Making Money Online

Site Building

2009-02-26T09:10:00.001-08:00

I'm going to be moving this blog to its own domain. One of the reasons this has been updated so slowly has been my inability to get the darn thing the way I want it. Blogspot can do just about anything you want it to, but I really need an easier category interface. I'll keep this site (never delete a blog), and you should keep checking here for awhile. Actually, whenever I update the other site, I'll update this site, too, so you can keep this bookmarked if you like.

Topics coming up include running a site that makes money, a few more click to read and some survey site reviews. The real money news is coming soon ; )

The new site address is here: Make Money Online, but there isn't much there, yet.

Review: IWon.com

2009-02-23T08:24:00.001-08:00

So this isn't really a way to make money online, but rather a way to efficiently waste time on line. Efficiently waste time? That's not actually an oxymoron, and I'm a moron so I should know. ; )

A few weeks ago I signed up at IWon.com. Here's the theory: every day, most of us who spend a great deal of time working on our computers also use a little bit of computer time to unwind. Some people look up celebrity news. Some people fiddle with Facebook. Some send around funny emails. And some people, myself included, like to spend a few minutes each day unwinding by playing simple computer games like "Turbo Solitaire" or "Collapse." If you are one of those persons who uses a few minutes of gaming to unwind, why not do it at IWon.com and turn your unwinding time into a chance to win money and prizes?

Playing free games, including spinning the prize wheel, gets you coins that you trade in for chances to win contests. They have a daily sweepstakes that is $100. Weekly is $500. Monthly is a $1000 equivalent prize. Annual is up to $1 million. And for extra excitement there are all sorts of side prizes you could win while playing the games.

The games come in several forms: cash games (always stay away from); free online games; and free to download games, which are full games that used to be available on store shelves. These in the latter category don't win you any coins, and I have no idea about the cash games. As I've said before; there's nothing there to see...move along. The free games are where it is at, and there are tons of choices. Almost anyone should be able to find something that they can enjoy.

But here's the deal. We've talked about efficiency before, and some of these games are very addictive. It's okay to go there for a few minutes a day to unwind, but be careful that you don't accidentally end up spending vast quantities of time. And don't get carried away spending your winnings, either. I've been playing for about a month and haven't won anything, and from chatting to various people while playing, about the most I've found that someone has won was a logo water bottle. Remember this rule of thumb: a chance to win is barely better than no chance to win, so never expend great effort on contests. Just enjoy them for what they are, small distractions from the mundane.

There are a host of other things to do at Iwon.com, including joining a team and competing not only for yourself, but also for the charity of your choice. Go check it out.

InboxDollars: Initial Review

2009-02-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

Please also note that I have neither requested or nor received money from InboxDollars, so the final review will rest upon that. After all, we don't want imaginary earnings, right?

So here is the deal: Most of the time when people talk about making money online they are talking about earning a good living, getting rich quick, etc. But making good money isn't as easy as all these websites would lead you to believe, and sometimes we shouldn't be thinking big, but small and efficient. This is where InboxDollars seems to fit.

Signing up is harmless. You pay no money, and you only receive the spam you request (and get paid to "read").

Cash out comes at $30, but they start you with $5 for signing up.

Ways to earn: There are seven ways to make money at InboxDollars and we'll go over each in order: Cash Emails, Cash Offers, Cash Surveys, Cash Games, Cash Shopping, Insurance Center, Referral Center.

Cash Emails: This is what most of the reviews online are furious about. InboxDollars usually sends you 2 to 3 emails a day, and you make 2 cents for each one you open. This drives people absolutely nuts. Apparently they want thousands of emails a day. This simply isn't realistic. But 2 to 3, and sometimes more, is actually fantastic because of the efficiency of it. I don't check my InboxDollars emails every day, so I build them up to 10 or so and finish them all off in about 20 seconds. That equals out to earning 1 penny per second or $36 per hour. Maybe that's not pro sports money, but that's good, efficient money. You aren't going to get rich quick opening 10 emails a week, but you are earning a small amount efficiently, and that's a good thing.

