Legitimacy Verified - Associated Content and Swagbucks

I actually got my Associated Content payment deposited in my Paypal account several days ago, but a lot has happened since then in my personal life. I had to put a few things on hold for a while, and I have not been able to update this blog.

Here's the screenshot of the payment. It's only $3, but it's $3 more than I had, right?





As for Swagbucks, I got my first Amazon gift certificate code today. I actually redeemed the Swagbucks a few days ago, but it takes some time for them to post the code (my guess is that they request codes from Amazon either in batches every week, or else they request them on an individual basis, I don't know). You don't have to worry about missing it - they send you an email when the code is ready. When you go to My Account and check under My Gift Cards, there it is. I think it's clever - this way, you don't have to worry about your spam filter causing you to miss a gift card code that was emailed to you.

Here's a series of screenshots, from putting in my request for the gift card to actually entering it into my Amazon.com account. I have pixelated anything that might compromise the security of my account or otherwise cause problems (including the gift card code, my last name, and order numbers). Please do not email me asking for these things "as proof". I'm not going to send them to you, because I'm not stupid. Anyway:




And now the actual redemption of the gift code:





So there you go. I'm now $5.00 richer, which isn't a whole lot but it's free money so I can't really complain. You won't be rolling in dough but if you're a gamer looking for a way to support your monthly WoW habit, or you're trying to figure out how to buy birthday or Christmas gifts that you otherwise can't afford, just run a few searches a day (some in the morning, some at night) on Swagbucks.com. It's not that hard to win, and it's somewhat useful as well. I haven't downloaded the toolbar because I generally loathe toolbars, but I've heard that it's quite handy, so maybe I'll change my mind.

As for this $5.00, it's going to help pay for my brother's birthday present.

Associated Content

The article I submitted to Associated Content was reviewed (it took about a week) and is currently processing. I now have a $3.00 payment pending, and have submitted another article.

Update:
The article was published. You can find it here: Budget Beauty For An Ugly Economy

Progress

Here's how things are going so far:

MyPoints - 515 points. Time investment: minimal. Have not yet qualified for a survey.
SendEarnings - $13.37. Roughly $18 left to go, but it's very slow going with this website. Time investment: minimal. I qualify for a survey maybe every 3 days.
MyLot - $2.10. Haven't really posted anything, just some ratings and halfhearted replies. Time investment: minimal.
Ciao - Have earned several dollars more since Monday's cashout of $6.10. Not counting whatever I earned yesterday, since it does not seem to update on the weekends. I could almost cash out twice over. It definitely snowballs after the first (rough) week and a half. Time investment: moderate.
SwagBucks - 28 Swagbucks. Last few days have been slow going. Either my luck is lousy, or they're not letting me win as often. Maybe a combination of both. Roughly 18 more to go before I can cash out that $5.00 Amazon gift card and decide whether it is worthwhile or not. Technically, I'd have 5 SB more if I hadn't bought that raffle ticket. Since I've been a member for about a week, that's still not that bad. Time investment: minimal to moderate.

Obviously, nothing terribly exciting. My last Ciao cashout will not get processed until next month, so I can't tell you whether it has gone through or not, or whether or not the money will actually land in my Paypal account. But judging by my interactions with Customer Service so far, I have no doubt that it will. Ciao and Swagbucks are the most promising websites so far.

Catching Up...

So, how are things going with these websites?

MyPoints - did not qualify for any surveys since my last update. They have another survey service you can sign up for to earn points, but I didn't want to give the service all of the personal information they wanted, so I didn't sign up. Currently at 470 Points. Time invested: Very little.

SendEarnings - Seem to qualify for a survey every 3 days or so. Have not failed to be credited for a survey, although it can take a few days. Have been regularly clicking mailings. Averaging 11 cents per day (averaging in the occasional successful Survey attempt). Currently at $12.27. Time invested: Very little.

MyLot - have been half-heartedly replying and rating. Some of my replies were to news articles. Only one new post. Currently at $2.03. Time invested: Little to Moderate.

