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.