tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21295408823366228782024-03-13T11:17:03.300-07:00MTurkish DelightPaulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-49975243537703106932014-12-15T16:48:00.002-08:002014-12-15T16:48:57.100-08:00Earning Money with Swagbucks: Pros and Cons<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12963762">
<h4 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Note: This article originally appeared on <a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/_gcz4qtm83sj0/">my Hubpages Site</a>.</i></span></span></h4>
<h2 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> What is Swagbucks?</span></h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_12963762">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Swagbucks
is a website-based rewards program that pays you virtual currency for
doing basic tasks, such as checking in on their website, doing web
searches, taking surveys, filling out profiles, watching videos and
shopping online.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Every time you fulfill one of these tasks, an amount of virtual
money, known as “Swagbucks” or “SBs” is credited to your online account
and that is how you earn money (the Swagbucks can be swapped for goods
or money later).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is also a Swagbucks toolbar that they will pay you to install,
should you want it, which is supposed to help you to keep track of your
SB account balance and increase your prospects for <a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/hub/5-Best-Ways-to-Make-Quick-and-Easy-Money-Online">earning money online</a>. So what are the pros and cons of earning money online with Swagbucks?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D2GfmEYW_NI/TXWziVx7eaI/AAAAAAAAAEk/9YkxemlXZ2M/s1600/DSCF0229.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D2GfmEYW_NI/TXWziVx7eaI/AAAAAAAAAEk/9YkxemlXZ2M/s1600/DSCF0229.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12963784">
<h2 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
The Pros of Swagbucks</span></h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_12963784">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1.
Swagbucks is free to sign up to and to use. You just go to their
website and fill out a form and then you can start earning money
straight away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. You often receive SBs for performing tasks that you would do
anyway, for example, searching for something on the web, or buying an
item you need online through Swagbucks, which means you make easy money
sometimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. The daily Groupon deals provide some great bargains and sometimes
you win twice, because you buy a bargain through Swagbucks and then they
award you lots of SBs on top of that, which is great when you’re making
a purchase that you planned to make anyway.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_22587663">
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_22587663">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4.
Another good thing is that with most earn from home sites, you need to
earn a minimum threshold before you can spend any of your money (<a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/hub/-Top-Ten-Tips-For-Making-Money-From-Amazon-Mechanical-Turk">Mechanical Turk</a>
being a notable exception to this) but with Swagbucks you can start
redeeming your SBs straight away (although you will still have to build
up a reasonable amount of SBs to afford anything half decent!) That
means that you can earn money online instantly with Swagbucks.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5. Swagbucks encourage you to redeem your SBs at their online store.
But if you can’t find anything you want in there, you can either convert
your SBs into Amazon Giftcards (450 SBs for the $5 giftcard), or buy
the PayPal cash (700 SBs for the $5 PayPal) which goes directly into
your PayPal account. (From your PayPal account, the money can be
transferred to your bank account, if you wish, although there are so
many places nowadays who accept PayPal, you might well find that it’s
not necessary. If you are unfamiliar with PayPal, you should definitely
consider getting an account as there are many earn money online websites
who use it.)</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_12963761">
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12963787">
<h2 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Cons of Swagbucks</span></h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_12963787">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1.
The concept has always seemed a little gimmicky to me. What’s the point
of earning money that's in a virtual currency that you then have to
convert or redeem? Why not just have real dollars and cents from the
start?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Another criticism I have is that the Swagbucks online store just
isn’t that great, in my experience. As there is nothing there that I
want to buy, nine times out of ten, I end up having to swap my SBs for
the Amazon gift cards, or PayPal money, so that I can take my trade
somewhere else. (At least they give me that option, I guess!)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. I have also seen some people criticize Swagbucks online for having
issues relating to malware. My wife and I have used Swagbucks regularly
for a long time, however, and never had any problems in this area, so I
can't confirm this.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDdKWRNHLc4/VI-AYhuTe8I/AAAAAAAAAnk/gKV9OazNAcQ/s1600/self%2Btyping.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDdKWRNHLc4/VI-AYhuTe8I/AAAAAAAAAnk/gKV9OazNAcQ/s1600/self%2Btyping.jpg" height="383" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12963764">
<h2 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Conclusion</span></h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_12963764">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">People
can and do make money from Swagbucks. But you have to work at it, in my
experience, even if it’s only for 20 minutes each day. Over time,
you’ll see your earnings and account money grow.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I probably make around $30-40 in a typical month nowadays, but I made
far less when I first started. You will never become a millionaire from
Swagbucks, but it can allow you to buy a few of life’s little luxuries
and treats that you might not have been able to afford otherwise.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For more ideas regarding maximizing your Swagbucks earnings, I would recommend that you read my wife's post: <a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/swagbucks-tips-and-tricks.html">Swagbucks tips and tricks</a>.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-17903172682095584742014-05-23T09:57:00.000-07:002014-05-23T09:59:02.706-07:00Bubblews Problems and Frustrations!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am still writing on <b><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104">Bubblews</a></b>. It doesn't really make me much money,
compared to other places, but generally I find it fun. Every now and then, I get a payment for $50,
and even when I don't write, I earn about 20 or 30 cents/day from people
looking at my previous work. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've made about $300 so far.
You could probably make $50 to $100/week if you dedicated lots of time to
the site (rather than just writing 3 or 4 "bubbles" per week, like I do!).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As well as fun, it can also be a very frustrating website
too, however. There is always some sort
of problem happening. I have listed some
of the most recent frustrations I have experienced below. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not
getting paid. This has only
happened to be once, and not recently, but it was still annoying. Unfortunately, the site has got itself a
bad name for this. I have to say
that I have been paid successfully on 7 occasions, but I am never fully
sure when I click the redeem button whether I will receive my money</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
minimum redemption figure increasing from $25 to $50. I think this was introduced by Bubblews
so that they could process payments more easily, but it made the work
needed to achieve the payout threshold take twice as long for users. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
payment process is taking much longer than it used to. Early on, Bubblews said that they would
reply within 4 days, if I remember rightly, and then you would receive a
Paypal check which would clear in 3 or 4 days. That meant that from redeeming to
actually having the money took about a week. That same process now takes about twice
as long. One issue is likely that
Bubblews don't have many staff, I suspect.
I guess I am happy if just to get paid, and not too concerned with
the time factor. But it is no
longer true that Bubblews is a quick way of making money. Not as quick as Amazon MTurk, anyway.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bubblews
can be very glitchy. A recent
example is the comments on people's profile pages, where instead of the
relevant comments, there has just been blank spaces for some time. All websites have glitches from time to
time, of course, but Bubblews seems to have more than average and they go
on for a long time.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
site is also extremely slow at times - so slow that it quite often fails
to load altogether and you just get error messages. Again, when I first started at Bubblews,
I thought the problem might just be a temporary one, but there seems to be
no improvement over time. There
have been times where I have just had to walk away from my computer, it
was so frustrating. It doesn't
exactly fill me with confidence or enthusiasm when I go to Bubblews and
the site fails to load repeatedly.