Also, some emails will offer you extra money, say $1, to sign up to the advertised service, which sometimes is nothing more than providing your name and email. For instance, I made $1 by giving Norton AntiVirus my email. How slick is that? I have no problem giving a major company my email, and I can always opt out of their mass mailings whenever I like. For the record, they have yet to send me anything emails at all, but my $1 is already credited to the account.

Cash Offers: Please note that this is only beneficial if used properly. This is where you can sign up for different things, like the Disney Movie Club or LifeLock and get money back. Disney gets you $6 and LifeLock, for instance, $8. You're probably asking, but don't you have to pay more than that to Disney and Lifelock in the end? Sure, but if you were going to join one of the many opportunities on this site anyway, why not do it through InboxDollars and get a little money for doing it?

One thing that my family likes to do is join up to the book and movie clubs as we get close to birthdays and Christmas. That way, we can get a ton of gifts for practically nothing, saving a fortune, get paid back on InboxDollars and then just buy a couple more books or movies that we would want anyway (or as more gifts), and we're done.

PLUS, some of these don't actually work as a negative sum game. For instance, I got $4 for signing up to Flicker, which I needed to do anyway, and only had to spend $3 there for a little profit of $1 for doing something I already needed to do. Which is better? Just sign up at Flicker and pay three dollars or sign up via InboxDollars and get a dollar back? Easy choice.

Cash Surveys: This is a total waste of time. The vast majority of surveys take forever to complete and many of them finally end by telling you that you don't qualify. As an experiment for the site, I tried over and over to complete surveys and ended up spending over an hour to make $.50. Now that's a far cry from the $36 per hour I was making opening emails. Every now and then I'll take the surveys that are guaranteed money, but, overall, I avoid this section like the plague.

Cash Games: Speaking of the plaque, here it is. If you are the type of person who wants to deposit their own money to compete with online players in games like Turbo Solitaire then you go ahead, but this blog is about making money online, not blowing money online. Stay away from "cash games."

Cash Shopping: Much like "cash offers," this is really only beneficial if you use it for things you were going to buy anyway. For instance, I needed to make a purchase of a hard to find item off of ebay, so I just went through InboxDollars and got some cash back. There are a lot of stores available, but the most notable are: ebay, Borders, GiftCertificates.com, DisneyShopping, Dell, Overstock.com, Apple Store and Old Navy.

Not too shabby.

Insurance Center: You can shop for auto, home, health and life insurance through InboxDollars, but due to regulatory stipulations, you won't earn any money back if you decide to purchase. The broker that InboxDollars uses is Netquote, who I actually used to broker for many years ago. They are a very strong company that might just save you some money if you are interested in giving it a try. A penny saved is a penny earned, right?

Referral Center: You get 10% of the qualified earnings of anyone you refer.

In the month since I signed up to InboxDollars, I've earned $13.96, though that includes the $5 I got when I signed up. All in all, of the places I've reviewed so far, InboxDollars is easily the most legit. You won't get rich at InboxDollars, but if you use it wisely, you can both earn money and save money. I highly recommend it.

Bux.to Scam - The Final Review

2009-02-14T13:07:00.001-08:00

I know that I said during my initial review of Bux.to that I knew it was taking a long time for them to pay and that I was going to wait it out for a good long time before writing a final review. I also said, however, that I suspected that they are a ponzi scheme. After having more time to think about it, I believe that calling them a ponzi scheme is a bit generous, and I'm ready to make my final review.

Here's the situation. They are luring people into buying ads and referrals. By my calculations, if people are paying for the ads that are on the site, then Bux.to should earn $7.25 with every $19.95 ad purchase. This would be an enormous profit percentage for a product. Toss in that they are charging people up to $500 to get a group of referrals (something many members do), and you'll see that these folks should be making a killing so long as everything is being run properly. So why is it that it takes them about a year or more to pay (when they pay at all)?

Simple. Either they are taking the money and running, or it is a ponzi scheme at the tipping point. To be certain, Bux.to claims that the reason for the delay in payment is that you have to be audited to be certain that you have not broken the terms of the agreement. But a year to audit it, to make sure you didn't use an automated program to earn your ten cents a day? Because that is all that they have in their ability to audit based on the terms of service. My wife audits a billion dollar company in a couple of weeks. So what exactly is their process? They claim it is proprietary. That means, knowing Bux.to, that there isn't one, and they really aren't looking at the accounts because there is no money anyway. They've either spent it or didn't have it to begin with. More than likely, they didn't have nearly enough, and then they spent it.

