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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LinkyLoveArmy

Brett Bumeter, aka "Colonel Love", has launched a new blog monetization site called LinkyLoveArmy. The idea behind LLA is that bloggers can work together rather than compete for advertisers, and they can reduce their dependence on "middle men" like Text Link Ads, Adsense, or PayPerPost.

The kind of collaborative blogging LLA has in mind works something like this. LLA launches a CPA campaign, with one or more of their members acting as "wedge bloggers." These wedge blogs are chosen because they're most likely to get the best results for the advertiser, but the collaborative part comes in when other LLA bloggers then link to the wedge bloggers' posts, hopefully increasing the effectiveness of the campaign.

Then all the bloggers involved in the campaign split the proceeds -- with 70% of each conversion going directly to the wedge blogger involved in the sale, and the other 30% being split by all the participants in the campaign.

Will it work? I have no idea! But I think it's cool that new models and methods for monetizing blogs are being tested.

Technorati Tags: problogging, LinkyLoveArmy, LLA, blogging, blog monetization, advertising

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Making Money With Paid Surveys is NOT a Job

Deborah Ng at WorkFromHomeMomma posted about paid surveys today, and I suspect her experience with them sounds very familiar. I totally agree that doing paid surveys isn't a job, or even an employment opportunity, and it's a shame that they're often marketed as such.

Deborah makes money online as a freelance writer. She says she has more work than she knows what to do with, and she's being paid to do something she loves -- writing. So it makes sense that she wouldn't want to use up any of her writing time to spend it doing paid surveys. But that doesn't mean paid surveys are a waste of time for everybody.

We've all got to decide for ourselves how we can best use our time, and I know that there are people out there who've managed to turn their participation in paid surveys (and especially the promotion of paid survey programs) into very lucrative businesses. But for most of us, paid surveys are at best going to bring in a bit of extra money. Maybe a few hundred bucks a year. That's not a job, and depending on your other options, it might not be the smartest, or most profitable, way to use your time online.

But if you enjoy spending a bit of your time doing these sorts of surveys (personally, I like the ones where I get to find out about new products before they're launched), and you feel like the money you're being offered is a reasonably fair exchange for that time, then paid surveys can be a nice way to make a few extra bucks.

Some of the paid survey programs that I recommend these days include:

MySurvey
LightSpeed Panel
ePoll
American Consumer Opinion Panel
SurveySavvy
SurveySpot

Technorati Tags: paid surveys, wahm, work from home

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Why Not Start a Side Business?

Personal Finance Advice has started a great series of posts called "Starting a Business With Pocket Change" that is well worth reading. Tina Parcell talks about starting up a side business, and so far she's included a lot of excellent information and advice.

And speaking of side businesses, Trent has a great post at The Simple Dollar talking about his experiences starting and running two side businesses -- a computer consulting business and blogging. It's awesome when people share their honest experiences, warts and all, and Trent offers some good advice, particularly about the importance of networking and providing great customer service.

Technorati Tags: money, sidebusiness, business, home business, side business

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Doing More Paid Surveys

After reading a blog post about paid surveys (that I won't link to because it was basically trying to con people into paying to join a paid survey scam site), I've been making an effort to increase my survey participation. And in just a week or so, it's really starting to pay off.

I've joined a few new programs, updated my profiles at some older ones, and I've made sure when I got a survey invitation in my inbox that I took the survey as soon as possible.

The results? I've been paid around $55 in Amazon gift certificates so far this month. $30 from ePoll, $10 from LightSpeed, and $15 from KRI Panel. And I've nearly got enough points for another $10 AGC from LightSpeed, and $10 cash from NFOMySurvey.

My advice for making money from paid surveys includes:

• Use two dedicated email addresses -- sign up with one address, then when you've determined that a program is legit, move it to the other address
• check those email accounts every day, and respond to any survey invitations as quickly as possible
• fill out your profile as completely as possible
• never pay for access to a list of survey sites

The thing I like about surveys is that not only do you get paid for doing them, but some of them are a lot of fun. I enjoy finding out about new products before they're released, and I looooooove telling companies what I think they're doing right and wrong (especially telling them what they're doing wrong!). Some of the surveys can be tedious and boring, and it drives me nuts when I spend 10 minutes answering questions only to be told I don't qualify for the survey, but mostly doing paid surveys is an enjoyable and rewarding (financially speaking, that is) experience.

Tags: paid surveys, get paid, surveys

LuluTV Drops Subscription Fee

Last year I blogged about revenue sharing at LuluTV, and described the subscription-based plan they were using -- where you paid $14.95 to become a "shareholder", and then all the shareholders split up an 80% share of the revenue generated from the videos on LuluTV.

While that model apparently worked out for a few uploaders (LuluTV's top money-maker made over $10,000 in 3 months), I think a lot of people would've struggled just to break even, or would've been put off by the whole "subscription fee" concept.

So it's great that Lulu has come to their senses and dropped the subscription fee. Now people can upload their videos and get paid a share of the revenue based on the traffic they send to the site.

I think this is a good move for LuluTV, and good news for people who want to make money uploading videos.