I expect it puts off many writers and readers.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
standard of some of the writing on the site is very low. I don't mean the subject matter so much,
although that can be pretty poor too, but rather the low levels of basic
English skills, things like grammar and spelling. There also seems to be quite a bit of
blatantly spammy content, spun articles etc. (spinning is when software is used to
reword a copied article, usually churning out only semi-literate
results) If the low quality
material cannot be filtered out some way, then the future of site is
undermined, because they need readers as well as writers if they want to
succeed.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This post probably sounds like one big moan about Bubblews
and maybe it is - but most, if not all the frustrations I've highlighted I
believe to be legitimate concerns. I do
enjoy writing and earning money at Bubblews, but I do think that the experience
could be improved.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you are not a member of Bubblews already and would like
to join and earn from the site, may I suggest that consider going to the site
via my referral link below (it won't affect you in any way, but it will earn me
a few extra cents)?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u>Sign up to Bubblews</u></span></a></span></b></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-89501557216823864112014-03-19T07:23:00.000-07:002014-03-19T07:25:17.463-07:00What's Your View on the Best Way to Make Money Online?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I thought it might be interesting and fun to take a poll of
blog readers' favorite way to make money online.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, there are hundreds of ways to earn money out
there so I can't list every option available, so I figured that I would include
5 of my current favorites and an "other" option.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your favorite falls into the
"other" category, please feel free to say what it is in the comments.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My current favorite ways to earn online and what I like and
dislike about them are:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.mturk.com/mturk/"><b>Amazon MTurk</b></a> - This is the one that I started out
with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like it because it is easy and
free to use, plus there are always lots of choices and you can sometimes get
paid within a few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dislike the
fact that the payment rates have got lower and lower over the years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><b>Bubblews</b></a> - The "new kid on the block",
Bubblews is easy and fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like it
because there is a social element and the payments are reasonably generous for
this type of site, plus the "bubbles" rank reasonably well in Google,
all things consider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn't like it
when they raised the payment threshold from $25 to $50 however, and their
website can be very glitchy, plus they occasionally don't pay you and there's
no explanation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mturk/"><b>HubPages</b></a> - HP is free but demands more long term
commitment than MTurk and Bubblews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is basically a writing platform where you share in the advertising revenue,
which comes from sources such as Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, and HubPages
own advertising scheme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like the community
at Hubpages, who can be very helpful if you want help or an opinion on
something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dislike the fact that
HubPages has been consistently hit by Google since 2011 and is nowhere near as
lucrative as it used to be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave"><b>Squidoo</b></a> - The main rival of HP and another open
platform writing site, or "content farm" as these sites have been
labeled by their detractors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like with
HP, you write and post articles and share in the advertising income.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
could make quite a bit of money off Squidoo and HubPages at one time, but they
are both suffering under the Google changes to their algorithm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Creating My Own Hosted Blogs/Sites</b> - I've been running
my own earning sites the last few years, with some remarkable successes, as
well as some dismal failures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hosting your
own earning blog requires quite a bit of commitment, mainly time wise but also
financial (buying the domain and hosting services) but pays off if you stick at
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The technical side is actually
pretty straightforward nowadays with hosting services like <a href="http://secure.hostgator.com/~affiliat/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=purpledogstar"><b>HostGator</b></a>
and <a href="http://www.bluehost.com/track/paulask"><b>Bluehost</b></a> enabling you to easily download and install free blogging software from <a href="http://wordpress.org/"><b>Wordpress</b></a> for you
to use with your domains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, here's my poll, and an opportunity for you to give
your vote (and comment?) on which online earning site is the best?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<form action="http://poll.pollcode.com/26595124" method="post">
<table bgcolor="EEEEEE" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" style="width: 175px;"><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><b>What is your favorite way of earning online?</b></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer1" name="answer" type="radio" value="1" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer1">Amazon MTurk</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer2" name="answer" type="radio" value="2" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer2">Bubblews</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer3" name="answer" type="radio" value="3" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer3">HubPages</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer4" name="answer" type="radio" value="4" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer4">Squidoo</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer5" name="answer" type="radio" value="5" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer5">Creating and hosting my own blogs/websites</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td width="5"><input id="26595124answer6" name="answer" type="radio" value="6" /></td><td><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><label for="26595124answer6">Other</label></span></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><center>
<input type="submit" value=" Vote " /> <input name="view" type="submit" value=" View " /></center>
</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right" colspan="2"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;">pollcode.com <a href="http://pollcode.com/"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;">free polls</span></a> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</form>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-56275695644025670532014-01-24T08:17:00.000-08:002014-02-20T08:35:16.437-08:00How Much Money Can You Make With Bubblews?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><img alt="Bubblews" src="http://www.bubblews.com/assets/images/logo.png" /></a></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I’ve been playing around with <a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><b>Bubblews</b></a> the past couple
of months, using the name: <a href="http://www.bubblews.com/account/77775-bigbrains/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">BigBrains</b></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is quite possibly the best way to earn
some extra spending money at the moment, if you just want a quick earner and
don’t mind putting in some time.<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bubblews user, Southern Teacher</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>(aka<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Holle Abee), who’s word I trust (she’s
a fellow online earner who has had a strong presence on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mturk/">HubPages</a> </b>for a number of years), <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">claims to have earned</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">$1,738.86 on Bubblews since September 10, 2013</span>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I do believe that’s absolutely possible, although I myself earned less than 10% of that over a similar period. Plus I also suspect
that you have to put a lot of time in to achieve that level of earnings (more time
than I have!). The earnings probably don’t sound quite so impressive if you
work out the hourly rate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, here are my personal experiences, good and bad, when
I tried earning with Bubblews.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What is Bubblews?</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Basically Bubblews is a website where you get paid for
writing short “bubbles” (essentially written pieces) and socially interacting
with other “bubblers”, “liking” and commenting on their work, as you would do in
something like Facebook.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The articles you write are meant to be clippets of news, or
short factual pieces, but in practice people write just about anything,
including personal blog posts, poetry, and opinion pieces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great thing is that your articles only have
to be a minimum of only 400 characters long (yes, you read right, that’s 400
characters, not words!) which is pretty short.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Earnings</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You can earn around a dollar for an article, in my
experience, provided you’re prepared to put in some time liking, following and
commenting on other people’s stuff.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You are limited to posting 10 bubbles within any 24 hour
period, however, making it difficult to earn much more than $10-$15/day in my
experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Writing and posting the 10 Bubbles doesn’t take too much
time, but if you add to that all the liking, commenting, etc. that you also need to do,
it can get pretty time consuming and I assume that the high earners put in
quite a bit of time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is a “passive earning” element to Bubblews, but it is
nothing significant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found that on days
when I didn’t post, I still earned, but it was only in the region of 15-30
cents/day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I assume that the passive element will get bigger, the more
followers that you have, but I doubt that it will ever bring in large earnings.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The ideal, of course, would be to have a Bubble go viral on
Twitter or one of the other social media sites.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Payment</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bubblews has a range of payment options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I opted for payments via my PayPal account,
but you can be paid by other methods, including by check.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pros and Cons of
Bubblews</b></span></h3>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pros</b></span></h4>
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Very easy to use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Writing 400 characters is quick and doesn’t take too much effort.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Very few restrictions on topics that you can write about.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Socially interactive and fun.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Payments are relatively generous for this type of program.</span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cons </b></span></h4>
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some users complain of not being paid, usually with no
explanation given.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know how
often this happens, but it has happened to me once.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Threshold for payment was raised from $25 to $50, which
means it takes longer before you’re entitled to request a payment.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It can take at least a week to get your money after you
click the redemption button, as you typically have to wait a few days for
approval, followed by a few more days to access your money in PayPal.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some of the writing quality on there is very poor quality –
obvious spelling and grammar errors, as well as bland or thin content – which makes
you wonder if the site will survive in the long run without more stringent quality
control.</span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">My Earnings Stats</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In a 4 month period, I worked on Bubblews most days. Sometimes I just wrote one or two bubbles, but there were days where I worked more intensively, and some where I wrote the maximum 10 bubbles. I wrote just over 200 bubbles in total.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Over that period, I had 3 payouts of $25, 1 payment of $50, and 1 of my requests for payment rejected (no explanation given). </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I also gained just over 700 connections during this period, and my bubbles received just under 16,000 views, and over 500 comments.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Conclusion</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The payments/earnings are generally reasonably generous for
this type of site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That said, when you
factor in all the time spent, the hourly rate isn’t that great.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You won’t make a living from Bubblews, certainly if you live
somewhere with a high cost of living like the USA, but it’s a great site if you
just want to earn some extra spending money and have some fun!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joining Bubblews</b></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you wish to sign up to Bubblews, I would appreciate it if
you would consider doing so via the link below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sign up to Bubblews</b></a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It’s an affiliate link, that means I get a small commission for everyone
who uses it to sign up – there is no detriment to people who use it, financial
or otherwise, just a small gain for me, I appreciate your support!<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-10027490892090168132014-01-09T17:06:00.000-08:002014-02-20T08:36:23.671-08:00Time For a Revamp!<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A new year has started and I am working on revamping this
website to give it a new look and feel, hopefully making it even more useful and
informative for those people who are earning online.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I started this blog back in 2011 when I was new to the world
of earning online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought it would be