Bux.to is a scam. It won't get you rich, but it probably made the guy who set it up quite wealthy. I'll still let you know if I ever get paid, but that won't change the fact that they are a complete and utter scam.

Final Review - PaidToRead.com

2009-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this is a little embarrassing. Last week I signed up for PaidToRead.com and promised a review this week and here it is: The site is dead.

My first hint was when I didn't get an initial flood of spam, which almost always happens when you sign up to one of these places. I really have too much to do, so I didn't pay that much attention, but after a few days with no emails of any type, I began to get suspicious. Going back to the site, I looked around a bit and clicked on the "News" tab. The last update was from 2003. So much for getting paid by these guys.

I have found, in fact, one decent site which I will try to post an initial review on in the next few days. Stay tuned.

Trial Start - PaidToRead.com

2009-02-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

Starting a trial today, 6 February 2009, with PaidToRead.com.

This appears to be another site that pays you to read emails. There is a strict earnings minimum of $10 per month, which lends a little credence to the site. I will get more familiar with it over the next few days and do an initial review next week. My thoughts upon signing up to the site were that it might something one could use for advertising purposes.

ZoomPanel: Final Review

2009-02-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

So here's my philosophy. I don't care if a money-making opportunity doesn't make me a lot of money so long as it also doesn't take a lot of my time. ZoomPanel screws up, for me, all the way around. One would really have to have a deep love of sharing your opinions in survey form and a tremendous amount of patience for this to be worth it to you.

First of all, there are no payments involved. It is, rather, a reward system like what you may find with your credit card. And the points aren't exactly tossed around liberally, either. I got fifty points for the sign up survey and then I got ten points for the one survey that I was able to complete. That left me with "only" 940 points needed to get to the first redeemable point level of 1000. So what do you get for 1000 points that would take forever to get to? You get to select a prize from the $10 or less bucket, things like paperback novels or music downloads or $10 donations to charity.

The major problem with this (actually, just one of the many) is that to get your $10 prize it would take about 24 hours of constant survey taking. That equals out to a few pennies per hour, and then you end up with a product you probably don't really want.

I can't even begin to imagine the thought processes that would inspire someone to sign up for ZoomPanel and start shooting for the 10,000 ZoomPoints it would take to get the "48 Piece Cutlery/Kitchen Combo Set," but the word 'ignoramus' pops immediately to mind.

Even if you love taking surveys, I would find somewhere a little more useful than ZoomPanel to get your kicks. Stay away from these useless loons.

SurveySpot - Final Review

2009-01-27T17:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Bux.to Trial Start

2009-01-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Trial Starts....

2009-01-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

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.

Spottt, A Review

2009-01-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

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 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.

Final Review on Gomez Peer

2009-01-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

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.

An Early Review of Gomez Peer

2008-11-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

Ah, hopeless futility, how I love thee.

I signed up for Gomez Peer a little over a month ago by following a link like the banner ad above. According to the site FAQ, Gomez Peer runs in the background of your computer, checking the performance of various websites, and pays you for your processing time. You are not automatically approved just by downloading and running the software, and you are only processing when you are online. The maximum amount that you can earn is $45 per month.

I did a little research via Google and decided to give it a try, though downloading software from a money-making opportunity website is usually the equivalent of hitting your PC with a sledgehammer. I'm pleased to report that the software appears to be clean and that it can be easily removed by uninstall with no apparent lasting effects.

So far, that's about as positive as I can get with Gomez Peer, but at least it is something.

My first problem is that I still haven't been approved or disapproved from the program despite the FAQ saying that it generally took two weeks. Part of this may may be my own fault. For one thing, I did go on vacation and have my computer turned off for a week. For another thing, my testing the ability to cleanly uninstall software may have thrown off whatever takes place as part of the Gomez Peer review process. In any event, regardless of what I've done, I still feel there should have been a response by now.