Technorati Tags: LuluTV, money, videos, get paid

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New Earning Opps: Winzy and MegaBuzz

I came across a couple more online earning opportunities today.







Winzy is another search and win search engine, like Blingo and SearchChips. You can either win instant prizes, or you can earn points and use them to enter sweepstakes and raffles.



It looks good, but since I'm only 9,663 Chips away from getting my iPod Nano, I think I'll stick with SearchChips for now.



But since I could win a Nano instantly by doing a search at Winzy, I've added them to my Firefox Search Bar (which makes it more likely that I'll remember to use them, plus it made me an "upgraded member" -- double points for each search, more chances to win an instant prize, more than triple the max number of points I can earn each day, an automatic entry into a monthly raffle to win...wait for it...an iPod Nano!!!!...and as if all that's not enough, I also get a gold star by my name.  Woohoo!









MegaBuzz is another super-groovy Web 2.0 "community" and what makes this one a little different is that you can win prizes for arguing. You can earn points by participating in BuzzPoll's (a recent one was "Should the U.S. abolish the penny?", or Buzzpicks (unlike polls, these have right and wrong answers, for example "Will Al Gore Run for President in 2008?").



I've tried a few, and it's kinda fun, but so far I haven't seen a lot of arguing. But with under 500 members, there's still hope, lol.



So how do you make money? There's a weekly drawing where one lucky member gets to exchange their points for cash ($1 per point, max. $1000). And there's also a special "Daily Challenge" BuzzPick, where if you pick the winning outcome, you go into a draw to win a $50 Amazon gift cert. And if you create a BuzzPoll or BuzzPick that gets 500 or more participants, you automatically get a $20 Amazon gift cert.



I like to argue. I like doing polls. And I like to bet. So I've signed up and I'll have a bit of fun. And maybe I'll get lucky and win a gift certificate.



If you'd like an invite, email me at moolanow at gmail dot com and I'll send you one.



Technorati Tags: Winzy, MegaBuzz, Get Paid

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Who's Making Money From Your Web Presence?

Howard Reingold has a link to Trebor Scholz's post at Collectivate.net called "What the MySpace genereation should know about working for free." It's a good reminder that much of the value of sites like MySpace, eBay, YouTube, StumbleUpon, etc.is created by the people (us!) who use them. And that value comes with a pricetag. News Corporation paid $580 million for MySpace. Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube. And eBay's market cap is currently over $46 billion.

We, as users/creators at these sites, need to keep those numbers in mind, and ask ourselves if what we're getting in return is worth it. Collectively, we create the content and the data (much of which we are completely unaware of) that makes these companies worth billions. Are they giving us enough in return?

It's an interesting question, and definitely something we need to take into consideration when we decide to create our own web presence. And I also think it's important to think about how things might change in the near future as envisioned by KirkH in his comment for Jeff Jarvis' Who Owns the Wisdom of the Crowd? The Crowd. post at BuzzMachine. How will things change when everybody is connected to the net all the time? When we don't need an ISP or a web hosting company or a webmail service, and all the software we need is available for free? Will we still provide billions of dollars worth of content, data, and attention to a bunch of big companies, or will we each get our own slice of that gigantic pie?

Technorati Tags: sociable web, web 2.0, cyberculture

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Easy Ways to Make Money Online -- Part 1

After realising that FreeCashSpace blog was about to turn 2 years old, I went back through all the posts and looked at all the different ways to make money online. I've blogged about quite a few, mainly focusing on ways to make small amounts of money as a casual online earner.

• Reward programs -- these are an easy way to earn cash back when you shop online. But they're set up to reward you for spending money, not to provide you with an extra income.
  
  
• Paid to Read Email Programs -- you can make small amounts of money from these types of sites, but again the idea is that you're being rewarded for viewing ads with the understanding that at some point you might actually buy something from an advertiser. If nobody buys anything, the advertisers go away.
  
  
• Paid Surveys -- this is a very easy way to make money online. Join a few good paid survey sites and you can probably earn a few hundred dollars a year.
  
  
• Writing Product Reviews at Epinions -- an excellent, easy and fun way to make money. And if you hurry and join and submit 10 reviews before the end of March, they'll pay you $10.
  
  
• eBay selling -- You don't have to be a professional eBay PowerSeller or anything. Just sell stuff you don't want or need and it's easy to make a few extra bucks.

Those are just a few of the ways to make money online that I've recommended over the last couple of years. I'll blog about more of them later.

No-fee 0% APR Balance Transfer Credit Cards

Disclaimer: This a paid ReviewMe website review.

Because the credit card companies pay such excellent commissions for approved applications ($40 to $60 commissions are common), they are hugely popular with affiliate marketers. One of those affiliate marketers has created a site focusing on cards that offer no-fee 0% balance transfers. The site is called The 0% APR Credit Card Balance Transfer Website. Not particularly imaginative, but it covers all the important keywords. And it even uses the Cocos (Keeling) Islands domain extension -- .cc -- to stand for "credit card."

