TrekPay, Neobux, and Scour developments

I stuck with TrekPay even though they rubbed me the wrong way the first few days I was a member. I stopped getting the "WE'RE WATCHING YOU" type messages, and haven't seen any accusations of cheating since.

Now, one of the things that irks me is the abundance of "VISIT THIS WEBSITE AND CLICK ADS" links on TrekPay - especially aonsidering that the websites involved are, in some cases, essentially violating the TOS of whatever network they're a member of. I highly doubt Trekpay cares, and it's honestly not their job to care. I have noticed that you'll get the full 3 credits whether you click the ads or not - I just don't know how well Trekpay tracks it, and I don't feel like finding out.

Otherwise, Trekpay is super easy. They don't even make you wait a set period of time once you've visited the site - you get your credits right away. Unlike places like Neobux, the websites you visit are actually - *gasp* - occasionally interesting and useful. I was shocked.

So, anyway, how does Trekpay work? Well, for starters, you don't earn money directly. You earn credits. Credits are converted to money each week - I think they do it on Tuesday, since that's when I suddenly had money in my Trekpay account. The credit-to-dollar conversion rate varies, so there's no real way to tell how much money you've actually earned. I don't know if I like that - I feel like it's way too easy to get jacked around by them that way. And if the conversion rate were to continually change in their favor, I could see putting in a ton of work and getting very little return. But there's no saying that'll happen - we'll see.

Anyway, my first 40-odd credits were converted on Tuesday. I now have 11 whole cents! Oddly enough, not ALL of my credits were converted to money. Or were they? I really can't tell, I'll know more by next week. Either way, I'm nowhere near the $5.50 minimum cashout at the moment.

In other news: Neobux ads are taking FOREVER to load lately. I've had to let them sit for minutes at a time before the counter actually starts. It's a minor irritation for me, since it's not like I don't have other things I can do while the timer loads, but it is annoying.

For a while, Scour was also taking forever to load. Lately, it hasn't been nearly so bad. It still takes a very long time. I also noticed that on Scour, the "Redeem Points" button had also mysteriously gone missing from my profile. A quick visit to their blog revealed that points no longer matter. They attempted to gloss things over, but tacked this on the end: "Please note: The previous point reward system is still discontinued as of September 1, 2009." From what I can tell, then, the point system is discontinued - period. You gain nothing by searching on Scour - I guess I'll be sticking with Google and Swagbucks.

I Received My Points2shop Prize

Today, I received my prize from Points2shop. I'd ordered a music CD (Good Apollo I'm Burning Star Vol. IV by Coheed & Cambria, if you're curious). I'll post photos of the package and prize in a little while

To recap: I received confirmation that my prize had been ordered the third day after I requested it. I never received a tracking number for the prize, even though the message told me I would receive one. I was a little bit worried about that. A tracking number would have been comforting.

I just now visited their website and, unfortunately, it seems to be down. d'oh. They'd been talking about an update, I guess maybe their update hasn't gone as planned? I'm not sure. All I know is that it only occasionally loads properly, and if I try to visit another page, I get an Internal Server Error. I hope that my point balance hasn't been wiped out - that would be a shame, considering the fact that I've just confirmed that they pay out.

Edit: I just visited the website again, and it appears to be working properly. Nevermind.

Progress

Alrighty.

So far, I am up to 157 points in Scour. Still a few thousand to go, but getting points is easier than I thought it would be. I was using the Scour engine to run phrases through (checking for plagiarism on Ciao) but realized that when they reviewed my account for payout, it might look suspicious to them. So I stopped doing that (Scour wasn't pulling up much in that area that was useful for me, anyway).

I am around 100 points away from cashing out on MyPoints. I was frustrated with MyPoints - I get disqualified for every single one of their surveys, and accumulating points has been very, VERY slow. However, they recently introduced something called the "Frogpond", where you can visit and write short reviews about websites to get points. 25 points per website! And on MyPoints, that's a pretty good amount of points. I don't get anything for referring you (their referral system works off of email only) but now that points are easier to get on MyPoints, it may be more worthwhile to look into it.

I have also joined SurveySpot. I have been taking free surveys - not making money yet. I guess before you get a chance at paid surveys, they want to make sure you're trustworthy/serious. That's the impression I get. SurveySpot is a member of the BBB Online Reliability Program, so I trust them right now. They don't use referral links, but if you want to maximize how much you benefit from this and make the most out of joining, your best bet is to find a link to it and join through somewhere like Points2Shop, where you get points for joining.

And as for Points2Shop, accumulating points there isn't as rough as GamingLagoon. Unlike GamingLagoon, they seem to actually approve offers you complete! It's hard for me to find offers - I'm choosy and loathe giving away any of my contact information unless I think a website is trustworthy - but their daily surveys really aren't bad (when you can qualify, anyway, and you won't always qualify). I'm nearly up to 500 points there, which I guess is like 5 bucks on Amazon.com, which really isn't all that bad when you think about it.

Ciao and Swagbucks Cashouts

Currently up to my eyeballs in Message box spam in Ciao. Also angry - discovered some members who had copied my reviews. I reported them - unfortunately, one of the continually frustrating things about Ciao is that they do nothing about the plagiarists.

Otherwise, I am pennies away from the $5 cashout on Ciao after just 2 days of renewed activity. That's not bad, really. I won't be cashing out at $5, however - it's not worth it, at this point. I'll wait until there's more in my account.

On Swagbucks, I just 'bought' another $5 Amazon gift card. My order has been verified, and I am currently waiting for the gift card number.

If you haven't joined these two sites yet, you're definitely missing out!

In the meantime, at MyPoints, I am about 150 points away from ordering my first gift card.

Ciao - Legitimacy Verified

I have written 40-odd reviews on Ciao. A while ago, I requested some payments. Two separate payments, totaling about $23.00, when all is said and done. I was paid via Paypal.

Well, nothing happened for a while - no money in my Paypal account - and I thought perhaps I'd been had. I was also frustrated by the rampant plagiarism and spamming on Ciao. So, at the end of April, I just sort of gave up.

Wasn't I surprised when I was informed that Paypal had a payment waiting for me?



Here, you can only see one of the payments (for $18.00), I'm guessing the other one went through at the end of April (about when I gave up).

Well, the money is in my account - for real - and I can say that, while Ciao certainly takes their sweet time paying you, they DO pay you. Be prepared to wait for a month and a half, however.

I'm back on Ciao again - after all, $23.00 for writing a few reviews isn't bad. There are other websites where you can write reviews for money, but they are not as user friendly and they have some shady tactics. I'll review one in more depth later this week.

Until then,
Ciao!

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.