Last Thursday, 22 Jan 09, I signed up for SurveySpot. Less than a week later, I'm willing to call this one "done."
You really have to have a burning desire to share your opinion to get anything out of SurveySpot. Rather than get paid for surveys (supposedly they do send paying surveys out, but I didn't get any), at this site completing surveys earns you chances in various prize drawings, including the big $25,000 sweepstakes and much smaller biweekly prizes. If you have as much luck at prize drawings as I do, you can begin to understand the sense of futility here.
Essentially, you spend a great deal of time answering survey requests in your email inbox. The surveys last for, on average, around 20 minutes. That's right. Twenty minutes of answering annoying consumer questions with the payoff being a slim chance in hell at a small, bi-weekly drawing and no chance in hell at a big annual drawing.
I suppose that I could have hung around longer and found out if they ever actually sent me a paying survey, but there are numerous annoyances with SurveySpot besides the lengthy free surveys. For one thing, their website is a complete disaster, continually logging you out when you go from one section to another. There may be some small way to make a few dollars a month here, but, needless to say, I have better ways to spend my time. Hopefully you do, too.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Bux.to Trial Start
Note: Requested payment on 27 Jan 09. Will append to the bottom of this post updates on my attempts to get paid.
Bux.to is one of a number of sites that claims to pay members to view ads. While this review is called the "Trial Start," I have, in fact, been a member of Bux.to for several months. I went ahead and joined because this is one of those "make money" methods (or schemes) that requires some time to reach a real and reasonable starting point. For me, I determined that this would be when I requested payment. That day came yesterday, but let's back up, first, and talk about what Bux.to is.
Bux.to is free to sign up to. Once signed in, you can view a certain number of ads per day based upon the level of your membership. Free members, such as myself, get about 8 ads. Premium members get at least 20 according to the site FAQ.
Once a member, you click on an ad name and your browser is taken to view an ad for 30 seconds. You may only view one ad at a time. Once that ad has been registered, you may go back and click on another ad. For each ad, free members are paid one penny. Premium members are paid 1 1/4 cents.
Seem like an act of futility? Sure, but the goal here is to get referrals. You get paid the same whether you or your referral watch the ad, so the more referrals you get, the more money you make without doing anything at all.
Speaking of referrals, you can buy un-referred members through the site, which I did. In fact, here is my experience so far:
I signed up in around the first of October and purchased 35 referrals for $34.95. Over the course of about 3 months, I and my referrals slowly built myself up to about $35.23. At that point, considering myself ahead, I requested payment. Now for the fun part. We're going to see how long it takes to get paid (if we get paid).
Initial Thoughts: Bux.to clearly pays some people. From searching around the web, there are a good many testimonies of people who have received payouts. The problem that I see is that the payouts are significantly delayed (and some people have claimed to never be paid), which raises serious questions about the legitimacy of Bux.to. If they were really making and managing their money, would it take nine months or more to pay out? This absolutely screams ponzi scheme. What's more, the ads are the same handful over and over again, and all of them are "get rich quick" ads. Are these ads really paid for? Are the ads really for sites that Bux.to runs? Is there more money coming in that Bux.to is sending out?
These are serious questions, and I hope to be able to answer them over the coming months. In fact, I may have a little something up my sleeve that might allow us to use Bux.to to earn money even if they don't pay out cash, but you'll have to stay tuned for that one.
Bux.to is one of a number of sites that claims to pay members to view ads. While this review is called the "Trial Start," I have, in fact, been a member of Bux.to for several months. I went ahead and joined because this is one of those "make money" methods (or schemes) that requires some time to reach a real and reasonable starting point. For me, I determined that this would be when I requested payment. That day came yesterday, but let's back up, first, and talk about what Bux.to is.
Bux.to is free to sign up to. Once signed in, you can view a certain number of ads per day based upon the level of your membership. Free members, such as myself, get about 8 ads. Premium members get at least 20 according to the site FAQ.
Once a member, you click on an ad name and your browser is taken to view an ad for 30 seconds. You may only view one ad at a time. Once that ad has been registered, you may go back and click on another ad. For each ad, free members are paid one penny. Premium members are paid 1 1/4 cents.
Seem like an act of futility? Sure, but the goal here is to get referrals. You get paid the same whether you or your referral watch the ad, so the more referrals you get, the more money you make without doing anything at all.
Speaking of referrals, you can buy un-referred members through the site, which I did. In fact, here is my experience so far:
I signed up in around the first of October and purchased 35 referrals for $34.95. Over the course of about 3 months, I and my referrals slowly built myself up to about $35.23. At that point, considering myself ahead, I requested payment. Now for the fun part. We're going to see how long it takes to get paid (if we get paid).