Ciao - Cashed out once already, at $6.10. Doing well, between $1.00-$2.00/day, writing 3 reviews per day. Someone who writes a few articles a day should make around $5.00/week, in my opinion. That's not money you can live off, but it's not bad for what isn't a whole lot of work.

Swagbucks - Currently at 16 Swagbucks. Would be 21, but I spent 5 on the monthly 1000-Swagbuck raffle. Stupid? Maybe, but 5 Swagbucks is about 1 day of using the search engine, so in my opinion, it's not a huge loss for the potential gain. Do they actually award the prizes? I don't know right now.

I also recently joined Associated Content, and have submitted one article, which is awaiting review. At this point, I have no average per day. Time invested: Moderate.

Ciao Success?

I hit payout today, 9 days after I joined Ciao. It would have been 7, but my account wasn't 'earning' anything over the weekend. I panicked and emailed Customer Support, so now I look like an idiot. Customer Support never got back to me about it, but when $2.00 showed up in my account this morning after a weekend of nothing, I figured out that maybe Ciao just doesn't credit on the weekends. Either that, or Customer Support did something about it without emailing me back. They've been pretty good so far, after all.






Apparently, payments are processed on the second week of each month. So it could be processed this week. Or I may have to wait 4 weeks, and won't find out until next month. I'll keep checking my Paypal account. After all, the money's no good to me until it winds up there. I've got a whole bucket o' things to review, until then.

Keep in mind, this was done mostly by myself. While I have referred three people, one was only right before this, and the other two haven't been very active. So it is possible to earn money on Ciao without referring tons of people. Will it be oodles of money? Highly unlikely. But these days, any amount of extra money is a good thing.

Hits4Pay and Gaming Lagoon

These two websites have left a bad taste in my mouth, for different reasons.

Hits4Pay
I signed up for Hits4Pay a few months ago, but haven't had anything to do with it since. Part of this is because they ask for your Social Security Number, ostensibly for tax purposes. I really don't believe this. After clicking on a few ads every day - getting, at most, .02 per ad - I highly doubt that I'm going to make enough to warrant sending me a tax form for it. In fact, I highly doubt I'm going to even hit payout. All in all, I got a bad feeling from the website, and after looking up a few reviews of it, I've pretty much never gone back. A search at bbb.org for Multiple Stream Media (the company that runs the website according to their About page) turned up nothing. This means that they are probably unlikely to be a BBB Accredited business (unless I just searched for the wrong thing), which means that I'm not giving them my Social Security Number, no matter how many positive 'member testimonials' I read.

In any case, I don't see the point of continuing to visit Hits4Pay, since they refuse to pay you unless you give them your Social Security number (which they aren't getting from me). They could very well be legit, but I guess I'll never find out!

That aside, from what I have gathered from the 'member testimonials' themselves (such as the ones in the comments on this Reviewopedia page), it's impossible to really make anything off of Hits4Pay unless you recruit a legion of zombie followers (that is, spam referral links and get a bunch of people in your downline). You won't be able to make much money just clicking ads. That said, do you want to have to convince 100 people to divulge their SSNs to a random website?

GamingLagoon:
GamingLagoon made me angry in quite another way. Supposedly, you use points to buy electronics or gift cards. You accumulate points by filling out offers. There's a "verification" time period where they verify that you filled out the offer before rewarding you with the points. I should have earned enough points to buy a World of Warcraft Game Card. Instead, 90% of my offers failed verification. If you put them on the spot about it, you get a bunch of bull about how you must not have had cookies enabled on your browser - or once you verify that they were, in fact, enabled, the good old "Well the cookie corrupted". I'm pretty sure I know where they can shove their corrupted cookies. All I have to show for joining is an inbox full of spam. Although there are members who state that they have gotten their items or gift cards - and I fully believe them - it's not worth the grief of arguing over the stuff that was denied verification, and I won't be filling out any more of their offers. Whether they actually pay out or not, they've already proven to be too much of a hassle.

Swagbucks & The Search For Swag

A person I met on Ciao - he has a good rep, does good reviews - told me about Swagbucks. Now, I'd heard of it in the past - and may have even checked it out - but for whatever reason, I never signed up. It's a gift-card website (like MyPoints) that also offers prizes you can "buy" directly with your points. He said he'd gotten his gift card and it didn't take too long (unlike my months-long estimates about MyPoints) so I decided to sign up and try it out.

