Traffic Exchanges

Traffic exchanges are websites that let you look at other members' websites, earning credits which can then be used to show your website to others. In other words, a bit of 'If you show me yours, I'll show you mine.' The quality of this type of traffic isn't necessarily all that high -- since a lot of people will care nothing about the websites they view, but only in earning credits to show their website. Not too hard to see how it could all get useless pretty fast, huh?

But if you think about the type of people likely to use traffic exchanges, and you show them something that gets their attention (most traffic exchanges only require members to view a website for less than 30 seconds to get credit), you can have some success. And you might come across some useful websites you might otherwise have never discovered.

A few traffic exchanges that I've been using lately are:

ShareAdSpace - in addition to earning advertising credits, you can earn cash, too.

RewardingTraffic - in between looking at other members' websites, you can play a game of Yahtzee. Sweet!

WebMasterQuest - Surf for credits, surf for cash, play games, download ebooks. It's all there at WMQ.

ClickVoyager - a traffic exchange with a twist -- the option to go on a voyage of discovery with the possibily of winning huge rewards, or losing it all in a single click.

MysticalMaze - surf ten sites and then get a chance to explore the Mystical Maze. It's fun!

What kinds of websites can you promote through TrafficExchanges? Well, one of the easiest things to do promote your PaidToRead programs, or even other TrafficExchanges to get some referrals. Or you may have your own website to promote. Some people even promote the websites of their favourite charities. And since some TrafficExchanges let you promote more than one website, you can choose more than one option if you want.

I Got Paid!

Wow, it's been a pretty good week online so far. I received a $30 check from EmailCash, as well as quite a few paid surveys (total value around $10-12), and a $50 payment for some short articles I wrote. Plus my wife has made quite a few eBay sales. And somewhere in there I think I received a payment from BeeHiveMail -- only $1 but hey, you got to start somewhere, right?

Investing in the "Get Paid" Market

A lot of people ask me why I got involved in "Get Paid" programs -- and I haven't always been able to give them a clear answer. The simple answer is that back in the late 90s I was spending a lot of time online (that hasn't changed), my wife and I had just had our first baby, and we were learning how to save money. And a lot of the people that talked online about how to save money were talking about a company called AllAdvantage.com that paid people to surf the net. It seemed like a pretty good idea to me, and I've been into it ever since.

Eventually, AllAdvantage crashed, and since then a lot of other programs have been created all more or less based on the same concepts -- incentivized advertising and loyatly rewards. A lot of those programs and companies have also crashed, but a few have found ways to keep going, and even prosper.

So why did I mention investing in the title of this post? Because that's generally how I think about the "Get Paid" business. You can make money by "investing" your time. Of course the value of reading email advertisements isn't huge, so you won't make a lot of money -- but it's a way to get started with nothing more than a computer and an email account.

I'm not talking about "easy money" or "money for nothing" or "get rich quick" here. I'm talking about being paid for your time and your attention. Of course the money's got to come from somewhere, and the best way to increase the return on your investment is to add value.

One way to do that is to re-invest a portion of your profits back into the market. In Paid to Read programs, you can do that by buying ads. As I've said before, reading advertisements is never going to pay much. But it's a start, and all you need is time.

So that's why I'm still involved in PTRs and other "Get Paid" programs. Because I think its a good way to get started making money online. I think you can get started using nothing but your time, then use some of your earnings to re-invest in the programs, and eventually you'll be making enough to move beyond PTRs.

But you've got to start somewhere.

Shopping Search Engines

BrilliantShopper is a new price comparison site, or shopping search engine, or whatever you want to call it. You input what you're looking for, it gives you a list of websites that sell it. Brilliant Shopper lets you sort the results by price, or by product rating. It also provides a list of related search terms, product reviews, and forum topics.

At the moment its still in beta, and only works with IE, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on.

Another search engine that's launched recently is Oodle, a classified ads search engine. So far, it only searches local classifieds in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and San Fransisco, but will be expanding to other cities soon.

Since I'm always looking for ways to make shopping online easier, I'm glad to see some new players creating resources that do exactly that.