great to write about my experiences of working on sites like <span style="color: lime;"><a href="https://www.mturk.com/mturk/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Amazon Mechanical Turk</b></a></span> and share my
knowledge and experiences with others. I have learnt a lot of things on the way,
some of which I’ve shared, but there is lots more that I want to post.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Consequently, I am going to broaden the scope of the site
and cover some of my experiences with earning methods such as affiliate
advertising, as well as covering MTurk and alternatives such as <span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bubblews</b></a></span>, which I’ve been playing
around with a lot recently.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have earned more than $40,000 online over the past couple of years, it’s not enough to
live off full time, but it is a more than reasonable part-time income.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of that money came from sites like MTurk,
but I’ve also done well<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from websites
like <span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_gcz4qtm83sj0/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hubpages</b></a></span> and<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> <span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave">Squidoo</a></span></b>, as
well as through creating my own sites, mainly creating sites using the blogging
site: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress.org</a></span> </b>and then hosting them
with<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">my favorite website host:</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> <span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://secure.hostgator.com/~affiliat/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=purpledogstar">HostGator</a></span></b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have discovered and used a lot of resources over the past
three years and I want to share my discoveries with others – posting some of my
mistakes and bad experiences, as well as the good ones.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Despite me semi-neglecting this site, it still gets an awful
lot of traffic, and I’m hoping that with a new look and feel and some fresh
material, it will reclaim, or even exceed its previous glories!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am looking forward to this new project!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Watch this space!</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Disclosure: Please note that some of the
links below are affiliate links – that means that I earn a small commission if
someone uses them to sign up or buy something. Using an affiliate link does not
<b>cost or cause detriment to you in any way,
however.</b> Also note that I don’t
recommend anything unless I have experience of it and have found it helpful in
achieving earnings targets. I greatly
appreciate the support of everyone who uses my affiliate links.</i></span></div>
</div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-1190558049073533502013-06-05T08:32:00.000-07:002013-06-05T08:32:14.168-07:00MyLot no longer an earning site!<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One piece of news that I noticed last month was that the MyLot website has been completely revamped and is no longer an earning site. They seem to be going for a social networking style debate site.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I must confess that I virtually stopped visiting the old version of the site. The full page ads annoyed me and the earnings seemed to be measured in cents rather than dollars. Some people claimed to earn a reasonable amount, but they must have been putting in a lot of time, as far as I could see. Plus, it is always best to treat earning claims with a degree of skepticism in my experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now the website has a cleaner, more user-friendly design, but I'm not
sure that I will use it. I am pretty content with using Facebook and
Twitter for my social networking and I'm not sure if the new MyLot brings anything new to the table. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The old MyLot did have its fans. I've met people online who said they preferred it to sites like Redgage. But I suspect that there were a lot of people like myself who used it for a while, and then moved on to other earning sites.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The best way to earn some quick cash online is still Amazon MTurk in my experience. The best way to earn long term is through affiliate advertising and a lot of hard work writing articles that people want to read.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One last thing, I did have some earnings in my account before the MyLot change which have now disappeared (there was a $10 threshold for payments, I seem to remember). There was only a few dollars in there, but it makes you wonder how much there was in total, if you add up all the earnings money of all the MyLot users?</span><br />
<br />
<br />Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-76979873176466452602012-12-09T08:40:00.000-08:002012-12-09T08:40:56.875-08:00MTurk qualification tests<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">What
are Amazon MTurk qualification tests?</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">One thing that pretty much every turker
comes across sooner or later are the MTurk qualification tests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are set by the requester and are
generally a way for them to restrict the turkers who do their HITs, essentially
by trying to weed out workers who lack certain qualities or skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The qualification tests are in addition to
the other restrictions that the requesters can impose, such as minimum HIT
acceptance rates and nationality.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">What
do the tests involve?</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">There is no set answer to this question as
there are numerous types of qualification test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It all depends on which skills or attributes that the requester is
looking for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The test will in most cases
reflect this in the form it takes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, if the requester wants to assess your English language skills, you
might be given a series of sentences and asked to judge which ones are
grammatically correct. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Some tests are as simple as just pressing a
button, or answering a yes or no question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Other qualification tests can involve elaborate tasks which are
difficult and time-consuming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course,
if you spend a long time taking a difficult and time-consuming test and
ultimately you are told you have failed, it can be very frustrating. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Should
I take an Amazon MTurk qualification test?</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Generally speaking, I would say yes in the
majority of cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I mentioned
earlier, many of the tests are very easy, and even if they aren’t, you haven’t
got too much to lose from trying, apart from your time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Don’t take a test if you clearly don’t fit
the criteria, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the HIT
involves translating text into German and you don’t speak German, then common
sense dictates that the test will be checking your German language skills and it
isn’t worth taking.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Some tests will also fail you for things
that you can’t control, such as where you live.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The advantage of taking tests is that if
you succeed, they can sometimes open the door to you doing some of the
(relatively) better paid HITs.</span></span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-24539291164995345852012-10-15T06:54:00.000-07:002014-02-11T07:47:31.099-08:00What is Squidoo? A review<div class="modfloat full">
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873917">
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873917">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/6971434_f260.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i9_-fOAdDTI/UHm-MYwITRI/AAAAAAAAASc/o0Devk3N-ZE/s1600/squidoo+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i9_-fOAdDTI/UHm-MYwITRI/AAAAAAAAASc/o0Devk3N-ZE/s1600/squidoo+logo.jpg" /></a></div>
I must admit that despite having heard many positive things about <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/PaulGoodman67">Squidoo</a></span>
over the past year, it has taken me three attempts to get going on the
site, with my first couple of attempts ending up as false starts. Why? I
think all the cartoon monsters on Squidoo (they dish out the points and
trophies) is off-putting to me for one thing – I don’t think it’s
unreasonable to assume that the site is not targeted at my demographic
group (middle-aged men), but rather one that is younger and possibly
more female? Anyway, I have overcome my aversion to cartoon monsters and
I am here to give you my Squidoo review.</div>
</div>
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873927">
<h2 class="subtitle">
What is Squidoo?</h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873927">
Squidoo
is online writing and earning site where you post one page articles,
known as “lenses”. There are some rules that Squidoo imposes regarding
what lenses can be about, but generally speaking, you can write about
any topic that choose (preferably something that you know about!) Your
lenses are given a rank by Squidoo. There is scope for them to
gradually rise up the rankings – if this happens then you will receive a
payment from Squidoo, with the payment varying according to which
“tier” of rankings that your lens reaches. Squidoo (and you) make their
money from the adverts and sales made via the lenses with the pot
getting split fifty-fifty. There are a variety of different affiliate
advertisers that you can use, such as Amazon, eBay, etc.<br />
<br />
<div class="modfloat full">
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873928">
<h2 class="subtitle">
How do you rise up the rankings?</h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873928">
Squidoo
keep their exact formula secret. However, there are a number of factors
that have been picked up anecdotally by writers over the years. Traffic
levels and the number of sales made through specific Squidoo lenses
seem to influence rankings the most. Positive feedback from other
writers seems to have good effect (interactivity with other users is
encouraged), with the number of “likes” lenses receive seeming to affect
their ranking too.</div>
</div>
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873930">
<h2 class="subtitle">
How much can I earn on Squidoo?</h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873930">
Like
with most writing sites, the majority of writers don’t make much money
and what they do earn takes many months to accumulate. However, there
are a tiny proportion of writers who seem to do rather well from
Squidoo, earning hundreds, or even maybe a few thousand dollars each
month. It does seem to take a lot of lenses and months (years?) of work
to achieve this, however. It also helps if you have a basic
understanding of the search engines rank web pages and follow some <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://simple-seo-tips.com/">simple SEO tips</a></span>, plus and have some online writing experience. (Although I know from experience <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-much-money-can-i-make-with-hubpages.html">how much money can I make with HubPages</a></span>,
my knowledge of Squidoo is still fairly minimal, as I only joined
relatively recently. I do know some Squidoo writers from HubPages,
however, so I understand that the earnings can reach two, three, or even
four figures per month for some people).<br />
<br />
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873929">
<h2 class="subtitle">
How do Squidoo pay me?</h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873929">
Part
of the ethos at Squidoo is that they encourage writers to give at least
part of their earnings to charity (Squidoo give you a large choice of
good causes) – it’s completely optional what proportion, if any, of your
earnings that you give, however.<br />
How Squidoo calculates earnings is one of things that Squidoo’s
detractors sometimes express a dislike for. Unlike writing platforms
like <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://wizzley.com/?pr=2611">Wizzley</a></span> where you
generally earn through Google Adsense and affiliate sites such as
Amazon, and the details of how your earnings are made up can be viewed,
the Squidoo system is pretty opaque – you have to more or less trust
Squidoo to allot the earnings in a fair and reasonable way. I generally
prefer the <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://wizzley.com/?pr=2611">Wizzley</a></span> way
overall, but the Squidoo method has the advantage of being simple and
straightforward, as you simply get a single payment to your PayPal
once/month provide you pass the threshold (which you can set at just a
dollar if you wish).<br />
Squidoo use PayPal to send you your money. I have no problem with
this, although I know that some people don’t like PayPal, I have never
had any trouble with them.</div>
</div>
<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_17873931">
<h2 class="subtitle">
How do I join Squidoo?</h2>
<div class="txtd" id="txtd_17873931">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/PaulGoodman67">Squidoo</a></span> is free to join. You give them basic details like a name and email
address, write your first lens, fill out some profile details and you
are away.<br />
</div>
</div>
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-35486631294062054702012-06-26T05:30:00.000-07:002012-06-26T10:03:09.287-07:00Total processing time for MTurk payments from HIT to bank account<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">I get quite a few comments from people
asking about the processing time for MTurk payments. Usually they are new to Amazon Mechanical Turk
and panic when they don’t get their money straightaway. I have to say that although MTurk is one of
the quickest ways of earning money online, in that you don’t have to reach a
high threshold level of earnings or wait for a monthly payout date, you still
don’t get your money instantly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">I thought I would give you a personal
timeline of how the earnings system works, starting with me completing the HIT
for the MTurk requester, through to the money becoming available in my bank
account. It is written from my own
experience, but bear in mind that I live in the </span><span lang="EN-US">USA</span><span lang="EN-US"> and
the system might work a little differently if you are in another country.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">STEP 1</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">HIT is completed for an MTurk
requester. It then sits in the HIT
Status section of my dashboard page waiting for the requester to approve or
reject it. This is often the longest
part of the process and it can take anywhere from being almost instantaneous to
up to a month. In reality most hits are
accepted or rejected within hours or days – it’s difficult to predict however
and depends entirely on the MTurk requester.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">STEP 2</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Even after a HIT has been accepted it
doesn’t get credited to me straight away.
