SearchChips Purchased, on Hold Until 2008

I first blogged about SearchChips last year. It's a "search and win" site a bit like Blingo and Winzy, where you can win prizes by using their search engine. This is just a quick update for people who might've signed up and not used SearchChips in a while (like me!), to let them know that SearchChips has been sold, the website has been pulled, and they're saying that there will be a new website launched next year, that all our chips will still be in our accounts, blah, blah, blah. You can read their FAQ if you want more info.

The SearchChips search engine (rebranded /powered by Ask.com) was OK, and they did give away over $100,000 in prizes, so if they come back, I'll continue to use them occasionally. But even though they're offered me the chance to get a free iPod, they're still facing a lot of competition, particularly from Winzy, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Prizes are cool, but for me the best reward from a search is a link to whatever it is I'm looking for.

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Earn Gather Points for Uploading Your Pics

Gather.com is offering members the chance to earn 10 Gather points for every photo they upload to the site between now and June 30th. Gather members can rate and comment on each others' photos, and the member who uploads the pic that receives the most '10' ratings will win a $20 Borders gift card. And the member who writes the best comment about the winning pic will get one too!



If you're not a member of Gather.com, or you don't know what it's all about, basically it's an online community where you can publish stories, essays, poems, recipes, articles, photos, drawings or whatever. You can join groups, participate in discussions, rate other members' stuff, or read the comments they leave about your stuff. And you get Gather Points for doing all of that. Then you can redeem your Gather Points for things like a $10 Borders gift card (625 points), an Omaha Steaks gift certificate (1,565 points) or a $50 Home Depot gift card (3,125).



I have to admit I've been a member at Gather.com for quite a while now, and I haven't contributed anything to the site. I don't have a single Gather Point. I've occasionally read some of the short stories and articles posted by other members, and thoroughly enjoyed them. I really should start participating. Maybe I'll start by uploading some photos!



Technorati Tags: writing, money, paid writing, Gather.com

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Buying and Selling Websites

After following a link from NewspaperGrl's The Truth About Making Money Online post, I spent a bit of time poking around BuySellWebsite.com. Yes, it's a website where you can buy and sell websites. I visited a few of the sites for sale -- mostly affiliate-type sites -- and checked out the prices, as well as some of the stats for the sites. And I wondered if anybody was buying. Content consists of a website directory in various health and nutrition-related categories, each with a thumbnail image of the site and a one or two-line description.



Then I saw TotalNutrition.info, which has apparently sold for $10,000. According to the info provided about the site, it gets around 3800 unique visitors a month, and has a net income of $3000 a month (which appears to be from Adsense and Amazon affiliate sales), a PageRank of 2, and an Alexa ranking of around 1,000,000.



Another site that I checked out was MyScrapbookingSecrets.com, a site that sells digital scrapbooking kits through ClickShare, with $3500-4800 in monthly income from 3600 unique visitors, a PR3 and Alexa Rank of around 50,000. Asking price? $19,000 reduced from $27,000. I think I'll keep an eye on it and see if it sells, and at what price.



And finally, I was intrigued by OrganizedFamilies.com, which was for sale for $14,295. It has 7337 unique visitors, PR3, and an Alexa score of around 1,100,000. But the part that got my attention was the claim that the site has a 25% CTR and a $20+ eCPM. The site includes Amazon and other affiliate ads, Adsense, and direct sales of a few of their own products.



If all those numbers don't mean much to you, don't worry about it. The important thing to know is that a PageRank of 2 or 3 is fairly average for a small site (this blog has a PR3), and while Alexa rankings don't really mean much, a rank of 1,000,000 is nothing to brag about (this blog's ranking is around 500,000; also nothing to brag about).



My point is that these sites are nothing extraordinary. Clearly the people who've created them have put some work into them. Maybe a lot of work. They've found their niche, they've built their traffic, they've created content, and they've found ways to make money from their sites month after month after month. And now they're selling their sites for ten to twenty thousand bucks. Not a bad chunk of change.



You aren't going to build a website today and sell it for $10,000 next week. Building websites that make $3000 to $5000 a month in net income isn't easy. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes persistence, and you'll have to learn 5000 things you never thought you'd need to know. But it's do-able. And sometimes it's even fun.

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Payments for May 2007

eBay	$111.03
PecoMail	$0.05
Total:	$111.08
Year-to-Date:	$860.60

A lower total this month, but only because I didn't have any income other than eBay sales. But the eBay money was fairly reasonable this month -- $111 in profit from $435 in sales. I can live with that.



And of course I shouldn't overlook the nickel I received from PecoMail, which was an unexpected payment after the owner of the site blew a gasket and deleted my account because I made critical comments about some changes she'd made to the PecoMail Terms of Service. And also because I'd pointed out that she'd broken those Terms herself. Some PTR owners really don't like it when people do that sort of thing. Oops! LOL! To be fair, at least she paid me my nickel before she deleted my account. A lot of PTR owners like to keep those nickels for themselves.



I think payments for June will be higher than they were in May. eBay sales have started off well (as a comparison, we've had six sales so far this month compared with 1 at the same point last month), and I should get some payments from PayPerPost and a couple of survey companies as well.



Technorati Tags: get paid, PTR, paid to read, eBay, make money online, PecoMail

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