Another Joining Spree

One of my goals this month was to invest some of my online earnings back into the programs that have paid me. But as it turned out, I didn't think it was a great month for advertising, and the little bit that I did seemed to confirm it. But then today I found out about a new Paid-to-Read program called Destiny's Dollars that has just been started as a sister site to another PTR I've been a member of for a long time, HeavenlyEmail.

As an upgraded member at Heavenly, I was given the opportunity to be one of the first people to join Destinys. I think when I signed up there were 5 other members. So I decided to take a punt and do something I've never done before -- I upgraded my membership immediately, and began promoting it through ads at other PTRs. I've never help launch a program before, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

Normally I'm very cautious about promoting and recommending programs, and usually take a 'wait and see' approach. But in this case, I know and trust the owner, and I've been a very happy member of HeavenlyEmail for a long time. They've paid me over 20 times, for a total of over $35, and its run by some of the nicest and most professional people I've ever met in PTR. I wish them all the best.

Star Wars

I first saw Star Wars at the Gulfgate Theater in Houston in 1977 or '78. I can't remember if I saw it during its original release or when it was re-released the next summer. I do remember I was riding with my cousin and her husband, saw a billboard for some sci-fi movie, and mentioned that I'd like to see it since I hadn't seen Star Wars. My cousin's husband immediately headed for the nearest cinema and corrected what he considered a serious case of neglect in my childhood geek development.

What does this have to with making money online? Not a damned thing! But it does have a lot to do with the fact that I've been a big Star Wars fan for over 25 years, and that I was a kid in the 70's and a teenager in the 80's.

Which explains why I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Ireland's musical tribute to Star Wars, featuring music by Journey. \m/

I also came across a hilarious alternate ending for Star Wars at HowItShouldHaveEnded.com. You'll need to download the file (It's a 6.81 Mb .wmv file) but it won't take long if you have an application that can handle .torrent files. If you don't, you can download BitTorrent, Azureus or even Shareaza to do the job.

Payments This Week

A seriously slow week for payments this time. But then again, I was sick for most of it, didn't even logon to my computer, nevermind do anything to earn any money. So any payments this week were pretty unexpected anyway.

TrafficMeet $0.25
BlogTrap $0.25
Total: $0.50

Monthly Total: $30.95

The payment from TrafficMeet was completely unexpected. It's a traffic exchange that I haven't been active in for a pretty long time. I didn't even know I'd earned any money there.

I guess I should count money earned from traffic exchanges in with the PTR money, so that brings my monthly total to $5.20.

I don't think I'm going to reach my goals for this month. I haven't finished the articles I'm supposed to be writing, so I doubt I'll get paid for them before the end of the month. I haven't joined 5 'non search' PTRs. I haven't posted anything at ePinions. I haven't added any new pages to the FreeCashSpace website. And I haven't even come close to spending $20 on advertising. Still, there's another week left in this month, so maybe I'll get some of that stuff done. Some of them might get pushed to next month. And some may have to be 're-evaluated.' ;)

Advertising Results -- Not So Good

I bought an ad last week before I got sick, and I just had a look to see how it went. So far, not so good. :(

I sent a targeted ad to about 150 people in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US. I also targeted those interested in ads for PTRs. So far, I've had 66 clicks and no signups.

I think the ad copy was pretty good. Lately I've been trying to write things that seem less like ads and more like short messages to my fellow members. Basically like I just sent out a quick email to say hey, and to tell them about some good PTRs I've found. Then I send them to the FreeCashSpace homepage where I've got a bit of info and a banner link to each PTR.

Maybe I need to change the webpage. I added the cartoon because I thought it might get people's attention, but even if it does, they may not be scrolling down to read about the different PTRs. The ad I bought is set up to run once a week for three weeks, so I think I'll try changing the landing page to see if it has any effect.

The good thing about PTRs is the advertising is usually pretty cheap. It should be, since incentivized advertising doesn't get great results. But since it is cheap, you can afford to play around and try to find out what works best. A lot of advertisers give up after just one ad. I prefer to make some changes and try again. And again. And maybe even again. But then that's it...because, you know...any more and it would just be silly. ;)

Too Sick to Click

I've spent the last three days in bed sick, and when I finally found the strength to click a mouse, I checked my email to find 1100+ messages waiting for me. I let them download and be filtered into their respective folders, then I went through each folder, checked for important Admin updates, then sent everything to the trash.