The first thing you see when you get to the Balance Transfer website is a bunch of credit cards. They're organised by provider -- Discover, Citibank, Chase, and American Express. Not an exhaustive choice of card issuers, but since each issuer has a number of different cards with different features (apart from the 0% balance transfer), there are plenty of cards to choose from.

Clicking on any of the cards takes you to the issuer's website, to a page that explains the features (and the terms and conditions) for that particular card, along with a link to the page with the application form. If you're not sure which card you want, there's a link under each group of cards that gives you the details for each offer. I think it would be more helpful if those links were a little more obvious, though.

There's also a blog with reviews of each credit card, which is handy. But I think it would be good if the owner changed the template from the slightly-modified Blogger template. In fact, I think the whole site could use a bit of a design overhaul. But I'm sure there will be plenty of time for that later.

The important thing is that the site is up, and provides a good mix of offers and information. The site even includes 7 important "caveats" to help educate visitors about the risks of participating in these kinds of balance transfers. They can be really great deals, if you read all the fine print, and if you use them the right way. But if you pick the wrong deal, or you aren't careful about how you pay off the balances you've transferred, you could end up in a real financial mess.

Overall, I wouldn't say it's the best credit-card related site I've ever seen, but for an affiliate site, it gets the job done. Hopefully the owner will continue to improve this and his other credit-card related sites, and not adopt the "set and forget" mentality too many affiliate marketers use.

Missed Opportunity at ReviewMe

Ouch! After working my way through over 600 emails in my inbox, I found one from ReviewMe letting me know that I'd had an order for a review. But because I didn't respond within 72 hours, the order had been cancelled. Bummer. That's $20 that I didn't earn, all because I didn't check my email over the weekend. That'll teach me.

Get Paid to Review My Blog Post

You might've noticed a new graphic in the footer of each of my posts. The one that says "Get Paid to Review My Post -- PayPerPost. Wondering what it's all about?

Basically, it's a cool way for people to make money from PayPerPost. The way it works is, you click that little graphic, sign up to PayPerPost, and then write a review of my post. Once your review is approved, PayPerPost will pay you $7.50. And they pay me $7.50, too!

I think this is a pretty smart move on the part of PPP. It gets more bloggers to sign up and start making money through sponsored posts, and it not only rewards existing members for their referrals, but it also helps them get more links to their blogs. It's a win-win (uh, make that a win-win-win) situation.

All you need to get started is a blog. Written in English. And it has to be at least 90 days old, with at least 20 posts within those 90 days. In other words, you can't start up a new blog and start filling it up with sponsored posts. If you've got a blog that meets those requirements, click the little PayPerPost graphic, sign up, review my site, and start making money. If you don't have a blog that meets those requirements, why not start one and start blogging. Then don't forget to join PayPerPost in three months or so and start getting paid to blog.

Once you join, you can ever get paid for writing posts like this, talking about PayPerPost. That's right, this is a sponsored post. PPP is going to pay me $10 for it. This whole blog marketing thing is pretty cool, huh?

Get Paid to Park Domains

Matt Coddington has an excellent introduction to "domaining" (making money buying and selling domain names) called Domaining 101.

Matt goes through the process step-by-step, from deciding which domain extensions are better (.net is good, but .com is king) and how to use SEO tools to help you select the best domain names, to links to the tools and sites that you can use to make money from those domains.

One thing to keep in mind is that Domaining 101 mostly focuses on making money by parking the domains, and is a little short on detail for those interested in selling the domains directly. I found the whole thing very interesting, even though I've never really given much though to getting into the domain hoarding business.

Thanks to Maki at DoshDosh for pointing me to Matt's posts, along with several other good ones about getting started in the domain game. If you're interested in getting into domaining, read Maki's post for links to good places to start learning.

Get Paid for Your Art

Revenue sharing has come to the world of computer graphics. CGShare is offering to pay professional and amateur artists who join its community and upload their images, animations, or 3D models.

Another excellent reason for joining the CGShare community is that, even if you aren't an artist, is that everything uploaded by those with the talent is free.


If you're like me, you're always on the lookout for collections of free images for your websites, so if this community grows, it could become an excellent resource. And possibly a nice source of additional income for the artists who share their creations .

Make Money at Amazon Mechanical Turk

Anybody looking for something different in terms of online earning, or if you'd just like to see what kind of "work" gets posted at Amazon's Mechanical Turk ought to drop by and have a look around.

I was pretty active when it first came out, then it seemed every time I checked in, there were few if any HITS (individual "work" units) available. But I got an email from the the other day that reminded me to have a look, and there were heaps of different assignments available.

Most of the HITs pay between 2 and 10 cents each, and take anywhere from a few seconds to 5 or 10 minutes to finish. Some recent HITs I did included viewing blogs and providing keywords to describe them, and identifying road signs in photos. Some of it's fun at first, but a lot of it gets tedious pretty fast. But if you've got some time to kill, and want to kill it while making a bit of pocket change, the Mechanical Turk isn't a bad way to do it.

You can have your earnings transferred to your U.S. bank account, or to your Amazon.com gift certificate account. So far I've transferred about $20 to my Amazon account thanks to the Mechanical Turk