In my experience, it is normally credited to my current balance (found
in Account Settings) within 24 hours of acceptance though (and very often
sooner than that).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">STEP 3</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Once the money has been credited to my
Current Balance, it can be spent online at the Amazon store. If I want to transfer it to my bank account,
however, I need to reach a minimum of $10 earnings credit to do that. You will also need to link your Amazon MTurk
account to your bank account - it is some time since I did this, but I seem to
remember that it took a day of two before my account was set up. You transfer money by clicking on the “Withdraw
or transfer your earnings” link in the “Your Earnings” section of the Account
Settings page. Once you transfer the
money, it typically takes a couple of days to appear in my bank account. Transferring it at the weekend will take even
longer. Once it appears in my account it
can be withdrawn or spent as normal.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">As you can see from the steps above, you
don’t get money instantly. You have to
wait up to a month to get the HIT approved (although usually it is done within
a few days). You have to wait up to 24
hours to get the money credited to your current balance after approval.
It can then take several days to transfer it your bank account.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-37712183835315580262012-05-15T07:23:00.000-07:002012-05-15T07:23:35.582-07:00Sticking to surveys and diminishing returns<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">I’ve been sticking to doing online surveys
for money on Amazon Mechanical Turk recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After working a lot on MTurk in the run up to Xmas to get some extra
money for the festive season, I’ve just been working fairly intermittently in
the last few months for a bit of extra pocket money to spend on small Amazon
products, such as computer accessories.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Diminishing
returns</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">I think that generally speaking, it is best
to see MTurk earnings as pocket money, rather than trying to earn it as any
sort of wage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be different if
you are in a developing country, but here in the US, the money that you can
earn (with the occasional exception) is generally just too small to make a
great deal of difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This wasn’t
necessarily true in the past, but I think it’s fair to say that MTurk payments
have overall been driven down over time.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Online
surveys</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Surveys are a good example of this
phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I started doing the
online surveys for money on MTurk over a year and a half ago, it was common to
see 15 or 20 minutes surveys that paid, $1.50, $2, $2.50, or more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the equivalent survey generally pays at
most a sum more like 50c,75c, or, if you’re lucky, a dollar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(My stats are anecdotal, but I’m pretty sure
that the lower earnings aren’t just my imagination!)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Globalization</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">The worst falls in earnings come with the
general, more mechanical tasks, however, that are open to anyone in the world
to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These tasks pay less than 10% of
what they did a couple of years ago in some cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t
begrudge fellow turkers from the Indian Subcontinent earning an honest buck,
but MTurk is definitely an example of how globalization can sometimes have a
negative effect on workers’ wages.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-27335924160490488052012-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:002014-02-11T07:58:59.375-08:00Best 3 ways to make money writing online<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">As experienced turkers know, the size of payments for writing tasks on Amazon MTurk vary considerably. I have done well with certain writing tasks in the past, but recently I’ve struggled to find ones that are worth the effort. I am not sure whether payments are gradually decreasing in value, or whether I am just getting more fussy. Anyway, there is never any harm in exploring alternatives.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">My 3 favorite make money writing<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>sites are<span style="color: lime;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mtrk">HubPages</a></span>, <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://wizzley.com/accounts/register/?pr=2611">Wizzley</a></span> and <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave">Squidoo</a></span>. I will give you a general advantages and disadvantages of writing on these sites, compared to writing on MTurk, and then give you a brief overview of each site.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Advantages of online writing and earning platforms</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Potential earnings are generally bigger on writing platforms than on a site like MTurk, at least in the long term.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">The income from these sites is “passive”, which means that in theory at least, you keep earning even when you aren’t working and can get paid multiple times for the same piece of writing. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Online communities can keep you up to date with online earning opportunities and help you to develop the necessary skills.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Disadvantages of online writing and earning platforms</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">It can take months before you begin to earn even relatively small amounts, and a year or more before you see a decent return for your efforts - even then, the earnings certainly aren’t guaranteed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">You need to be fluent with English and have some skill at writing - especially with writing one page articles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">“Passive” income makes it sound like you don’t need to do much, but the real truth is that these sort of sites require a level of continual commitment if you want to succeed. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">You will often need to set up accounts with external advertising/affiliate sites in order to earn money (for example Google Adsense and Amazon). Although free, it can take time and effort and sometimes it isn’t straightforward, especially for people in Asian countries, where the rules are sometimes stricter.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">HubPages</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Hubpages is the one of the biggest writing platforms. Users write one page articles called “hubs” and earn through HubPages own advertising scheme, plus Google Adsense, Amazon, eBay etc. All the advertisers and affiliates are optional apart from Google Adsense which you have to be a member of, if you want to earn money. HubPages articles generally rank well in Google, but Hubpages take a 40% share of your earnings. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-much-money-can-i-make-with-hubpages.html"><span lang="EN-US">Read more about Hubpages</span></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mtrk">Visit the HubPages website</a></span> (using my referral link)</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Squidoo</span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Squidoo is HubPages’ main rival. It’s set up slightly differently and has its own unique appearance, but the underlying principle is very similar. One advantage of Squidoo is that you don’t have to set up your own Adsense or affiliate account. Squidoo pool all the money that’s made, take a 50% cut, then share the rest out to the writers according to how highly their articles (known as “lenses” within Squidoo) are ranked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/hub/My-Squidoo-review-What-is-Squidoo-and-how-do-I-earn-money"><span lang="EN-US">Read more about Squidoo</span></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave">Visit the Squidoo website</a></span> (using my referral link)</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Wizzley</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US">Wizzley is the new kid on the block. Set up by experienced Squidooers, it is similar to HubPages and Squidoo, in that you write one page articles and earn from the adverts and affiliate advertising. They take between a 50 and 60 percent cut of your earnings, depending on how many articles you’ve posted there. Each article posted is checked by a real person (as a pose to a bot) to make sure that it comes up to the required quality standard. The jury is out on Wizzley as far as earnings go, but I am enjoying my time there, so far.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/hub/Review-of-Wizzley-The-new-online-writing-and-earning-website"><span lang="EN-US">Read more about Wizzley</span></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://wizzley.com/accounts/register/?pr=2611">Visit the Wizzley website</a></span> (using my referral link)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span lang="EN-US">UPDATE (February 2014)</span></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">I would no longer recommend Wizzley as a good earner. Income from Hubpages and Squidoo is lower than it used to be, but still worth it. <br /><br />If you just want a quick and easy place to earn, I would recommend: <a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104"><span lang="EN-US">Bubblews</span></a>. </span><br />
</div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-69010891456973010432012-01-11T08:23:00.000-08:002012-06-01T15:51:46.344-07:00Disappointed by MyLot<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">For those of you who have followed my writing, you will know that I have recommended MyLot as a way of making money online in the past. I must confess though, that despite my initial enthusiasm, I have become rather disappointed with it.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I am speaking in terms of the money making mainly (although the full page adverts can be a bit annoying too). My earnings on there have been very low. Even when I spent quite a bit of time on MyLot, I only seemed to bring in a few cents. I could earn more in ten or fifteen minutes on Amazon MTurk than I could earn in several days on MyLot.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Maybe I am being unfair. You only make money with MyLot if you are active with it and as I no longer spend much time on it, I make very little money. People who enjoy the chatter and social networking side of MyLot rate it higher than I do and have commented so to me. Although I do enjoy social networking, I tend to do all mine on non-earning sites like Facebook.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">If you have photos that are of general interest (not just snaps of friends and family), however, then I would say that you would do much better uploading them to </span>Redgage<span lang="EN-US">, rather than MyLot. As well as earning money from the initial upload, you can also earn extra if people stumble across your photos on Google Images etc. Although you won’t earn a fortune in Redgage either, you do seem to earn more than on MyLot. I have earned 50-something dollars from Redgage for the photos I’ve uploaded, which is about ten times as much as I’ve earned from MyLot (although most of that money came from discretionary prizes that were awarded to me by </span>Redgage<span lang="EN-US">, </span><span lang="EN-US">rather than through direct earnings, I’ll admit).