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.

Up To Speed

Sites I Have Hit Payout On, And Have Paid Me:

Associated Content - Another article awaiting review.

Swagbucks - Roughly 10 points away from another gift card.

Sites I Am Close To Payout On, But Have Not Yet Gotten Payment:

MyPoints - I have nearly accumulated enough points to request my first gift card. That only took a few months, eh?


Sites I Am Not Close To Payout On, But Are Good Prospects:

I have not personally cashed out on any of these sites yet, and therefore cannot vouch for them in good faith. You are still welcome to join them if you want, but I won't give them my endorsement yet (so to speak).

Survey Spot - Still haven't qualified for any paid surveys.

NeoBux - Surprisingly, one of the best "get paid to click ads" websites I have encountered. I started out with only 4 ads to click per day, at 1 cent each, but am now up to 6 ads, and one of them counts for a cent and a half (which hardly makes sense, but ok).

SendEarnings - Yep, it's still slow as slow gets. I don't waste much effort on SendEarnings, lately. In any case, NeoBux is looking much more promising.

Points2Shop - The daily surveys are the only real way I get points. Honestly, I don't feel like giving away all of my personal information or signing up for stupid "free trials". That's about 50 points (50 cents' equivalent, I guess) per day, when I qualify at all. So it's going to take me a while. Assuming I only qualify half the time, that's roughly 150 points a week. But I guess it's not bad if you're saving up points for something special.

ReviewStream - I'm not a big fan of ReviewStream for regular reviews, they'll gyp you out of the full review rate and give you the Bulk Rate whenever possible. Nonetheless, I get the sense that it's fairly legit. I have recently submitted several ReviewStream reviews for the full rate, and one has gotten approved so far. You can find links to them here.

Scour - 183 points so far. I don't focus on Scour, but run my searches in it when I remember to.

Sites I Have Looked At But Haven't Really Touched:

Textbroker


Sites I Have Doubts About:

GamingLagoon - My Completed Offers are still pending. Big surprise.

Hits4Pay - Yep, they still want my SSN. A reader recently commented in defense of Hits4Pay's request for a Social Security number. I already understood that this was for tax purposes, but I'm not comfortable giving my SSN out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I've been poking around PTC sites for a while and honestly, since I am not an aggressive recruiter, it is highly unlikely that I will be making more than $600.00 from them.

Hits4Pay's BBB report can be found here. It's an A-, actually not a bad report. However, it is ultimately up to individuals whether or not they wish to divulge such information.

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.

Scour.com and More about GamingLagoon, Hits4Pay

Hit cashout on Ciao again. My first time, it took a week and a half - this time, it took 3 days. Why? Well, now I have a backlog of 44 reviews. The more reviews you write, the faster you make money, I suppose. I guess I'd better get cracking on those reviews again, eh?

I've also returned to my Scour.com efforts. I dropped it before because of complaints that Scour was not paying people who hit cashout - they were banning people and other shady things instead. However, I have since decided that perhaps this was because people were violating the Terms of Service (I see it constantly on other websites, right?) and unlike certain online counterparts, Scour actually DOES something about this. The only way to find out is to try to hit cashout on Scour myself, and either verify that it's legit or get conveniently banned. We shall see. Either way, it's gonna be a while - I've only got 90 points. If you want to give it a shot in the meantime, I say go for it.

GamingLagoon is on my shitlist. GamingLagoon has been sending me spam mails about their NEW OFFERS, so I signed up for another free "send me spam email" type offer to see if they've gotten any better about denying everything. For those not in the know, GamingLagoon is another free gift card/free stuff/free money type website. You can save up points to get stuff like a Nintendo DS, convert your points to Paypal money, or get gift cards with them. It's not nearly as good as Swagbucks, in my opinion - earning points is super slow, you have to sign up for "offers" (most of which involve too much money, or too much personal information), and they tend to reject the offers you've submitted as completed and refuse to reward you points, even when you have proof. I'll update this blog post with some images later, in order to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Nonetheless, persistent members claim that they have gotten their gift cards and such, I highly suspect that the only REAL way to do this is to recruit aggressively. If you're into that, I guess GamingLagoon can probably work pretty well for you. But I can't recruit people in clear conscience if I know that there's no way for them to be successful on the website without recruiting a whole bunch of people, themselves. I guess it's all about what you are or are not willing to do in order to earn points.

Hits4Pay still wants my social security number, but they're not getting it. I doubt I'll ever make enough off a PTC website to warrant needing my SSN for tax purposes.