I started yesterday with 3 Swagbucks. As of today, I have 6. My goal is 45, to get a $5.00 Amazon gift card. I don't know what the hell I can buy with $5.00 (maybe pay for shipping for something) but that's not the point. The point is to find out if it's possible to get it, how long it takes, if it's possible to do it on your own rather than having to recruit a whole bunch of people, and if they actually "pay out".

They don't ask for a ton of personal information, which is a good start. Like MyPoints, you can accrue Swagbucks by shopping through their website. The interesting thing is that they seem to have a different list of websites to shop through, and it includes sites like Newegg.

Unlike MyPoints, they do not offer any sort of pay-per-click method of earning points. There are Polls, but they seem to be for amusement only, although you can earn points by submitting a poll question that they use. The main methods of earning points appear to be using their search engine (which will randomly award points), posting in their blog, shopping through their website, and referring friends. And while the gift card values may be lower, the number of points to buy them is also lower.

I run a ton of searches every day for various reasons, so that's no problem for me. They have a toolbar you can download, but I dislike and distrust most toolbars. I'm sure theirs is fine, but I won't be installing it after all of the trouble I've had removing crap like Yahoo! Toolbar from browsers in the past.

Doing the Math:
I seem to be averaging about 3 points per day (from searches) but I've only been a member for one day, after all. At this rate, it will take 13 more days to accrue the 45 points necessary for a $5.00 gift card.

It doesn't require a ton of effort - just regular everyday use running searches through their search engine (they have an algorithm to detect if you're running bogus searches and spamming searches, so doing that won't help you much).

Observations:
The blog is somewhat boring at the moment. The search engine isn't quite as good as Google, although they claim otherwise, and their Image search is annoying (it takes you to the webpage, not the image itself). On the other hand, it tends to spit up different results than Google, which can be useful in and of itself. I tend to run searches through different engines to see what each one picks up, so this isn't a problem for me.

MyPoints

I was having a rough time earning points on MyPoints. After you fill out their Preferences and surveys, it's slow going unless you want to sign up for a bunch of offers that generally require some sort of financial involvement on your part (even the "free trials").

However, that was before I discovered all of the BonusMails that Gmail was shunting into my Spam folder. Arrgh. I quickly went from around 210 points to 335 points. Later that day, after digging up more long-lost BonusMails and receiving a few BonusMails and SurveyMails, I had hit 365 points.

On March 2nd, I received 2 BonusMails. I didn't complete either offer, but I still received 5 points each for clicking the link and at least looking at them. One was for a sort of neat Tidycat Litter System that I really wish they'd had when my old cat was still alive. I also considered buying it to see if I could train my pet rabbit to use it, but considering the fact that she tipped her last litter box over and wore it as a hat, I decided against this. In any case, my point is that the offers are worth checking out even if you don't generally complete them or buy anything, because you do occasionally find something neat.

I also received 2 SurveyMails. I didn't ultimately qualify for either, getting "kicked out" about halfway through each - which kind of sucked, but I think I may have still gotten 10 points apiece just for attempting to take a survey (and not qualifying). That's pretty nice, considering the fact that another website, SendEarnings doesn't give you anything at all if you don't qualify. In any case, I also attempted to qualify for another survey... also disqualified. Man, I suck at qualifying for this stuff. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I'd claimed to drink more beer, I would have qualified for at least one of those surveys. That'll teach ME to not be a raging alcoholic.

Anyway, that totals up to about 20 definite points that day. I would have gotten 30 more, had I qualified for the surveys.

Doing the Math:

So how "worth it" does that make my MyPoints efforts? As of March 5th, I am averaging 10 points per day. At an average rate of 10 points per day, and my current total of 365, in order to get a gift card with a value of approximately 2,000 points, it will take approximately 164 days (6 months).

But let's be more specific. Let's set our sights on a specific reward card with a specific value. One that I, personally, would actually use: a $50.00 Staples gift card, for 6750 points. At this rate, that would take nearly (but not quite) a year... 640 days, or slightly under 22 months.