My second problem has to do with the small fortune I've managed to amass in my month long experiment. Here's a screen capture of my Gomez Peer window:

So far for my computer's time, I've managed to earn 15 cents. To put this into perspective system-wise, I have a blistering processor and Comcast cable Internet access, which is pretty swift. Except for that week, actually 9 days, that my computer was turned off, my computer has been running quite a bit.

Needless to say, I'm in no fear of feeling ripped off because I earned more than my $45 limit.

One potential solution is referrals (who then have to wait God knows how long to be approved), and apparently you will earn money off of your referrals. For instance if you click the banners at the top or bottom of this post and sign up, you will become a referral for me. My assumption is that it will take many of you to do this in order for me to work my way up to $45 per month via running the peer. However, I will get $1 for each referral who is accepted into the program, double if you are on dial-up.

Bottom line is that I'm not ready to have a bottom line on Gomez Peer just yet, though I suspect that it is a useless program for those who don't have access to creating referrals. You only need to earn $5 to get paid, so I'm going to hang in there and see if I ever get approved and, if so, if I ever get paid and what happens after that. If you would like to support this experiment, click on the banner ad below and become a referral for me.

I'll give periodic updates.

Exchange Links

2008-11-20T09:22:00.001-08:00

Want to increase your search engine traffic? Let's exchange links. Put a link to me on your site and then put a comment in this article giving your site address. I'll add you to the links section.

Checking out before checking out

2008-11-20T07:08:00.000-08:00

As sort of a postscript to yesterday's story about iGameTester and iVideoTester, you really don't need to do what I did to find out whether the site is worthwhile, which is to purchase the stupid thing with a grimace and a deep feeling of being hopelessly screwed.

These are information for money sites, and there are three basic steps you can follow to make sure you aren't taken in by a scam and still get the information you are looking for.

1) Never join an information for money site.
2) Research via search engines or scam sites to find out other people's experiences.
3) Find the advertised information yourself for free.

1) Never join an information for money site.

This is the most important of the three steps. Just don't join them. They are all, with no exceptions that I've found, some degree of scam, and you actually can get the information on your own.

These sites prey on the notion that you are unhappy with your job/income/life and make promises that simply won't materialize. If you were unhappy before you signed up, you will be very unhappy after realizing that the yellow brick road you just helped to pave leads to nowhere.

This is not to say that the fields of dreams are all overgrown with briars. Take game testing and domain flipping, for instance; both of these are legitimate money-making opportunities. The problem is that very few people can actually make money this way, but lots of people can lose money trying to find out the "secrets" to success.

2) Research via search engines or scam sites to find out other people's experiences.

Simply put the name of the site into your Google search bar and start reading. It is sometimes helpful to add words like "scam" to your search. But there is a big WARNING that comes with this advice.

Scammers have found that it is helpful to flood the Internet with positive reviews of their sites or even partly negative reviews. Worse, some of these scams, like the Autopilot Profits program, actually create thousands of little scammers trying to sell the program. If you ever wondered what the Autopilot Profits program entailed, all you have to do is type "Autopilot Profit" into search engines and start looking. At first you might be confused. All you are seeing are sites that give glowing and vague reviews about the system and encourage you to buy it. In fact, on Yahoo there are over 3 million such sites while Google lists about 1.5 million. Then it hits you.

The system is about selling the system.

I haven't, and won't, purchase Autopilot Profits because now I know exactly what it is. It's a system for selling Autopilot Profits.

And then consider the site, ihatescammer.com. It is a site that does nothing but direct you to scams under the guise of being a consumer protection site. But even here a careful reader can often find information that is helpful. In their ad, and all their articles are ads, for game testing, they declare (somewhat buried) that a great game tester program to join would be one that listed at least fifty companies you could apply to. At the end of the exceedingly long article, they give you a link to their recommended company. Without spending a dollar, I can tell you that what you are going to get when you sign up is a list of 50 game companies. This list will include such obscure names as Microsoft and Electronic Arts.

This brings me to suggestion number 3:

3) Find the advertised information yourself for free.