Some PTR members have this thing about reading and clicking through every single email. They stress if their inbox gets too full, and they sit up until all hours of the night, opening and clicking like zombies, not even really aware of what they're doing. I don't do that. I have other things to do besides PTR. This week, what I had to do was be sick and miserable. Now that I'm better, I'll read some emails and visit some websites. But I'm not going to try to catch up on all those emails.

With an average click value of 1/4 cent, dumping 1100 emails means I missed out on $2.75. I can live without it.

Payments This Week

Wow, another week's gone by already. It's been a bit of a crazy week, but I've managed to fit in a little bit of online 'work' and collected a few payments:

ClassicalMails $0.50
RandomPTCs $1.17
BeeHiveMails $1.04
PolarPTR $1.04
BlogTrap $0.25
Total $4.00

Monthly Total $30.45

That brings my total earnings from PTR up to $4.95 for this month. My goal was to get paid $7.50, so I'm still on track. If nothing else, I should have another $1 from BeeHive and around $3 from HeavenlyEmail before the end of the month.

Looking at the rest of my goals for the month, it looks like I'm running a bit behind. Nothing new there.

I haven't joined those 5 programs yet, but I have quit several programs so that I can join some new ones without overloading myself. I need to get moving on the writing, though. $70 is a helluva lot better than the occasion 25 cents I've been getting from BlogTrap.

Paid to Read -- Paid How Much?

One of the frequently asked questions I get is 'How much money can I make reading emails?' The short answer, of course, is 'It depends.' but really that's no answer at all. So let me offer a longer answer.

Roughly speaking, you can make about 50 cents an hour reading emails. If you join all the programs in my list, you can probably make between $1 - $2 a day if you spend 2 to 4 hours reading emails. I tend to break it up -- I read some in the morning, and then again at night. As you can see from the payments I've posted, I don't read all the emails I get.

For most people, 50 cents an hour isn't a lot of money. Unless you're working in a Nike sweatshop or something. Or if you have absolutely no other opportunity for putting cash in your pocket, in which case 50 cents and hour might be better than nothing.

If you build big downlines, you might earn a lot more. I don't like to talk too much about downlines, because its easy to make it sound like some kind of multi-level marketing thing -- 'if you get 10 referrals, and then they each get 10 referrals, and then they each get 10 referrals, you'll be making $427 a day!!!' or some bullshit like that.

Of course there probably are people who do exactly that and make thousands of dollars a month reading emails and building downlines. But I'm not one of those people, and chances are, you won't be one of those people either.

But you can be one of the people reading emails a few hours a day, making $30 or $50 a month. And if you're smart, you can move beyond PTR after a while so that you're not still reading email for $50 a month next year.

Free Games

Somebody posted links to a bunch of free games at BoingBoing, and after thoroughly play-testing them, I found several that I thought I'd pass on.

Mepball - get the ball in the hoop to score points. And don't let the ball touch the ground. Seven hoops gets you to the Lightning Round. Score 1000 points and FREE THE MEP!

CurveBall -- high tech tennis that starts out easy, but gets hard fast.

TowerBlaster -- finish your tower by getting the numbered blocks in order -- lowest on top, highest on bottom. And do it faster than your Viking opponents.

When you spend as much time in front of a computer as I do, it's can really help kick your brain back into gear by taking a 10 minute break with some of these games.

Enjoy!

'Get Paid to Read' -- Advertising Results

I set a goal for this month to spend $20 on advertising with various 'Paid to Read' programs. So far, I haven't spent the money. But I did win a free ad, so I'll talk a bit about that one.

I won a 10 point ad to all 2,300 members of AK-Mail. Since I don't know much of anything abou those members, and because the ad wasn't targeted by country or interest, I decided to send an ad for another PTR. I chose Random-PTCs.

So far around 340 AK members have read the ad and clicked the link. Of those, 3 have signed up as Random-PTC members. And together they've earned about 8/10 of a cent so far -- I got 10% of that as referral earnings, so I've received an extra $0.0008 in my RandomPTCs account.