That's a long time!

So why not do the other stuff? Why not complete a bunch of offers and stuff? Well, because I'm trying to accomplish these goals with the minimum personal investment. I consider every offer I sign up for to be a "risk" in some way. Some of them want some sort of financial investment... some of them want me to divulge information I consider none of their business at best, or dangerous at worst. The surveys I consider to be marginally safe.

That doesn't mean that I won't consider buying things from Offers that I actually want, just that I'm not going out of my way to buy a bunch of junk for a few points. If I do any online shopping, it'll likely be using their website as a gateway, in order to accrue points for the money I spend. I consider that to be a pretty good deal, especially for places that award amounts like 4 points per dollar spent. I'm going to spend the money anyway. Why not get a kick-back for it? So if you do a lot of online shopping at places that they have deals with, you'll probably be doing pretty well for yourself.

That's if they pay out, which I have not yet verified. They have gotten a ton of great reviews from members, so we'll see. To that end, I'll select a "cheaper" gift card to go after. Something I'll still like and use.

The Game Plan:

The American Red Cross Donation looks interesting, and I'd love to do that... unfortunately, I don't know a way to verify it since I don't think it would be a physical card in my hot little hands. So I'll go with something else. I happen to know that my aunt loves Bath & Body Works, so I'll aim for a $10 gift card there. $10 at Bath & Body Works doesn't go far, but hey, it's $10 more than she had. Anyway, it costs 1400 points.

At my current rate, that will take 104 days. I may be able to speed it up a little bit with a survey here and there (if I ever qualify for one!). So let's plink along for another 4 months and see where that gets me. 4 months for one $10 gift card? Well, I'm certainly not in this to make a living, just to see if it works - even if it works slowly.

It is important to note that so far, MyPoints has not taken away points for what I like to call "bullsh** reasons". It's early in the game, but this is still important. I don't have my hard-won earnings yanked away for reasons I can't understand, and I'm not worried that they're going to go down the tubes. This is a good sign.

My Progress:
March 2nd: 365 points
March 5th: 395 points
Average: about 10 points per day.

More About Ciao

So far, my progress on Ciao has been pleasing, even though I haven't reached my first payout yet. However, something happened that amazed me.

I had been having issues with my password since my account was created. I contacted them about my problem via email. I received an automated reply, and didn't think much of it. I have not had many good experiences with online customer services (including one infuriating exchange with Myspace.com).

So you can't blame me for being surprised when I was emailed a day later, not by an automated reply, but an actual polite human being offering to help solve my account problem, if I was willing to be patient for a little bit longer. Because of the nature of the problem, it wasn't unreasonable for them to ask me to wait another day or two. I emailed them back with an affirmative and waited.

Another day passed, and I got another email. My problem had been addressed and fixed. I logged into my account to check -- it had!

So apparently, their customer service is handled by real, live human beings - and they actually try to help you. It's sad that I should be impressed by something like this, but I really am. It's not often that you get good customer support from a large website.

It's definitely a huge point in their favor, and yet another indication that it is worth spending a little bit more time using Ciao. I am certainly being won over.

Ciao - Ranting and Raving For Cash

Ciao.com is a rare gem: a website where I get paid for writing a few paragraphs about how much I hate my MP3 player.

I reached Ciao through SendEarnings or MyPoints (I honestly cannot remember which) about two days ago. I initially joined because I'd seen a lot of buzz about it on MyLot, and some people swore by it. I knew that the payout was fairly low (I later discovered that it was $5.00).

I have read on blogs and heard from members that Ciao isn't as good as it used to be. Apparently, you used to get a flat $1.00 fee for publishing a review. This was changed to .25, and now to the current "incentive" program where you get paid a few cents for each positive rating your review receives. That system still sounded o.k. to me - write a good review, get rewarded more.

I'd choose this system over a flat rate any day. There's more potential to make money this way. I can easily make that $1.00 off of a review over the course of a few days, and after that, it'll just keep making more. With a flat rate once I've gotten it, that's all I'll ever earn off that review. With the current system, my reviews will continue to earn for me (I believe up to $3.00).