Once you research and realize that game testing sites are all giving you links to places like Microsoft, you can just go directly to Microsoft. You don't have to pay someone $35 for a link to Microsoft, do you? If you are a huge fan of games and really want to be a game tester, look on the boxes of all your games and go to the developers' web sites. You've just saved yourself some money, and, who knows, maybe even found yourself a dream job.

And in the case of Autopilot Profits, why sell someone else's garbage? I mean, if you really want to be a scammer, just set up your own scam. There's a lot more money in being the primary scammer than in being the scammer enabler.

Make Money Testing Video Games--Not!

2008-11-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm right there with you. We should know better. But given a moment of weakness or plain curiosity, we might find ourselves reaching for the credit card to buy into one of these services that advertises everywhere we gullible people congregate.

First of all, before we dive into the details, iVideoGameTester.com and IGameTester.com are useless, simple ploys to separate you from your money. You should stay away at all cost and keep the credit card in your wallet.

Curiosity overwhelming me (and since I'm doing this blog), I decided to find out for us what this is all about. Haven't we all wondered what magical tips hide behind that credit card page that will nearly ensure our success? Behold! Here sits the magical job listing that will allow you to sleep until noon, play a couple hours of video games while eating a burger, AND GET PAID FOR IT! So my credit card and I paid $34.95 to join these sites. Had they worked, I'd be playing a video game right now instead of writing this post. Sadly, here I am.

So having sent my money off to people that we all instinctively realize are the types of folks who take lollipops from disabled children, I anxiously arrive at the awe inspiring page of secret knowledge. Yes, it really is just one page, and not even a very long one. Here's what I got for my money:

An introduction congratulating me for taking this fantastic step in my life and encouraging me to share your success stories with them.

Brief advice on writing a resume.

Links to game companies and job sites.

A notice that I have just been given everything I need and encouragement to keep trying until I succeed.

Dismissing the other garbage, what about the links to game companies and job sites? That's what we were, apparently, after.

There are about thirty apparent links to companies. I call them "apparent" links because about a third of them no longer work.

The first link is to Microsoft Playtest, which I have just provided to you for free. This actually seems pretty interesting. You enrol with Microsoft, giving them your demographic information and your gaming habits, and then they contact you with opportunities to test games. This seems like just the sort of thing I wanted for $34.95 except that Microsoft doesn't actually pay you to do this. If you get called to participate in a study, which will take place at a specific time, you are then allowed to pick one or more gratuity items (software) from Microsoft. I haven't been selected yet, so I don't have any idea what is available. This is not a bad thing to be made aware of if you are a fan of gaming, but not exactly the job you were looking for.

There's a link to Nintendo (you should be getting an idea now of how you can find all these sites by yourself), which then tells you that they use employment companies to find testers and that all testers must live in Redmand, Washington. Here's the link: http://www.nintendo.com/corp/tester.jsp

You have Activision, which is hiring for testers for Guitar Hero so long as you live in Woodland Hills, California. And then this becomes the pattern for the handful of game companies who are hiring testers. Internet be damned, if you don't live in the neighborhood of Bioware (Austin, TX), you need not apply to be a tester.

But in the end it really doesn't matter because of all the links provided, Nintendo, Activision and Bioware were the only folks hiring. A couple other places were looking for testers, whom they termed "volunteers", but there was absolutely nothing that the average person from Indiana, for instance, could use.

So it was on to the job site links. Gee, who would have ever thought to look for a job at Yahoo Hot Jobs? That $34.95 is looking better every moment. So I go to Hot Jobs and type in the suggested keywords, "tester" or "beta" or "game". Guess what? There's hope yet because there are tons of jobs! Oh wait, those aren't jobs. Those are ads for iVideoGameTester.com and IGameTester.com trying to get more people to pay them $34.95.

So the bottom line is this: If you like games, go to manufacturer websites and see what jobs they have to offer. If you are a local, you might just find something. Or, as in a couple of cases, you may be able to volunteer to test games or even get gratuities from Microsoft. What you definitely shouldn't do is to pay someone $34.95 for this information. It is true that information is valuable, but not this kind of information.

If I ever hear back from Microsoft Playtest, I'll do a follow-up post to let you know. In the meantime, if you have a particular site/offer you want me to try on your behalf, let me know in the comments section.