Listia

Well, here my review on Listia as promised. My curious nature brought me to this site via an ad on Facebook saying get free Magic cards, and because I have an eBay store that sells Magic cards I thought that free stuff sounds pretty good, especially if it has some value to it and I can resell it on eBay. I will say that things worked out pretty well.

Listia is an online auction site, but instead of paying with money you pay with credits and some of the things on there are pretty darn good. You can spend money to buy credits, but it’s ridiculously expensive and silly to do so unless you are absolutely certain that you’ll get your money back via product value. Alright, I wasn’t completely telling the truth when I said you don’t pay money, some auctions require you pay shipping with real dollars, but other than that there really isn’t much else you need money for in this site.

Much like eBay, every type of product you can think of goes up here. Collectibles? Yep. Computer parts? Yep. Cameras? Yep. Even books and clothing and a dozen other categories of stuff with… subcategories! Not only that, but you can get the stuff for pretty much free. Free is good, right?

If you want to add credits to your account you can do quite a few things. One is spend money to buy them there credits. Another is list your own stuff that you don’t want to have anymore and in a few days after somebody wins the auction your credits will come to you. You can also complete surveys and offers of the free kind and the paid kind and get a varying amount of credits per choice. There are also little goals here and there that can give you 10-15 credits if you complete them. Also inviting a friend that then completes an auction gives you 500 credits and them 100 plus the starting amount when they join.

I’ll tell you now that this site is in fact very legit and definitely not a scam. It’s also a fantastic way to get rid of all of your extra junk that you don’t need that somebody else might want.

MySurvey.com

I figured it is about time I do a formal review on this paid survey site. I’ve now spent about a month working with it and finally have come up with an assessment of this site. MySurvey is a decent paid survey that you can earn some money with if you take the time to use it and don’t speed through each survey, although you get chances at a larger reward if you do speed through, I’ll explain in full detail later in this post.

Signing up is very easy, you give them your email, make a password, and then attach a PayPal account to it. There’s also a little bit more information, but not much. They try to find surveys that fit your profile after you do a survey to give them the information required to find surveys for you. Many of the surveys they give to you afterwards are opinion based anyways.

The interface for answering surveys fits a few similar styles, some of them appear more modern than others. The style of the survey depends on who has posted it. After meeting an estimated time while taking the survey you will get “paid” in reward points upon completion. You always will get entered into a monthly raffle for every survey you complete. This monthly raffle gives you a chance to get 10000 reward points (10 people win this each month), or 50000 reward points (only one person wins this each month). There is also a $4000 sweepstakes that happens every 3 months, this has special rules that can be found at this link.

Every 1000 points is worth $10 and they do add up provided you take the estimated time to answer the survey and don’t speed through, otherwise you only get the chance to win the 10000 points every month. Here are the rules for the monthly sweepstakes. Reward points also can be turned in for various non-cash rewards from gift cards/certificates to bags and wallets to other various products. However, be careful with the non-cash rewards because I read some reviews saying that the wrong stuff was sent to them and the company that owns MySurvey would not give a refund. Anyone with an account with less than 1000 reward points is considered having an account with no value.

Overall this is a decent site to make some pocket change and possibly win some product of some sort. Even get gift certificates/cards. I recommend MySurvey if only because you can make some money from it or get a small gift card to a family member who goes to wherever the card is for.  I give MySurvey a 4/10 on profitability, but a 10/10 for pocket change and 10/10 for free gifts for family. They are also absolutely legitimate and less of a pain than any of the other survey sites I’ve tried.

Summary of Ways of Make Money Online

Some of these you’ve probably read from earlier posts and in greater detail, but I decided I would gather some more general information about making money online. While, yes I focus mostly for college students on this post, anybody can get some decent information on this.

Money is always a problem for college students, anybody really, but especially college students. We have loans, bills, gas, food, and other sorts of things to pay for. Sometimes having a part-time job just isn’t enough to cover what is needed. How can one cover the rest? We happen to have the greatest resource at our own hands: the Internet. There are several ways one can make money on the internet: blogging, paid surveys, paid services, and e-stores.

Blogging is a totally achievable way for people to make money. It takes multiple steps and of course it requires having a good sized following. Now, while it is totally achievable, not everybody can do it because it requires some knowledge of the internet which I will go into further detail soon. I spoke with Steve Pavlina via email, he’s a Las Vegas blogger that has made a decent living from blogging, and I asked him some questions about how to make money by blogging. His responses were basically pointers to some of his past blogs which went into great detail about making money via blogging.

