Paid By Reviewstream - Reviewstream is Legit

Two hours after sending Reviewstream an email requesting payment, I received my payment of $90.80. Wow, that was fast!




So I can now say that they are definitely legit. I can also say that I'll be able to pay my student loan bill next month. Thank you, ReviewStream, and bless your little hearts.

I'd like to mention that I did this without a legion of referrals. In fact, I have no referrals at all. Nobody has been up-voting my reviews (I don't think I've gotten a single Helpful vote, although I work awfully hard on them). That's right, I wrote 47 reviews (I got paid the bulk rate for 2 of them before wising up). It wasn't easy. They tend to get accepted faster as you write more. I think out of all of the reviews I have written, perhaps 2 have gotten rejected for the full rate, and that was before I learned how to write them in a way that I knew would get them accepted for the full rate. Writing a good review really doesn't take that long once you have practice and you're writing to a template. You can see the reviews I've written by checking my review blog, ShinyReview.

Waiting...

The points I've been waiting for on MyPoints are still pending.

Nothing at all in my Paypal account from DollarSurveys - but I did get tons and tons of spam! I'll be taking my surveys through Points2Shop unless/until I see something from DollarSurveys actually arrive in my Paypal account, since they both run off of the same survey services (and the number of surveys you can take per day through those is limited) and I would like to benefit the most (or at all) from any surveys I take.

The gift card I requested a few days ago from Swagbucks is still pending - I haven't gotten my gift card number yet. They've always delivered in the past, so I'm not really worried about this, and I'm back up to 11 SwagBucks already again - almost 1/4 of the way to my next gift card.

Regarding ReviewStream - I made a formal payment request from them today. I won't state the amount I requested, since I don't want to jynx myself. I wasn't quite sure how to make the formal request - they didn't offer any suggestions or guidelines, so I just emailed them and asked for the money to be sent to my Paypal account. Yeah, I've been busy writing a lot of reviews - I've been sweating bullets lately, since I've had no way to pay my student loan or phone bill.

Still nothing worthwhile from SurveySpot, besides them expecting me to take surveys for free. Is the chance to not get paid for surveys why I signed up for SurveySpot? I think not. I think I can do that pretty much anywhere else on the Internet.

Survey Sites and the MegaList

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Progress, Monday June 22.

Associated Content accepted another article. It's currently processing, and I hope it posts later today.

I redeemed my third Swagbucks prize, another $5.00 Amazon gift card.

MyPoints - I finally have enough points for the $10.00 Bath & Body Works gift card, however, some of those points are still "pending" and I can't order it until they officially post.

Sendearnings - up to $16.93 (cashout is $30.00)

ReviewStream - Writing several reviews a day and up to $18.80 (cashout is $50.00). A dozen more are still pending. You can find links to posted reviews here.

Neobux - up to 50 whole cents!

Points2Shop - 764 points. Not really a 'minimum' cashout, but it's the equiv. of about $7.64 on Amazon. Got my sights set on a $25.00 pair of 'pirate' boots. It's gonna be a while. Some offers I completed last week are still 'pending' but others post almost immediately - I'm hoping this doesn't turn into another GamingLagoon situation.

Survey Spot - As of yet, I have not qualified for any paying reviews.

MyLot- have been signing in and posting every few days, I'm up to $2.54 (that only took, what, 6 months?).

Gaminglagoon - What's that? My pending offers are still pending? Surely, you jest.

I have found a few other places to join but won't be discussing them until I have an idea of how they may pan out.

A relative also emailed me a list of paid survey websites. The list is incredibly long! I don't think I could ever evaluate all of these, although I'm sure some will clearly be garbage the moment I look at them. I plan on leafing through it over the course of this week, however.

I have a lense on Squidoo, predictably called Shiny Little Pennies.

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.

...What?

There are some very odd people currently using the MyPoints search engine - I recently screenshotted this gem:



I really cannot think of a logical reason that this would be a Top Search query, anywhere, ever. Does anybody have any ideas, or know something I don't?

Ciao to Ciao

It looks like Ciao.com is shutting down. They say it's 'merging with Bing', but Bing doesn't appear to be a review site. If you've earned any money from Ciao, it's still yours, but they won't be paying out anything new. This makes me terribly sad - I wasn't earning a lot, but I'd paid a bill with some money from Ciao. It was a nice source of a little bit of income.

I don't know if the newly merged Ciao will be paying for reviews. It doesn't mention that they will, so I'm guessing probably not. I suppose one shouldn't jump to conclusions, but I don't see any reassurances in the letter that it will be otherwise.

My personal opinion is this: from what I've seen on the website, Ciao was probably bleeding money to nonsense reviewers, plagiarists, and users who did not contribute any sort of unique or worthwhile content. This is my own speculation, it is not a fact, but I cannot help thinking this. The plagiarism and garbage reviews were rampant, and I can't see how Ciao would be able to sustain itself when much of its content was either copied or nonsense.

Ciao isn't the only paid review site out there, though. There is an alternative, a website I didn't like as much because I don't like the interface, so I never used it much - it's called ReviewStream. The payment system is a bit different - $2 for review, unless you let them give you the bulk rate, and $.10 per rating. You can't really log in - you submit reviews with your email address, and your account balance is tied to it - so it's not as socially gratifying. You also have to wait for your submitted reviews to be approved, and the minimum cashout is higher at $50.

If you have reviews on Ciao, do what it says and save them. I'm going to find out if they can be "recycled" or if Ciao will be keeping them up. It looks like I'll be hopping over to ReviewStream now.

So I guess, to Ciao... "ciao".