In any case, I took the plunge and joined. After staring at the wall for a while, I decided to write my first review on St. Ives Apricot Scrub, a product I had some mixed feelings about.

I looked at my account all day that day, but although I got many comments on my review from other members, the balance remained 0. I assumed that the product I had selected was not one that you got paid for reviewing, and almost didn't go back to the website. However, when I logged into Ciao the next day, I was greeted by a pleasant surprise: 33 cents I had not possessed before.

After this small success, I wrote three more reviews: one for the Sunbeam Bread Maker I own, one for the Creative Zen Micro (a combination rant and funeral dirge for my dying MP3 player), and one for Diesel For Her (a perfume I like that most people hate).

These efforts netted me 45 more cents the next day, bringing my total to just under a dollar. With such a low minimum balance necessary to reach payout, I'm starting to see how one might easily generate a trickle of extra cash from Ciao.

I befriended a few people, and rated a few people (who kindly rated me back). Currently, I'm accepting some Friend Requests, but I'm not going to befriend plagiarists or rate shoddy reviews positively. I'm just not going to reward bad work. I suppose that may not please some people in the community, but they'll get over it.

What I've been up to:
Feb 28th:
I joined Ciao and immediately wrote my first review on St. Ives Apricot Scrub.
It got a bunch of comments and positive ratings, but I didn't see any money in my Earnings section. Discouraged, I logged off and went to bed.

March 1st:
Logged in to discover that I was 33 cents richer. Woohoo!
Wrote reviews on Diesel For Her and Zen Micro 5 GB.
Befriended several other users, who immediately began nagging me to rate their reviews positively.

March 2nd:
Logged in and discovered another 46 cents in my account, bringing me to 79 cents. More nagging "RATE ME" spam. Checked out users' reviews. A few were good, decent, legitimate reviewers, but there was an upsetting amount of plagiarists, people who copy-pasted product reviews, and "Engrish" word salad. De-friended the offenders, reported some for plagiarism.

Wrote a review for Eisbrecher's album, "Eisbrecher".

Recruited my friends Reese and Jaime. Sent my mother an email with a referral link, which she might get around to reading and clicking eventually.

Friended some users who actually wrote coherent and useful reviews.

March 3rd:
I was awake for rollover. Saw my account total go up another 70 cents. Part of this was due to my referrals posting reviews of their own, but most of it was my own work. Ciao is looking good so far.

I wrote a review for The Sims 2 Expansion Pack: "Seasons" and Friended a few more good reviewers.

March 4:
Only made 20 cents. Apparently, I am alone in my awe of The Sims 2. Friended a few more people.

Wrote three more reviews: One for the video game Cubivore, one for Maybelline Purestay Foundation, and one for Clean & Clear Morning Burst.

More RATE ME spam and friend requests from people who don't actually bother to write reviews. I wish that there was an Ignore button.

Doing the math:
At an average of 40 cents per day, I should reach payout in around 9 days. If I make closer to 70 cents per day, it will be around 6 days.

From what I have gathered, you can make a maximum of $3.00 per review, not counting the Premium Fund (which I will talk about in later posts). I spend an average of 15-20 minutes writing a review. If you stop to think about it, that could amount to $3.00, total, for 15 minutes of my effort. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that I will make the maximum amount of money off of a review. Once it gets too old and nobody reads it any more, it stops earning (except maybe very occasionally). A review might only ever earn me 50 cents.

Still, all said and done, that's not a bad. Still, I do not wish to misrepresent Ciao. Although it's panning out well for me, it seems like it will only be good for a little bit of extra cash. I'll consider myself lucky to make $5.00 a week - assuming I don't have trouble cashing out. Remember: at this point in the course of this blog, I have not yet hit payout.

My observations:
I've noticed that there are a few reviewers who seem to speak somewhat-broken English, but their reviews are still pretty good. Then there are some who write their review entirely in text-message shorthand, which irks me to no end. I know it's a review about a cell phone, but that doesn't mean you need to type out the review AS IF you typed it on a cell phone.

Finally, there appear to be a few who have simply copied and pasted the product specifications into the review box. Nonetheless, there are a LOT of very good reviews and reviewers. I can see how writing a good review that stands out in the crowd could become exceedingly difficult.

