Earning Money with Swagbucks: Pros and Cons

Note: This article originally appeared on my Hubpages Site.

 What is Swagbucks?

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.

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).

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 earning money online. So what are the pros and cons of earning money online with Swagbucks?

The Pros of Swagbucks

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.

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.

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.

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 (Mechanical Turk 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.

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.)

The Cons of Swagbucks

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?

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!)

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.

Conclusion

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.

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.

For more ideas regarding maximizing your Swagbucks earnings, I would recommend that you read my wife's post: Swagbucks tips and tricks.

Bubblews Problems and Frustrations!

I am still writing on Bubblews.  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. 

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!).

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.

• 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
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.

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)?

Sign up to Bubblews

What's Your View on the Best Way to Make Money Online?

I thought it might be interesting and fun to take a poll of blog readers' favorite way to make money online.

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.  If your favorite falls into the "other" category, please feel free to say what it is in the comments.

My current favorite ways to earn online and what I like and dislike about them are:

Amazon MTurk - This is the one that I started out with.  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.  I dislike the fact that the payment rates have got lower and lower over the years. 

Bubblews - The "new kid on the block", Bubblews is easy and fun.  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.  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.

HubPages - HP is free but demands more long term commitment than MTurk and Bubblews.  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.  I like the community at Hubpages, who can be very helpful if you want help or an opinion on something.  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.

Squidoo - The main rival of HP and another open platform writing site, or "content farm" as these sites have been labeled by their detractors.  Like with HP, you write and post articles and share in the advertising income.   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.

Creating My Own Hosted Blogs/Sites - I've been running my own earning sites the last few years, with some remarkable successes, as well as some dismal failures.  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.  The technical side is actually pretty straightforward nowadays with hosting services like HostGator and Bluehost enabling you to easily download and install free blogging software from Wordpress for you to use with your domains.

Anyway, here's my poll, and an opportunity for you to give your vote (and comment?) on which online earning site is the best?

What is your favorite way of earning online?
	Amazon MTurk
	Bubblews
	HubPages
	Squidoo
	Creating and hosting my own blogs/websites
	Other
pollcode.com free polls

How Much Money Can You Make With Bubblews?

I’ve been playing around with Bubblews the past couple of months, using the name: BigBrains.  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. 

Bubblews user, Southern Teacher (aka Holle Abee), who’s word I trust (she’s a fellow online earner who has had a strong presence on HubPages for a number of years), claims to have earned $1,738.86 on Bubblews since September 10, 2013.

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.

Anyway, here are my personal experiences, good and bad, when I tried earning with Bubblews.

What is Bubblews?

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.

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.  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.

Earnings

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.

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.

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.

There is a “passive earning” element to Bubblews, but it is nothing significant.  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.

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.

The ideal, of course, would be to have a Bubble go viral on Twitter or one of the other social media sites.

 

Payment

Bubblews has a range of payment options.  I opted for payments via my PayPal account, but you can be paid by other methods, including by check.

 

Pros and Cons of Bubblews

 

Pros

• Very easy to use.  Writing 400 characters is quick and doesn’t take too much effort.
• Very few restrictions on topics that you can write about.
• Socially interactive and fun.
• Payments are relatively generous for this type of program.

Cons

• Some users complain of not being paid, usually with no explanation given.  I don’t know how often this happens, but it has happened to me once.
• Threshold for payment was raised from $25 to $50, which means it takes longer before you’re entitled to request a payment.
• 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.
• 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.

 

My Earnings Stats

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.

Over that period, I had 3 payouts of $25, 1 payment of $50, and 1 of my requests for payment rejected (no explanation given).  

I also gained just over 700 connections during this period, and my bubbles received just under 16,000 views, and over 500 comments.

 

Conclusion

The payments/earnings are generally reasonably generous for this type of site.  That said, when you factor in all the time spent, the hourly rate isn’t that great.

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!

 

Joining Bubblews

If you wish to sign up to Bubblews, I would appreciate it if you would consider doing so via the link below.  

Sign up to Bubblews

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! 

Time For a Revamp!

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.

I started this blog back in 2011 when I was new to the world of earning online.  I thought it would be great to write about my experiences of working on sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk 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.

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 Bubblews, which I’ve been playing around with a lot recently.

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.  Part of that money came from sites like MTurk, but I’ve also done well  from websites like Hubpages and Squidoo, as well as through creating my own sites, mainly creating sites using the blogging site: Wordpress.org and then hosting them with my favorite website host: HostGator.

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.

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!