Generally speaking, I'll say if I don't make a profit on an ad within 3 months, the ad has failed. This particular ad didn't cost me anything, so I'm already ahead. But not by a full penny!

Payments This Week

It's been an interesting week as far as payments go -- plenty of them, but most of them are very small amounts.

StormOfCash: $0.06
TheMailClub: $0.38
SendMoreCash: $0.38
BannerFoxAds: $0.09
MesmerizingMails: $0.29
Writing: $0.25
Pure Profile: $25.00
Total: $26.45

Not bad for a single week -- but the 5 PTR payments were only $1.20. Still, my goal for PTR payments this month is a low $7.50, so $1.20 in the first week is a pretty good start. And it shows how PTR is only a part of earning online.

I discovered PureProfile thanks to an ad delivered through a PTR. I probably earned 1/2 cent for reading that ad and visiting the PureProfile website, but I've earned over $50 as a PureProfile member. In addition to the money you earn directly from PTR, you might discover many other ways to earn online through being part of the 'Get Paid' community.

Shocking Fun

I read about this game on another blog, but I can't for the life of me remember which one. If I figure it out, I'll add a link, I promise.

Anyway, this online store called ShockingFun.com sells, among other things, all sorts of games, toys and novelties that involve somebody getting zapped.

The Lightning Reaction Shock Game basically involves holding a joystick while lights flash and music plays. But when the music stops and the light turns green, everybody's got to press the button on their joystick. Whoever's last gets zapped!

I'm thinking this will make a great gift or a fun party game, and pretty good value for less than $20 + postage.

Free War of the Worlds (Original Radio Broadcast)

I'm always on the lookout for a bit of free entertainment, and some of those old radio shows are really cool. It's such a totally different experience compared to watching TV.

The Mercury Theater website has Orson Welles' original War of the Worlds radio broadcast (Oct 30, 1938) in MP3 and RealAudio formats.

They've also got heaps of others, including Dracula, Treasure Island, Mutiny on the Bounty, Our Town, and Huckleberry Finn, just to name a few.

There's even a BitTorrent with all the files -- over 60 radio plays.

An Apology

I don't know if anybody is actually reading this blog, let alone joining any of the programs I recommend here. But on the off-chance that you do, I'd like to offer an apology.

This month the owner of Disco-Dollars disappeared. She's stopped all contact with Disco members, hasn't contacted online friends, and hasn't paid for the hosting of her websites, including Disco-Dollars. And she hasn't paid anybody, either.

She's not answering emails, instant messenges, and her home phone has been disconnected. For whatever reasons, it seems she's gone, and not likely coming back.

Unfortunately, it happens. Usually there are plenty of warning signs before a PTR program falls apart. But occasionally, it happens quite suddenly, and for no apparent reason. That's the way it was in this case.

I really didn't see it coming. I lost the earnings in my account -- less than the $5 minimum -- and the money I spent promoting Disco-Dollars -- a few bucks at most. Nothing major. What's far more serious than the money I lost is the fact that others may have lost money after joining because I recommended the program. For that, I'm sorry.

Hopefully there won't be any more nasty surprises like that in the future.

Recommended Programs

After reviewing the results for June, I've made a few revisions to my list of recommended programs. They include:

Paid to Read

5StarPromotions
EmailCash (Australia Only)
MyPoints
PecoMail

Traffic Exchanges

BlogaZoo*
BlogExplosion*
BlogSoldiers*
ClickCrazey
ClickVoyager
DeepSeaHits
ExchangePilot
FastLaneTraffic
MysticalMaze
RewardingTraffic
ScreenRotator
ShareAdSpace
Surf4theEarth
TrafficRoundup
WebMasterQuest

* Blogs Only

Paid Surveys

American Consumer Opinion Panel
Ciao! (Au,NZ,Can)
ClickIQ (US)
ePoll (US)
Greenfield
NFO MySurvey (US,UK,Can)
PureProfile (Au)
Socratic Forum
SurveySavvy
SurveySpot (US,UK,Can,Au)



Last Updated on 25 March, 2007

Tags: PTR, Paid to Read, Traffic Exchanges, Paid Surveys, surveys

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