I'll write more about how bad the issue of spam and plagiarism is on Ciao, but for now, I'll state this: It's bad, it's annoying, it may threaten the longevity of the website. Still, I'm not having trouble earning money at all so far. Out of all of the programs I'm describing, Ciao may be the best so far.

SendEarnings: The Slow Burn

SendEarnings has fallen into a mental category I've decided to call "Slow Burners". It isn't going to amass you large amounts of money within a short period of time. The money you're required to earn before payout is a bit high compared to websites like MyLot and Ciao, at $30.00. I suppose that makes victory that much sweeter.

While the build-up is slow at only a few cents per ad you click, and maybe 50 cents for completing a survey, it doesn't take much effort at all (again, compared to websites like MyLot and Caio). You get several ads per day. You click them. You earn a few more cents. The $5.00 Sign-up Bonus I got wasn't bad... it was a pretty good start. After a few surveys and about 4 months of steady ad-clicking, it's up to about $10.43. For absolutely no effort beyond that required to click a mouse, or 5 minutes dedicated to a mindless survey here or there, that's not bad.

To be honest, I have not filled out many of their surveys or offers, and that's where the real money is at. I'll be spending a little bit more time filling out surveys from this point on, although it requires dedicating more time and effort to SendEarnings. But we'll see how quickly I accrue money by doing that, as compared to merely passively clicking on ads.

I will not be completing many trial offers, even free ones, because I don't appreciate the junk-mail or the information that it's necessary to surrender. Some of them are superficially lucrative, but require you to divulge important personal information that you may not want to divulge, or else they require a credit card/some other form of financial investment, and you don't receive credit for the offer until your payment has gone through. I don't consider this to be "worth it", so I'm happy with the ads and surveys.

They also have "Cash Games". I won't be spending much time on that. The games are free, and I enjoy them, but in order to get a chance to earn some money, you have to put in a financial investment. $10 for a "premium" account, and then $1.00 per tournament you enter. Those dollars will kill you quickly, especially when they were so hard to earn, and your chances of winning the tournament seem pretty slim. I'll stay away from those, unless I have the urge to play a few free games of Bejeweled.

So far, I seem to be earning about $1.00 a month simply clicking ads. That means I won't see payout for... what... almost 2 years? I'll see how much I can speed that up with surveys, though. Currently, I'm waiting to be credited for 2 surveys. I've completed and been credited for 3 without problems, and it can apparently take a few days.

And, of course, there is the "Referral Center". That's where you refer new people to SendEarnings . There are some pretty strict referral requirements, however, but we'll also keep an eye on that one as well.

My Progress:

March 1st - I have earned $10.45 up to this point. This includes the $5.00 sign-up bonus, $4.45 for clicking ads for the past few months, and $1.00 for filling out surveys. I am currently waiting for 2 surveys I completed to be credited to my account.

Attempted to fill out a survey. Did not qualify for any.

March 2nd:
Checked my email and discovered that one of my surveys had been credited. It took two days. I won't complain - it was an easy 50 cents.

Attempted to fill out a survey. Did not qualify for any.

Today:
Started out with $10.97 in my account, woke up to an email with an ad to click. Got 2 cents for my efforts. Woo.

I saw an email from the survey service that SendEarnings uses about how a program I downloaded for the purposes of taking a survey did not register correctly, and that I should re-download it. I took a survey a few days prior to that which required me to download a program... I did it because I actually trust that SendEarnings would not send me to a scammer, and the survey was actually interesting (whether or not this was stupidity on my part, who knows). In any case, I'm not downloading it again through a freaking email. I mean, come ON. I now trust that survey service less after their "download this again through this link lololol" crap. If that costs me 50 cents, so be it. Since I have not been credited for the particular survey involved, I suppose it has.

Attempted to fill out a survey. Told I did not qualify, and there were none available. Attempted again an hour later. Successfully completed a survey.

There'll be more paid ads today, and I may attempt to take another survey, so I may update the blog later today. Otherwise, it'll go into my next SendEarnings entry.