Initial Thoughts: Bux.to clearly pays some people. From searching around the web, there are a good many testimonies of people who have received payouts. The problem that I see is that the payouts are significantly delayed (and some people have claimed to never be paid), which raises serious questions about the legitimacy of Bux.to. If they were really making and managing their money, would it take nine months or more to pay out? This absolutely screams ponzi scheme. What's more, the ads are the same handful over and over again, and all of them are "get rich quick" ads. Are these ads really paid for? Are the ads really for sites that Bux.to runs? Is there more money coming in that Bux.to is sending out?
These are serious questions, and I hope to be able to answer them over the coming months. In fact, I may have a little something up my sleeve that might allow us to use Bux.to to earn money even if they don't pay out cash, but you'll have to stay tuned for that one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Trial Starts....
Signed up for the following services on this date to test for money-earning potential:
iwon.com: not so much a money-making site as a contest site that may have potential under certain circumstances which we'll get into later.
InboxDollars: a site that has games, emails and surveys to take for money.
ZoomRewards: a survey site that awards points and has a prize system.
Survey-Monster.net: a site that provides info on survey sites in exchange for getting your email.
SurveySpot: Much the same.
MyPoints.com: Needs more research.
iwon.com: not so much a money-making site as a contest site that may have potential under certain circumstances which we'll get into later.
InboxDollars: a site that has games, emails and surveys to take for money.
ZoomRewards: a survey site that awards points and has a prize system.
Survey-Monster.net: a site that provides info on survey sites in exchange for getting your email.
SurveySpot: Much the same.
MyPoints.com: Needs more research.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Spottt, A Review
On this particular site I really don't do any marketing, but I test marketing concepts on other sites. One such site, which has a general audience, gets a couple thousand unique hits a day. I decided to run a test of a product by AdBrite called Spottt to see if those hits would increase.
This information comes from the Spottt website:
What you do is sign up, create a little logo for your site, tell Spottt what your site is all about, place the code on your site and wait expectantly for the traffic to start rolling in.
The expectant wait was a long one. Informed that the site would be reviewed and placed within 72 hours, the reality was that I had the little dog picture up for over two weeks before being added to the program. Once I was finally approved by Spottt, I sincerely wished I hadn't.
The site I applied to Spottt for was ostensibly a religious site with a general audience. Needless to say I was a bit surprised when I got up one morning and logged on to find an ad for a porn site running. I hit refresh to change the ad and got a normal site. Refreshing again brought a naked busty wench advertising her wares. Another refresh brought the original porn ad.
Not quite a proper matching of audiences.
After removing the ad, I logged into my Spottt account and completed a customer service ticket which was never answered. With nothing more to go on, my experiment with Spottt ended there.
It should be pointed out that when I logged back in to Spottt that morning it claimed that all the credits I had built up by showing the ad for over two weeks had been spent. The site had been advertised tens of thousands of times that day. A quick review of the website's traffic showed that no one had arrived, presumably from a porn site, I guess, via Spottt.
Overall, I'd suggest avoiding Spottt unless your own ad shows a naked girl.
This information comes from the Spottt website:
What is Spottt? Spottt is a free way to trade links with other like minded sites. You show ads of other Spottt members, and they will show your ads.
Who is Spottt for? Anyone with a webpage. It can be your blog, MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other website.
What you do is sign up, create a little logo for your site, tell Spottt what your site is all about, place the code on your site and wait expectantly for the traffic to start rolling in.
The expectant wait was a long one. Informed that the site would be reviewed and placed within 72 hours, the reality was that I had the little dog picture up for over two weeks before being added to the program. Once I was finally approved by Spottt, I sincerely wished I hadn't.
The site I applied to Spottt for was ostensibly a religious site with a general audience. Needless to say I was a bit surprised when I got up one morning and logged on to find an ad for a porn site running. I hit refresh to change the ad and got a normal site. Refreshing again brought a naked busty wench advertising her wares. Another refresh brought the original porn ad.
Not quite a proper matching of audiences.
After removing the ad, I logged into my Spottt account and completed a customer service ticket which was never answered. With nothing more to go on, my experiment with Spottt ended there.
It should be pointed out that when I logged back in to Spottt that morning it claimed that all the credits I had built up by showing the ad for over two weeks had been spent. The site had been advertised tens of thousands of times that day. A quick review of the website's traffic showed that no one had arrived, presumably from a porn site, I guess, via Spottt.
Overall, I'd suggest avoiding Spottt unless your own ad shows a naked girl.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Final Review on Gomez Peer
Okay, so I said on November 30th that I was going to keep going at the Gomez Peer even though they were far behind in approving my application. Why not continue to give them a shot at it? Unfortunately, after another 6 weeks and a few fruitless emails, I finally decided to give them up. My total earnings after about 12 weeks of running their software while fruitlessly awaiting approval was about $1.50.
If anyone else runs Gomez Peer and has been approved, I'd like to hear about it. If you've managed to get anywhere near the monthly maximum $45, that would be interesting as well.
If anyone else runs Gomez Peer and has been approved, I'd like to hear about it. If you've managed to get anywhere near the monthly maximum $45, that would be interesting as well.
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