</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-36207981467408208232011-12-05T05:56:00.000-08:002011-12-05T06:08:57.389-08:00MTurk online surveys: 3 peeves of mine<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I’ve been working on Amazon MTurk a lot recently in the run up to Christmas - it’s a good way of saving for gifts, especially when I know that what I plan to buy is sold on Amazon. But some of the problems with the Mechanical Turk online surveys have been annoying me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing surveys. They seem like less hassle than some of the other tasks sometimes, the pay varies and is maybe going down gradually over time, but often still isn’t bad in MTurk terms. The requesters are also generally pretty reliable, especially if the MTurk requester is a university academic or student, so I worry less about not getting paid, or there being some sort of scam going on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But recently when I search for surveys, there have been more and more scams that are calling themselves surveys appearing (you know the sort, they always offer you an "easy money for 5 minutes work" and say they're going to pay you $20!). I mean signing up for a credit report can in no way be considered a survey! Neither can “test my website by entering all your personal details and pressing submit”! I guess I had considered online surveys to be a haven from the worst scams, but now I’m realizing that I was probably being over-optimistic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Another really annoying thing that happens to me sometimes with surveys is that I approve the hit, open another window then do and the survey – but when I go back to the original window it tells me that I’ve run out of time. Basically, the requester has given an absurdly short amount of time to do the survey and I have not noticed. It’s happened to me before and I think it’s actually the same requester who keeps doing it (I hope it’s not deliberate, but who knows?!) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Which brings me onto my third and final gripe, which never ceases to annoy me. Why is it that MTurk requesters can block specific turkers, but the turker can’t block a requester that they don’t like? I am maybe being cynical, but I think it tells you where the turker features in the Amazon scheme of things – down at the bottom of the pile!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, enough moaning. I can’t say for sure if I will blog again before Christmas. If I don’t, have a happy festive season, turkers, and a prosperous new year!</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-71075272988328096152011-10-20T08:18:00.000-07:002011-10-20T08:41:37.754-07:00My favorite MTurk requester<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">My favorite Mechanical Turk requester was Content Galore. For a period of time they were paying $1.80 for 150 word encyclopedia style articles on MTurk. They would give you a name or a theme, such as “Burt Reynolds” or “</span><span lang="EN-US">Orlando</span><span lang="EN-US">, </span><span lang="EN-US">Florida</span><span lang="EN-US">”, you went away and did some basic research (looked it up in Wikipedia or another reputable source), wrote a summary of the information in your own words and submitted it. The articles were checked by other turkers and pretty much always accepted (at least in the experiences of my wife and I).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">It was a great way of making money from home. Although there was the odd sparse period here and there, generally there was plenty of work to do. Content Galore were quick payers too – you would usually have your work accepted within a couple of hours, often almost instantly. The HITs would take me just over 10 minutes to complete, meaning that I could earn 20 dollars or more in just a couple of hours or so, which is pretty good by general MTurk standards. My wife could complete them even faster than me, often doing them in half the time that I could! Content Galore were great and I came to rely upon them, usually ignoring other MTurk HITs during that period. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But then something went wrong. My favorite MTurk requester disappeared for a long time, which wasn’t entirely unusual for them, but when they returned, something had changed. My wife noticed it first, she did three HITs for them straightaway, but to her shock had all three of them rejected! The pattern was repeated, with Content Galore disappearing again and returning, only to reject the HITs of my wife and I. It was bizarre, as we followed all the instructions and had done countless HITs for them previously without a single rejection. It resulted in our <a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/07/bad-hit-approval-rate.html">HIT approval ratings getting damaged</a> and our time being wasted with no money in return.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The rumor was that unscrupulous turkers had been trying to cheat the system, including submitting work that had been spun (generated by special software, which turns out work that reads well to a computer but looks terrible to a native English speaker). Content Galore had responded by introducing their own software to check work in an attempt to spot the spinners and cheaters – but the software was overzealous and rejecting work from honest turkers as well as the cheats.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Content Galore disappeared and reappeared again and again. Every time that they returned, my wife or I would try doing a ‘test HIT’ to see if Content Galore had resolved their problems, but each time we did, the test HIT was rejected. My wife had one HIT rejected on the grounds that she had completed it faster than was humanly possible. Well, I was with her at the time and can vouch that she did the HIT according to all the instructions and produced a great piece of work, which was researched, read well and had been spell checked too, so I don’t know what was going on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So nowadays, if I happen to come across a Content Galore HIT, I will ignore it. But working for them was good while it lasted.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-75590537205169518102011-10-10T07:17:00.000-07:002011-10-11T11:29:12.911-07:00Writing an MTurk blog: A look at the best ones<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Sustaining an MTurk blog isn’t always easy. Like most turkers, I suspect, my enthusiasm for MTurk ebbs and flows. There are periods where I do a lot of turking, periods where I do just a little each day, and periods where I do no turking at all. The reasons for this are varied. Sometimes there are HITs on MTurk that I enjoy and pay reasonably well, so I spend more time on MTurk to exploit them. Sometimes I am forced to spend more time on MTurk purely because I need some extra money. Other times, I have other things happening in my life and I haven’t the time, need, or motivation to be on MTurk.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I have been looking at other blogs recently, principally ones that are written by turkers and aimed at other MTurk workers - there aren’t actually that many active ones around, it seems. The <a href="http://mechanicalturk.typepad.com/" style="color: lime;">official Amazon MTurk blog</a>, for instance, tends to focus more on the needs of requesters and programmers, than the requirements of turkers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Judging by some of the other MTurk blogs out there that I have managed to find, many turkers start out with the notion that they can make enough regular money off MTurk to sustain themselves for a long period of time. Then they gradually become disillusioned if this doesn’t happen and some get angry with being poorly treated, or at the quality of some of the HITs. Some of the most entertaining and informative writing comes from disillusioned turkers, although their blogs are often short-lived.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">“<a href="http://mechanicalturkblog.blogspot.com/" style="color: lime;">Mechanical Turk Blog</a>” was clearly motivated to write an MTurk blog in order to highlight what he saw as the scams and injustices of MTurk, of which there are many. I think it is a continual source of disappointment to all of us that Amazon can appear unwilling, or unable, to police the posted HITs better when they are clearly aimed at gathering workers’ contact details for spamming purposes, or worse still, are aimed at collecting personal info to be used for identity theft. These sort of HITs appear regularly on MTurk, sometimes masquerading as a “survey” or a “website test”. Other times, turkers are being asked to perform tasks that are of questionable ethics, and/or legality.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Having made his point, “</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://mechanicalturkblog.blogspot.com/" style="color: lime;">Mechanical Turk Blog</a></span><span lang="EN-US">” now seems to have melted back into cyberspace.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://mechanical-turk.blogspot.com/" style="color: lime;"><span lang="EN-US">Eric Cranston</span></a><span lang="EN-US"> wrote an interesting turker blog, but unfortunately it petered out in 2007 after 2 years of posts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">There are many blogs by people on how to make money from home which refer to MTurk in passing, but it they generally just write a single article and they often don’t give you much more information or insight than a general introduction to MTurk for beginners. </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anybody know of any more interesting MTurk blogs?</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-11411940101876766032011-09-16T07:16:00.000-07:002014-02-11T08:04:04.290-08:00HubPages: Make money writing online<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mtrk/"><span lang="EN-US">Hubpages</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"> is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to make money writing online in my experience. Unlike many other writing online opportunities, you are free to write about any topic you choose and there are minimal restrictions in terms of style, length, and tone. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, yes it is, but you will have to have good English language skills, write engaging material, cover topics that people are looking for online, and be prepared to promote yourself, if you want to do well on Hubpages.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The money doesn’t come to you quickly either. It can take months before you really begin to see the fruits of your efforts on HubPages. But the big earners on HubPages can make hundreds of dollars each month. (I only make a fraction of that, but still find it worthwhile).</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Friendly community and helpful staff</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Of course, there will probably be some people who disagree with me, but my experiences have on the whole being very positive at HubPages. The community there is generally friendly and there are people who will go out of their way to help you sometimes. The staff are good at engaging with the HubPage users, known as ‘hubbers’ and the company has a good record when it comes to innovation and problem solving.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Where does the money you earn come from?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Revenue is raised through online advertising with HubPages taking a 40% cut and you getting 60% of the revenue generated by your hubs. Originally, Google Adsense was the main advertising company used, but in recent times, HubPages have introduced their own advertising system, known as ‘Hub Ads’. You can also make money by selling Amazon and Ebay products on HubPages.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Is it really that easy to make money with HubPages?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Well, yes and no. Of course, you can sign up with HubPages and just write about the topics that interest you and you will make some money, but probably only 20 cents a day. The people who make serious amounts of money with HubPages (dollars rather than cents) choose their topics and titles of their hubs very carefully, spend time researching and writing their hubs, and they do everything they can to promote their hubs and also to get them to appear high up in search engine results. They do this using a collection of techniques known as SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO can influence every aspect of their writing, from picking the topic and title of your hub, to the keywords that they include in their work.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">So what does SEO involve?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In short, the most important elements of SEO as far as hubs are concerned, are probably picking hubs that are likely to engage the online community, using keywords effectively in your titles and text, and getting backlinks for your hub.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">You can <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://hubpages.com/_mtrk/">sign up to Hubpages here</a></span>. It is free to join. (My advice is <u>don't</u> join if you want to earn money quickly! <u>Don't</u> join if your English skills aren't very good! <u>Do</u> join if you enjoy writing and want to make some extra money and don't mind if your earnings are low for the first few months!)