About the surveys:
One of the reasons I stopped paying attention to my SendEarnings account when I initially signed up for it was the fact that I didn't qualify for ANYTHING. I would try and try to qualify for Surveys, to no avail. Thankfully, that seems to have improved, and I can generally qualify for at least one survey every few days. I guess that's not so bad.

The irritating thing about the surveys is that some of them HAVE to be done in Microsoft Internet Explorer. I primarily use Firefox. This was a serious problem when my main PC ran Linux, another reason I didn't fill out Surveys very much.

Last, sometimes you get halfway through a survey and get disqualified. What a waste of time. I've also had surveys just... glitch on me. Also a waste of time.

Sometimes it will tell you there are no more surveys available for today. Wait an hour or two, and try again, and it may try to hook you up with another survey.

Doing the Math:
Assuming that I just round up to the nearest whole number as my account balance, if I manage to fill out at least one survey per day for 50 cents, at an average of 2 ads per day (which is what I seem to get), so let's make that 54 cents... it'll take about 36 more days, or a little bit over a month, to hit payout.

Keep in mind that it may not be possible to qualify for a survey every day, and that I normally don't bother (but am doing so for the sake of this experiment).

Adventures in MyLot

I'll be rotating between blogging about MyLot, Sendearnings, MyPoints, and Ciao. Each post on each respective site will discuss what I've been up to on that website since the last time I talked about it, what sort of progress I've made, general observations, and interesting or amusing incidents.

Initial Observations About MyLot:
I joined MyLot a few months ago, and initially lost interest because I was only making a few cents per day and could never think of anything interesting to post about. I've since started to revise my opinion - but we'll see. I can't recall how I joined it. I may have simply found it through an Internet search.

I think that MyLot would be interesting even if money weren't involved. My new-found interest has a lot to do with how much the community has grown even since I joined. As I described it in a previous post, MyLot feels like a combination of an internet forum and Yahoo! Answers. The minimum payout at Mylot is fairly low, at $10.00.

I've noticed a few things about the community there:

- It's very international. There are a lot of members from the US, Britain, Australia, Germany, India, China - you name it. Some members are even from countries where they can't possibly receive their payout, and just hang around because it's interesting. Before you sign up for it, though, make sure you live in a country where they can actually pay you... if you're in it for the money, anyway.

- There seems to be an obsession with fruit. I don't know why. There are a lot of questions about fruit, the ways fruit is good for you, and how to replace everything in your diet with fruit. I don't understand this. Is there some kind of crazy fruit diet in another country that I don't know about? I suppose I could go on there and ask. In fact, I did.

Other incidents of note:
-There was a user posting entries from an encyclopedia of animals, one entry after another. My guess is that he was doing it to get his post count up. Possibly just to troll. It was amusing for the first few posts, but after about 40, it wore pretty thin. It doesn't matter, since they'll all get deleted. All of that irritating non-effort for nothing. Poor little guy.

My progress:

March 1st:

tl;dr version:
Post Count: 22
3 were Discussions I started
1 was a Top Discussion
I referred one member
I made 25 cents
I am Rank 6 (but I reached Rank 7 between writing this blog entry and posting it)

Long version:
I started out March 1st with 82 posts, and ended the evening at 104... more posts than I've ever made in one go. I received one Best Answer on March 1st. I've been trying to work my way up to 100 posts so I can see my Ranking, which is displayed as a little star with a number next to your name. I reached that goal, and my Ranking is currently 6. I also Referred one member: my brother, the esteemed Scarywizard. He didn't do anything that day.

Despite having made 22 posts, I only earned 25 cents. This was an improvement over the 09 cents I earned the previous day, however. Of these posts, 3 were discussions I started myself. The most popular was Do You Believe In Altruism? with three lengthy replies. I later saw that it had made it into the "Today's Top Discussions" section. I'm sort of proud.

I'm going to see if starting more discussions earns more money.

Rather than having to list and link to all of them, you can see what discussions I started or commented on by taking a look at my profile.