I am looking forward to this new project!

Watch this space!

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 cost or cause detriment to you in any way, however.  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.

MyLot no longer an earning site!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

MTurk qualification tests

What are Amazon MTurk qualification tests?

One thing that pretty much every turker comes across sooner or later are the MTurk qualification tests.  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.  The qualification tests are in addition to the other restrictions that the requesters can impose, such as minimum HIT acceptance rates and nationality.

What do the tests involve?

There is no set answer to this question as there are numerous types of qualification test.  It all depends on which skills or attributes that the requester is looking for.  The test will in most cases reflect this in the form it takes.  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.

Some tests are as simple as just pressing a button, or answering a yes or no question.  Other qualification tests can involve elaborate tasks which are difficult and time-consuming.  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.

Should I take an Amazon MTurk qualification test?

Generally speaking, I would say yes in the majority of cases.  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. 

Don’t take a test if you clearly don’t fit the criteria, however.  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.

Some tests will also fail you for things that you can’t control, such as where you live.

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.

What is Squidoo? A review

I must admit that despite having heard many positive things about Squidoo 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.

What is Squidoo?

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.

How do you rise up the rankings?

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.

How much can I earn on Squidoo?

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 simple SEO tips, plus and have some online writing experience. (Although I know from experience how much money can I make with HubPages, 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).

How do Squidoo pay me?

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.
How Squidoo calculates earnings is one of things that Squidoo’s detractors sometimes express a dislike for. Unlike writing platforms like Wizzley 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 Wizzley 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).
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.

How do I join Squidoo?

Squidoo 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.

Total processing time for MTurk payments from HIT to bank account

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.

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 USA and the system might work a little differently if you are in another country.

STEP 1

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.

STEP 2

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).

STEP 3

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.

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.

Sticking to surveys and diminishing returns

I’ve been sticking to doing online surveys for money on Amazon Mechanical Turk recently.  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.

Diminishing returns

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.  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.  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.

Online surveys

Surveys are a good example of this phenomenon.  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.  Now the equivalent survey generally pays at most a sum more like 50c,75c, or, if you’re lucky, a dollar.  (My stats are anecdotal, but I’m pretty sure that the lower earnings aren’t just my imagination!)

Globalization

The worst falls in earnings come with the general, more mechanical tasks, however, that are open to anyone in the world to do.  These tasks pay less than 10% of what they did a couple of years ago in some cases.  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.

Best 3 ways to make money writing online

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.

My 3 favorite make money writing sites are HubPages, Wizzley and Squidoo.  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.

Advantages of online writing and earning platforms

Potential earnings are generally bigger on writing platforms than on a site like MTurk, at least in the long term.

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.

Online communities can keep you up to date with online earning opportunities and help you to develop the necessary skills.

Disadvantages of online writing and earning platforms

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.

You need to be fluent with English and have some skill at writing - especially with writing one page articles.

“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.

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.

HubPages

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.

Read more about Hubpages

Visit the HubPages website (using my referral link)

Squidoo

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.

Read more about Squidoo

Visit the Squidoo website (using my referral link)

Wizzley

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.

Read more about Wizzley

Visit the Wizzley website (using my referral link)


UPDATE (February 2014)

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. 

If you just want a quick and easy place to earn, I would recommend: Bubblews.  

Disappointed by MyLot

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.

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.

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.

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 Redgage, 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 Redgage, rather than through direct earnings, I’ll admit).

MTurk online surveys: 3 peeves of mine

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. 

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.

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.

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?!)

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!

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!

My favorite MTurk requester

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 “Orlando, Florida”, 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).

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.

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 HIT approval ratings getting damaged and our time being wasted with no money in return.

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.

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.

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.

Writing an MTurk blog: A look at the best ones

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.

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 official Amazon MTurk blog, for instance, tends to focus more on the needs of requesters and programmers, than the requirements of turkers.

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.

“Mechanical Turk Blog” 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.

Having made his point, “Mechanical Turk Blog” now seems to have melted back into cyberspace.

Turk Lurker’s blog has some entertaining and informative reads in it!  He has a dry sense of humor, referring to Mechanical Turk as the “Slave Yard” and giving his blog the url: “MTurkey”.  Strange that his posts suddenly stop in 2007 and then suddenly reappear in 2011, but these things happen, I guess – maybe his wife had a baby or something?

Eric Cranston wrote an interesting turker blog, but unfortunately it petered out in 2007 after 2 years of posts.

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.

Anybody know of any more interesting MTurk blogs?