided much more than a few cents per click. The structure of Neobux is such that referrals can be rented adding to income. More than that, there is a science to the recycling referrals that allows Neobux members to maximize their profit.

It is clear that Neobux is not like other PTC programs, with payment proofs displaying amounts in the $1000s and even one here for $1,199!! Neobux has once again caught my attention as a program that I am going to spend a lot more time and effort developing.
If anyone has any success with Neobux please let me know so I can share your experience with my readers.

Adsense Earnings

I have been a member of adsense for some time now, but I have only recently began to utilize my ads more efficiently, in terms of placement, colors, channels, etc. If you are a member of Google's adsense program then I would highly recommend that you take some time and read the optimization reports and suggestions so that you can begin to take better advantage of Adsense ads. After a bit of testing and optimization, I am making around $3-4/day on average, and growing. Here is a screenshot of today's earnings up until about 2:00:


Today I am going to talk a little bit about Google adsense and ad testing. When internet marketers and advertisers talk about testing ads, they are reffering to tracking the performance of certain ads, altering their colors and placements to track changes in performance and then making the necessary changes so that their ads are fully optimized. There are the different ways in which you can test your Google adsense codes:

1. Color Testing
There are two ways in which you can feature the adsense code on your page. As a part of the page in the sense that the colors correspond or in stark contrast to your page. Featured on this page, you will see that the adsense code is colored as part of the page. The colors match the colors of the page and there is more seamless intergration. You can also try a color scheme that is contrasting to your page. For a site like this, I would perhaps try Adsense code that looked something like this if I wanted to try and test contrasting code:


2. Ad Placement
Adsense makes it possible to take advantage of any and every unused space on your page. But adsense overkill can be a problem, and finding the right places on your page that will help to drive visitors to click on your ads is important. Playing around with adsense position can help you to optimize your earnings. I have found that inserting small bits of adsense code at the bottom of some posts help my earnings because visitor focus is already at the end of the posts, so that the next logical step for them is to click on an ad that might interest them. Placement in the header, footer, or sidebars, or even all three places will help you to maximize your earnings, and altering the placement of the ads can change the way that you earn.

3. Ad size
Ad size goes a long way in your page formatting and adsense earnings. Large and bulky ads that are not properly placed can not only ruin the flow of your page, but turn visitors off from staying on your page and clicking on ads. Finding the optimal size of the ads that you place on your page can also have a profound effect on your adsense earnings.

In these three ways, you can begin to take control over your adsense earnings, and by altering your ad color, placement, and size you can do major damage, or damage control. Testing your ads can only help you, and once you have begun to understand what works and what doesn't, you will be able to make the most out of every one of your ad placements, whether they be Google or otherwise.

Megalido: Proof Of Payment

Hey everyone, this is going to be a short and sweet post. A while back I posted an entry about Megalido. A new auto-surf that is taking the internet by storm. While I am more adventurous than most people in that I will try a program that I want to invest in, without being constantly afraid, I was a little hesitant, especially as money has been tight with the economy and all.

But I did a test investment, and I am happy to say that I have been paid my Megalido! More than that, the admin is excellent at answering questions and is very involved with Megalido's members.
So if you were waiting for more proof, scared, or just wasting time. DON'T!! Join Megalido and begin to cash in!!


 
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