</span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-48275992223924266142011-09-07T12:24:00.000-07:002012-06-01T15:52:33.551-07:00More Microworkers Payment Problems<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">Some time ago I wrote a blog post about the <a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/06/microworkers-scam-are-accusations-about.html">Microworkers payment problems</a> that I experienced when I first applied to get my online earnings from my Microworkers account paid into my PayPal. It took a long time before I received my PIN number from them. When the PIN number did eventually arrive however, after over two weeks, it obvious why - I live in the </span><span lang="EN-US">US</span><span lang="EN-US"> and the letter had been sent from </span><span lang="EN-US">Slovenia</span><span lang="EN-US">. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Anyway, after I posted about my experience, I received a comment from a reader called Simona who said that she was having problems getting paid as Microworkers had just withdrawn the PayPal option for payment. Sure enough, she was right when I checked. PayPal was the standard way for many of us to get our Microworkers earnings in the past, but now Microworkers are saying that workers have to open an account with Moneybookers, or Alertpay.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Ideally, I would prefer my money to be paid straight to my bank account, but I appreciate that can't always happen and PayPal is generally a reliable money site to use and one of the most common methods used to pay out online earnings by websites. I don’t really relish the idea of setting up another account with a new website just to pay myself the $9 or $10 that I earn intermittently on Microworkers. The Microworkers Support page states that more payment options (including presumably Microworkers?) would be available soon, but I have waited around for ages in the hope that PayPal would return as an option with no joy and there is still no sign of it happening at the time of writing.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I like earning money online with Microworkers - they are a smaller operation than MTurk but that is okay, I accept that they don’t have as many jobs and I don’t expect to build up my online earnings quickly - but sometimes they can be frustrating. I emailed Microworkers a few days ago to ask them what is happening but haven’t heard anything back, as yet. I will post their answer when they reply.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-18583638137646033292011-08-15T05:26:00.000-07:002014-02-11T08:16:00.721-08:008 Websites that pay you<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">I thought it might be useful to write a list of websites that pay you, along with my assessment for how lucrative I have found them in terms of online earnings. These are all websites that I use, or have used, to make money online. I give a very brief explanation with a link to a much more detailed review, followed by my online earnings rating – the online earnings rating is subjective, of course, as it is quite possible that someone else might sign up to a site and have a completely different experience to my own.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Crowdsourcing Sites</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In the crowdsourcing sites, you make money by performing simple tasks on your computer for online employers in return for small payments. Tasks might include things such as copying text from scanned business cards, completing online surveys, writing short blog articles, tweeting adverts, writing descriptions of photos or videos.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Amazon MTurk (Mechanical Turk)</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> – The site that this blog is named after and a great site if you want to make money online quickly. There are times when I find it frustrating, however. Despite the (occasional) problems, this site is probably one of the better websites that pay you. Full review: <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/_mtrk/hub/-Top-Ten-Tips-For-Making-Money-From-Amazon-Mechanical-Turk">Top 10 Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips and Tricks</a></span><span style="color: lime;"> </span> Online earnings rating: 8/10</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Microworkers</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> – Similar to Amazon MTurk but a much smaller outfit, which gives it some advantages as well as disadvantages. A lot of spammy jobs on there, so I tend to pick off one or two good ones each day and therefore find that making money money online is slower than with Amazon MTurk. Still worth doing though. Full review: <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/_gcz4qtm83sj0/hub/The-Pros-and-Cons-of-Making-Money-with-Microworkers">The Pros and Cons of Making Money Online with Microworkers</a></span><span style="color: lime;"> </span> Online earnings rating: 7/10</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">These sites pay you for online social activity. This might include things like: starting discussions, uploading photos, commenting on people’s profiles, bookmarking links to websites or posts.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">myLot</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> – I had a lot of hopes for myLot when I first started it, but overall I have been a little disappointed by it. It seems difficult to make more than pennies each day, in my experience, although I must say that the ‘work’ that you do is hardly taxing. Maybe I just don’t use it enough, as there are people on there who say they earn a dollar a day or more just for chatting. Full review: <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1125531597">How To Make Money Online With MyLot</a></span><a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/_gcz4qtm83sj0/hub/How-Can-I-Make-Money-With-MyLot" style="color: lime;"> </a> Online earnings rating: 4/10</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">RedGage</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> - I have known about RedGage for a long time, but only started using it recently. I personally prefer it to myLot, although both sites can irritate me a little at times (myLot because of the full page ads and RedGage because it can be a little glitchy at times). The great thing about RedGage, however, is that you continue to make money online even when you do nothing after you have uploaded enough stuff. It’s never going to make you a millionaire, but the community on there are friendly. Full review: <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/_mtrk/hub/Can-I-earn-money-online-with-RedGage">Can I earn money online with RedGage?</a></span><span style="color: lime;"> </span> Online earnings rating: 6/10</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">These sites pay you for doing things like completing online surveys, reading emails, watching videos, playing computer games, shopping online.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> – A popular website with a strong following. You collect a virtual currency called swagbucks, which you can then exchange for products online, PayPal money, or Amazon giftcards. Full review:</span> <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/swagbucks-tips-and-tricks.html">Swagbucks tips and tricks</a></span> <span lang="EN-US">Online earnings rating: 7/10</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Inbox Dollars</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> – Similar to Swagbucks in many ways, but a smaller outfit. I actually prefer Inbox Dollars to Swagbucks, but make sure that you don’t give them your main email address as they send you lots of emails, which can be annoying. Full review: </span><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/review-of-inbox-dollars.html">Review of Inbox Dollars</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: lime;"> </span> Online earnings rating: 7/10</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Writing sites</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">These sites are more involved than the others, as you have to write informative articles and have a good command of the English language. This means investing a lot of time and energy, often doing research as well as writing. Earnings are slow at first. They gradually build, but it can take months before the dollars begin coming in. HubPages and Squidoo make their money through Google adverts and companies like Amazon, and give the writers a share.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">HubPages </span></b><span lang="EN-US">You write informative articles on a topic you know. Good community. Has been through some tough times after getting hammered by Google, but now seems to be on the way back up, at least for may writers. There are some big earners on there, although most writers earn well under $15 per month. Use my referral link to. </span><span style="color: lime;"></span>O<span lang="EN-US">nline earnings rating: 7/10 <a href="http://hubpages.com/_mturk/">Sign up to HubPages</a> with my referral link.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Squidoo </span></b><span lang="EN-US">Similar to HubPages in essence, but the payout system is a little different. I didn’t have much success with Squidoo and gave up on it, but others swear by it as an earner. Online earnings rating: 5/10 </span><span lang="EN-US">Use my referral link to <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave">sign up to</a></span><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/SuperBrainwave"> Squidoo</a>.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: black;">UPDATE (February 2014)</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: black;">I would avoid MyLot altogether as they are no longer and earning site. Redgage is no longer much good either.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=525b2d81d1f4b9.19421104">Bubblews</a> is a good site, however, if you just want some (relatively) quick and easy money. </span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-44114662727780680952011-08-08T06:15:00.000-07:002014-02-11T08:18:26.715-08:00Review of Redgage: a website that pays you to bookmark links and upload photos, videos, and documents<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">In my latest look at methods of making money online, I have been playing around with the website, <span style="color: black;">RedGage</span>, which advertises itself as a website that pays you for online social activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some senses, it has similarities with <span style="color: black;">myLot</span>, although so far I am finding it more enjoyable and there would appear to be greater opportunity to make money online.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I have posted a full review of Redgage and my first impressions and experiences over at HubPages in my article: <a href="http://paulgoodman67.hubpages.com/hub/Can-I-earn-money-online-with-RedGage" style="color: lime;">Can I earn money online with Redgage?</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But basically, Redgage is a website that pays you to bookmark links and upload photos, videos, and documents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In return, you are awarded payments according to how many viewers you get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Views can come from other RedGage users, who you can befriend like you would in sites like MySpace or Facebook; or views can come from outside the site, from bookmarking sites like Faves.com, Delicious, Digg, Reddit or from people searching online with Google.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The RedGage viewers tend to die away after 48 hours or so, but I am hoping that I will get Google searchers over time, who will gradually build up viewing figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Typically, I only make a few cents for each photo uploaded, so it is hardly a lucrative venture in the short term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although there are lots people on RedGage who make hardly anything, there is a minority who’s online earnings are more substantial.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I am in the fortunate position of having lots of articles that I have written that I can link to, plus many photos that I can upload.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, if you don’t have lots of your own articles, you can always post links to other sites, like you would do in social networking sites like Reddit and Digg and you will still make money from people using your link as they pass through RedGage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Like with most of these sites, I don’t think that RedGage is going to make me a millionaire (I have made $6 over 4 weeks so far, and the minimum payout rate is $25), but I am finding it fun to participate in and still hoping that my online earnings rate will gradually increase over time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The RedGage website is a little glitchy, but I like my experience there so far and see more potential for making money online there than I do with myLot, which has been a little disappointing for me, so far.