My Thoughts About Ranking:
According to the FAQ, the higher your Ranking, the higher-quality your discussions and responses supposedly tend to be (since it's based on member ratings), and I suspect that it may influence the money you earn per post or reply. Of course, if you just have a ton of friends who up-rate you, I could see how a system like this could be broken - but all in all, it seems like a good system, as the users with the higher Rankings do tend to post the more popular discussions and worthwhile answers.

Spamming in MyLot doesn't do you much good. Most spam posts are deleted, and one-word answers for the sake of answering don't really earn you much money. I don't know their algorithm, nor have I attempted to crack it, but it seems like the more popular your discussion is, the higher rated it is, and the more responses it gets, the more you earn. That's not really a bad system. It seems pretty fair, for the most part, and tends to keep "sh**-posting" down (although it doesn't get rid of it entirely). Whether or not you find what the rest of the community finds interesting relevant to your own interests is another matter.

First Post - What It's All About

This blog is meant to chronicle my adventures in pay-per-click, review, and gift card websites. I know there are a lot of websites dedicated to making money off of these things, so I guess I'll start by stating this: I don't expect to earn any kind of income off of these.

I'll start with my mission statement. The aim of this blog is:

1. To explore well known pay-per-click websites that "pay out" to citizens of the United States of America. Other countries may be included in this, but why would I join a website that only pays out in India if I live in Illinois? Please don't send me emails about international websites that don't pay out in the U.S.

2. To verify that these websites are legit and do, in fact, pay out. If I earn money, it's worthless to me if I can't access it, I get jacked around on payments, my rewards are taken away due to some technicality before I can claim them, et cetera. It doesn't matter if the payout is a nickel. The key point is that it pays out.

3. To assess whether or not the effort invested is worth the reward. If I spend 5 hours earning 50 cents, the effort is not worth the reward, and the website is not worthwhile.

4. To determine the most efficient way to utilize the program in question. Every system has tricks. Every system has more efficient and less efficient ways of accomplishing the same task. My aim is to decide what the most efficient way of earning money is (even if I don't really earn all that much).

These are the websites I have selected to explore:

Mylot - A social discussion website, somewhat in the vein of Yahoo! Answers. It feels a lot like a cross between a message board, Yahoo! Answers, and Myspace. You get paid a few cents for every discussion you post, rate, or reply to, and for every image you upload. I think your community ranking may also influence this. I'll be chronicling how many posts I've made, my ranking, earnings, where the earnings came from, stuff like that.

Sendearnings - A Pay-per-click/Pay-per-survey website. You are emailed ads, and you earn a few cents for every ad you click on. You also earn a few cents for every survey you fill out, and you can earn up to a few dollars for participating in certain offers (like credit report services, trial memberships at websites, et cetera). I'll be discussing how many ads I've clicked on, the types of offers I've participated in, surveys, stuff like that.

Ciao - I didn't check this one out until recently. You write product reviews, rate and comment on other members' reviews, and get paid for doing it. I didn't check it out for a while because... honestly, I don't know why. I wish I'd looked into it sooner, though, and I'll explain why.

MyPoints - This website rewards you for filling out surveys and completing offers with points you can spend on gift cards from various retailers. I've heard very good things about it, and joined recently - now I want to see how my efforts pan out.

Other Websites, Programs, and Methods - I will touch on other websites - including programs and methods - either as I discover and explore them or as the topic comes up. I have explored a few other places such as Hits 4 Pay and Gaming Lagoon. They aren't on the list above for specific reasons, however, and I'll get into that in further posts.

I would like to note that I have not yet hit payout on any of the above websites. I only recently joined them. I joined many others, but these are the ones that have proven most interesting and have gotten the most positive commentary from their members. I will be chronicling my exploits on these websites on a nearly-daily basis, and if/when I hit payout on them, I will be posting if, how quickly, and how payout was received.

I'd like to go on to say that I'm doing this partly because I'm currently unemployed. Being unemployed sucks. Without a job, I feel sort of purposeless. I'm an artist - mainly, an illustrator and graphic designer. The current economy is unfortunately not kind to artists. Scrabbling for money lately hasn't been fun, and these sorts of things are intriguing to me, so if I can explore a topic that other people on the Internet find interesting - and maybe make a few bucks in the process - then I think everyone wins.