</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US">UPDATE (February 2014)</span></b><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">I no longer recommend RedGage and MyLot as effective earning sites, as they have both changed for the worse since this article was written.</span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-23061679243971329122011-07-18T04:32:00.000-07:002011-07-18T04:35:27.626-07:00Recovering from a bad HIT Approval Rate<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">As any experienced turker will tell you, recovering from a bad HIT approval rate can be a frustrating experience. It seems to take forever to come back from the damage that just one or two MTurk HIT rejections can do and all the time your HIT approval rate is damaged, your ability to make money online is compromised.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">If you are new to turking and aren’t aware, Amazon Mechanical Turk calculates your HIT approval rate by comparing how many of your MTurk HITS have been rejected by requesters for HITs submitted against how many have been accepted. The resulting percentages are called your HIT rejection rate and your HIT approval rate. (All these figures can be seen on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dashboard</i> part of your Mechanical Turk account.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The problem is that many of the requesters insist on a HIT approval rate of 95% or better as a qualification requirement and if you don’t meet the qualification standard, they don’t allow you do their HITs. These MTurk HITS are very often some of the best paid ones and so getting a bad HIT approval rate can really damage your ability to make money online.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">As I have mentioned before, when I started out with Mechanical Turk, I didn’t appreciate the problems that having a bad HIT approval rate might bring, so I just tried out lots of different HITs without really caring too much whether some of them got rejected or not. This came back to haunt me and I learnt my lesson accordingly. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">More recently, however, I have seen my HIT approval rate drop again through no fault of my own. This was apparently because, as I found out from turkers at <a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/06/turkopticon-toolbar-and-making-money.html">TurkopticonToolbar</a>, a requester who had been reliable in the past suddenly started using new (faulty) software which was wrongly automatically rejecting HITs that were actually completely fine. I did complain about it, of course, but it was to no avail, as usually happens! (See <a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/03/10-reasons-why-i-hate-amazon-mturk.html">10 reasons why I hate Mechanical Turk</a>)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, I’ve spent my time recently working my socks off on getting my HIT approval rating back up to 95%. It isn’t fun. As well as my choice of HITs being reduced, each time I do a new HIT I am worried about getting another rejection and getting pushed back down again (once bitten, twice shy!). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I’m not sure if I mentioned it in my comparison of MTurk and Microworkers: </span><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/mturk-or-microworkers-which-is-best.html"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?</span></span></a><span lang="EN-US">, but Microworkers are more generous with when it comes to recovering from a bad HIT approval rate. With Microworkers your rate will recover naturally with time, even if you don’t do anything - so long as you don’t keep picking up rejections you will be okay.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">In conclusion, my advice would be to not let your MTurk HIT approval rate fall below 95% if you can possibly help it. If it does happen, I would focus on getting it back up by doing ‘safe’ HITs, that’s to say HITs being offered by MTurk requesters that you trust, as you can’t afford to get any more rejections. Be prepared for a long haul, though - because the HIT approval rate is a proportional figure, you will need many new HIT approvals to make up for just a few rejections.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-41901771432164083872011-06-30T06:32:00.000-07:002014-02-11T08:26:10.382-08:00The Turkopticon Toolbar and Making Money with Mechanical Turk (MTurk)<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">I have raved about the Turkopticon Toolbar more than once in passing in my posts about Amazon MTurk (Mechanical Turk) but I love this device so much, I wanted to dedicate an entire blog post to it. It really is the most wonderful aid for Mechanical Turk workers (also known as turkers) and a must for everyone trying to make money with Mechanical Turk. As well as the Turkopticon Toolbar itself, there is also an online community of turkers associated with it, who can provide an invaluable source of information for anyone who is trying to make money online using MTurk.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">How much does it cost?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The Turkopticon Toolbar costs nothing to download and install, that’s right, it’s free! </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">How do I install it?*</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">There are two versions, one for Firefox and one for Google Chrome. Provided you get the right version, installation is simple. There is no version for Internet Explorer, but if you use MTurk regularly to make money online, then I would recommend that you download Firefox, just for the Turkopticon Toolbar, you can always just carry on using Internet Explorer for everyday use and click on Firefox when you use Mechanical Turk.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">How does the Turkopticon Toolbar work?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Basically, Turkopticon is letting you know how other turkers have got on before with specific MTurk HIT requesters. It does this by placing little button arrows next to the requesters when you are on the Amazon MTurk HITs page. By clicking on the arrow, you see how previous turkers have rated that MTurk requester. They are graded according to how quickly they pay, how fair they are at assessing HITs etc. Turkers also write reviews in some cases.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lgFita-5gYI/Tgx6T7sR7oI/AAAAAAAAAOs/khOyycMLRR0/s1600/turkopticonpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lgFita-5gYI/Tgx6T7sR7oI/AAAAAAAAAOs/khOyycMLRR0/s320/turkopticonpic.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/">http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/</a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This means that with the Turkopticon Toolbar you can avoid the worst MTurk requesters by looking at the reviews before you do a HIT. You can also write a review after you complete a HIT and get paid and let other turkers know how you got on with that MTurk requester.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Are there any problems associated with the Turkopticon Toolbar?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I personally have not encountered any. The program is also very small, so I’ve not noticed it slowing my browser in any noticeable way.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I know this probably sounds like a glowing endorsement, but as far as the Turkopticon Toolbar goes, I struggle to think of any negatives. It really is a must if you want to make money with Mechanical Turk.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><b>Oh, I nearly forgot to give you the download link, you can get the toolbar <a href="http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/">HERE</a></b>!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span lang="EN-US">*UPDATE: At the time of writing, the Turkopticon Toolbar isn’t working with Firefox 5, so I have gone back to Firefox 4 in order to use it! I’ve had similar problems with other Firefox add-ons too recently, the root cause being that Firefox rushed out version 5 only a few months after they brought out version 4 and the add-on developers haven’t had enough time to react. Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon. <b>FURTHER UPDATE: THIS MATTER IS NOW RESOLVED!</b></span></i></span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-77242969769694042212011-06-16T07:39:00.000-07:002012-06-01T15:54:35.649-07:00Microworkers scam: are accusations about payment problems justified?<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">I recently received a comment from someone on one of my make money online articles complaining about Microworkers payment problems and not being able to get his Microworkers earnings transferred over to his PayPal account. He was upset and said he couldn’t understand why Microworkers insisted on mailing a PIN number out to him, which he’d not received, and he also implied (at least this was my interpretation) that the whole thing was a Microworkers scam.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">As this was not the first time that I have seen complaints made against Microworkers about payment problems online, I thought it merited me writing a blog post. I figured that I could also give you my own experience of what happened when I asked to transfer my Microworkers earnings from Microworkers to a PayPal account for the first time. Before that though, I will go through the complaints about payment problems one at a time and provide some possible explanations.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Why do Microworkers send out PIN numbers by mail?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">You would have to ask them that. Although, often though it is done by companies for tax purposes, when they are attempting to show the IRS that they know who they are paying and sending out PIN numbers is a way of verifying someone’s address. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Is it in Microworkers interest to scam people?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I personally don’t believe that it is. They are a small company with a relatively small online workforce, certainly when compared to a giant like Amazon and their Mechanical Turk (MTurk), their main make money online rival. I can’t see why they would want to alienate workers or get a bad reputation just for the sake of a few dollars. (I have been critical in the past that Microworkers seem too lenient when it comes to some dodgy tasks being advertised on their website, but that is not the same as saying that Microworkers themselves are not legit!)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Here's what happened with me back when I first requested a Microworkers payment of earnings to my PayPal account online. I made </span><span lang="EN-US">a</span><span lang="EN-US"> request to transfer $10 from my Microworkers earnings to my PayPal account and noted the date that I’d done this. Within a few days, a message appeared in my Microwokers Account saying that the PIN number had been sent out. I waited. After a week had gone by, I began to get a little nervous. After 10 days of waiting, I began to wonder if there really was a Microworkers scam. After two weeks, however, I did receive my PIN number and guess what, the letter with the PIN number in it had come all the way from </span><span lang="EN-US">Slovenia</span><span lang="EN-US"> (I live in the </span><span lang="EN-US">USA</span><span lang="EN-US">), so I guess that is a big part of the reason why it took so long!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Anyway I entered the PIN on the Microworkers website, which was accepted. I then had to wait 4 more days while my Microworkers earnings were “pending withdrawal”, according to the Microworkers website. All in all the process took just under three weeks from me initiating the payment to receiving it in my PayPal account.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So my advice would be to anyone who is seeking to access their Microworkers earnings for the first time, if my case is anything to go by, you will get your money, but don’t expect it to happen quickly!</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-24300191116480884112011-06-13T04:30:00.000-07:002014-02-11T09:16:16.182-08:00Swagbucks vs Inbox Dollars, which make money online website is best?<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Xysea1971"><span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"> vs <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.inboxdollars.com/?r=ref8692016">Inbox Dollars</a></span>. They are two of the leading online rewards clubs which offer opportunities to make money online through completing paid surveys, reading emails, playing games, searching and shopping online amongst other things, but which website is best? They both have a lot of similarities, but also differences. So rather like I did with Amazon <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/mturk-or-microworkers-which-is-best.html">MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?</a></span> and Amazon <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/05/amazon-mturk-vs-inbox-dollars-which-is.html">MTurk vs Inbox Dollars, which is best?</a></span> I thought that I would compare and contrast Swagbucks and Inbox Dollars, with a view to deciding which one is preferable for those who wish to make money online. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks and Inbox Dollars Similarities</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Both are website-based rewards clubs where you can make money online.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Both pay you to do paid surveys, play games, read emails, watch videos, shop online.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Both give you coupons that you can print off and save money with.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">There is a Swagbucks toolbar and an Inbox Dollars toolbar that you can install and use to enhance your make money online experience.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks and Inbox Dollars Differences</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">One big difference is that with Inbox Dollars, when you make you make money online it is in dollars and once you reach $30, they pay you cash in the form of a check, whereas with Swagbucks you earn virtual money which you then have to spend in their online shop, or exchange for amazon giftcards, or PayPal money.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks is a bigger organization than Inbox Dollars and their number of users is larger than Inbox Dollars. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks have an active official Twitter account too, which you can use to keep contact with them and get info on Swag codes. Inbox Dollars have no active official Twitter account.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Swagbucks generally is more interactive and community orientated, whereas Inbox Dollars users are more a collection of individuals with no forum or blog to link them up, like with Swagbucks.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Some of the Swagbucks paid surveys pay slightly better than the Inbox Dollars ones, in my experience.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Inbox Dollars give you $5 when you join, Swagbucks give you 50 swagbucks.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">You do get more emails from Inbox Dollars than Swagbucks. My advice would be to do what I do and don’t use your main email address when you join any of these sites. I have a specific email account that I set up specifically for use with all these make money online websites.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In my wife’s opinion, Swagbucks has slightly more desirable gifts and rewards in their offers than Inbox Dollars does. I will have to take her word on that one. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Conclusion</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I personally prefer <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.inboxdollars.com/?r=ref8692016">Inbox Dollars</a></span> to <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Xysea1971">Swagbucks</a></span> on balance, I like the fact that when you make money online, it is in dollars. I find the Swagbucks concept of giving you virtual money which you then have to exchange a little gimmicky, although I guess it doesn’t really matter much in the long run, as you can convert the Swagbucks to Amazon gift cards or PayPal money, if you wish. My wife, on the other hand, is a huge fan of Swagbucks (although she still does Inbox Dollars as well, of course), so I guess that makes us a balanced couple!</span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-11935748166550371812011-06-09T10:44:00.000-07:002014-02-11T09:18:58.287-08:00Using Amazon MTurk to make money online with online surveys<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span lang="EN-US">One way that I make money online with Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is by completing some of the online surveys that you get on there. There are pros and cons to doing Amazon MTurk surveys. In some ways, you are better off signing up to a company that specializes in online surveys, rather than MTurk, if you want to make money online with online surveys, as they often pay much better. <span style="color: lime;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.inboxdollars.com/?r=ref8692016">Inbox Dollars</a></span> is probably better than MTurk for online surveys too, in many ways, as they tend to pay more also. But hey, this is primarily an MTurk blog and I do them on MTurk, so here are my thoughts on using Amazon MTurk to make money online with online surveys.</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US">How do you find surveys on Amazon MTurk?</span></b><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> I normally just type "surveys" in the search box for hits and check the "for which you are qualified" box (my hit rejection rate fell below 95% again recently!).</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Who pays you to do the online surveys on Amazon MTurk?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Anyone can pay people to do an online survey on Amazon MTurk. But usually the online surveys are provided by a mixture of consumer research groups working on behalf of companies, plus individuals who are studying something at a college or university - either academic staff such as professors, or students working for a degree. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Pay rates and time</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The online surveys that you see on Amazon MTurk have pay rates that are completely variable and erratic in my experience. Sometimes you will get paid maybe $2 a time to do easy surveys that take only 5 minutes. Other times you will be given 25 cents for doing a very difficult online survey that takes you over half an hour to complete. There is no rhyme nor reason to it and it is not always possible to discover from the instructions how difficult, or how long the survey will take you before you start out. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Things to watch out for in Amazon MTurk Online Surveys</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Some surveys have initial questions that you have to answer correctly before you can undertake the survey proper. These are annoying if you’re trying to make money online, because if you get anything on the initial section wrong, it’s often a waste of time as you don’t get to do the main survey and therefore don’t get paid.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Often there is a trick question put in the survey somewhere to check if you are actually reading the questions properly and paying attention. Try not to rush through them too much, or you will miss it.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Always make sure that you take your time and pay lots of attention at the end. Usually you get given some sort of code to prove that you have completed the online survey and if you miss that, you won’t get paid!</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Amazon MTurk surveys are generally reliable for paying up, but often late</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Generally speaking, I have had a good record of getting paid with Amazon MTurk online surveys, that’s to say, not getting unfairly rejected. They often aren’t the quickest payers though. Sometimes they pay quickly, but I have also known them to take weeks. On the whole, I would say they were relatively slow payers.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Get your browser right</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Some surveys like you to have specific browsers and software installed on your computer in order to do the online survey. I tend to use Mozilla Firefox generally, but I would always make sure that whatever browser you use, you have others installed too, certainly the big three: Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer, then you have extra options if you run into technical difficulties, or the requester demands that you use a certain browser. I would also make sure that you have your Flash player up to date, as some online surveys play you videos and audio to watch and listen to.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">PS If you use Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome, then you can also use the fabulous Turkopticon toolbar, which is one of the greatest tools for mechnical turkers ever invented!</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Bizarre experiences with Amazon MTurk Online Surveys</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I think one of the oddest surveys that I’ve done when trying to make money online, was one where they kept playing me the same piece of classical music over and over again and asking me what I thought of it. I like classical music, but this survey went on and on in a repetitive fashion for a long, long time, and it almost drove me around the twist!</span></div>
Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2129540882336622878.post-51177081976489022022011-06-06T04:55:00.000-07:002011-06-06T04:55:09.180-07:00My Best and Worst Amazon MTurk Experiences<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Looking back over my time earning money online with the make money at home site, Amazon Mechanical Turk, also known as MTurk, I thought it might be fun to contrast my best MTurk experience with my worst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those familiar with MTurk are aware that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when things are going well, it can be great fun and a more than decent earner, but when it goes badly it can be extraordinarily frustrating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes things go wrong because of your own mistakes, but other times you can lose money or get your hit rejection rate dented through no fault of your own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life certainly isn’t always easy or fair for a turker!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, before I head off to mturk.com to look for new hits to do today, here are my best and worst Amazon MTurk experiences from the past.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">My Best Amazon MTurk Experience</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I had a great run when I found an MTurk requester who paid just under 2 dollars for a writing task that took 15-20 minutes and there were lots of hits too!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a month I was making $15-$20 per day for just 2 or 3 hours work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was all going very well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only problem was that I was playing fair, but there were other turkers who were defrauding the requester using dodgy software to do their hits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the requester introduced their own dodgy software in an effort to weed out the fraudsters, the only problem was that the MTurk requester’s dodgy software started rejecting everyone, including legitimate turkers like myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My best Amazon MTurk experience ended badly with a reduced hit rejection rate, an easy money supply effectively terminated and a sense of annoyance that I still haven’t quite recovered from, but it was good while it lasted!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">My Worst Amazon MTurk Experience</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Early on when I was new to Amazon Mechanical Turk and I didn’t know any better, I did lots of MTurk hits for a requester.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were poorly paid and I didn’t really read the instructions closely, as I didn’t think it was terribly important if they were rejected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guess what, the MTurk requester rejected them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I still didn’t think it mattered much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, after a while, I suddenly noticed that there were lots of MTurk hits that I was no longer qualified for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I pieced it all together, I realized that it was the rejected poorly paid hits that had caused my problems by hitting my hit rejection rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took forever and a hell of a lot of grafting to get my hit rejection rate back up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, I paid a lot more attention after that, even if the hits were badly paid.</span></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04125096218951977368noreply@blogger.com1