The most difficult part is the need for patience, if you cannot wait then your blog is doomed to fail. Then there’s perseverance: you keep posting your topics while you build up viewers. There are ten ways to build traffic in a blog: create valuable content meaning will your content be worthy of being read by many people (“How to Build…”)? Create original content because while unoriginal stuff may be entertaining it’s more interesting to be creative with your posts (“How to Build…”). Create time less content because if people keep checking out posts from five or more years ago that’s a valuable post for you (“How to Build…”). Write for human beings first and computers second, meaning post content that means something to a person not nonsense that’s just going to put you higher on a search engine (“How to Build…”). Know why you want a high traffic site, this is pretty self-explanatory, but isn’t always profit oriented (“How to Build…”). Let your audience see the real you because nobody likes a fake, even if it’s easy to be that way on the internet because no one can see you, your posts will be more natural that way (“How to Build…”). Write what is true for you and learn to live with the consequences, meaning post what you want and understand that it may not be right for one audience but is good for another, but either way something is going to go haywire somewhere (“How to Build…”). Treat your visitors like real human beings, because if you don’t news can spread fast and hurt your traffic pretty badly (“How to Build…”). Keep money in its proper place, you blog shouldn’t be about making money, because sure money might be nice, but your viewers are more important and if you’re doing it all right the money will come with it (“How to Build…”). Finally, and most importantly: if you forget all the rest just focus on the people and rest will take care of itself (“How to Build…”).

Moving on to making money from a blog, this is easier than many people think, but the key is all dealing with traffic. The first and often time the best way to make money, is to use Google’s Adsense program, which is a free resource that Google has for people with websites to make money. What you need to do is sign up with Google, wait until you’re approved, and then copy the html code to your website. Google will then look at your site and post ads based off of your content (Google Adsense). The first $100 dollars goes to them and then afterwards all of the money you make goes to your Paypal account (Google Adsense). Another fantastic way to make money is to have donations to allow people to send money to you through Paypal or even snail mail (“How to Make…”). You can use Affiliate Programs via Amazon or LinkShare which allow you to review a product and anyone that purchases it through your review pays you a little commission for the sale (“How to Make…”). You can sell ad space, which is the only less passive means for making money on a blog, because all the others let you post the item and then the rest is the viewer’s clicking and buying (“How to Make…”). While it might be a great start, you should build more than just a blog and make it a real website this allows you to unlock the full potential of your site (“How to Make…”). There are also some great perks when it comes to a successful blog: people want you to test out and write reviews for your product and often times you get the stuff for completely free to test and keep (“How to Make…”).

There really aren’t any drawbacks to a blog. Starting it up is completely free and afterwards if things start really rolling for you, it’s dirt cheap. It is less than $10 a year for your domain name and maybe $150 a month for your server and bandwidth, but by then you’ll be making more than that a month (“How to Make…”). If a blog fails, it fails and that’s that.

Moving on now to paid services. What are paid services? The definition breaks down to getting paid to perform a service. What paid services are online? I did some digging and found two very good sites to make some pocket change, but one of them is very location based. There’s Student of Fortune and eJuror. Student of Fortune is an online tutoring service, and eJuror is a place where lawyers practice their profession and pay civilians to be their jury.

Student of Fortune is a fantastic way to make some pocket change. What you have to do is make an account and you may hook up your Paypal account to it. There are users that post questions dealing with school based problems and they attach a “bounty” to the question. Then a tutor helps the asker solve the problem and they get paid based off of the bounty (Student). The owners of the site get paid a 20% commission for the first purchase of the tutorial and then if it gets bought other times there’s a 40% commission (Student). While that might seem like a large piece of the pie, you’re posting answers for free and getting paid between $1 and $50 per question. This is really the best if you’re looking for some pocket change.

When I tried out Student of Fortune, I discovered one issue: many people posted answers and not tutorials. It is written in the terms that you must agree on to make an account that you will not cheat and posting an answer to the question is cheating because it is solving the question for the poster and not helping them solve it for themselves. For me that was a make-or-break factor and it broke.

EJuror, lawyers need practice, right? Here is a place for lawyers to go to make hypothetical cases to the public and then pay them to come to a verdict about the case. The biggest problem with this site is it is very locational. If you live in a low-population low-crime location it is less likely that a case will be posted, but it is very different for those in the opposite position (eJuror).

Paid surveys are exactly what you think they are, a site you fill surveys out on and then get paid for finishing them. There are two excellent sites for this: Vindale Research and MySurvey. Vindale Research is the most intensive of the two because it asks you to test out something before you take the survey (Vindale). MySurvey is less intensive, but you may not always qualify for the surveys that you can take because they are often looking for a specific demographic (MySurvey). The worst part of taking surveys to make money is the time it consumes. Of all the ways I’ve talked about and am going to talk about, these are by far the longest and most time consuming way to make money online.

Finally, comes one of the easiest and possibly one of the best ways to make some real money online: e-stores. EBay is probably the worst example and the most popular one, and it’s one I use myself all the time; however, it works and is easy. EBay requires that you make an account and hook up a Paypal account to it. From there you make your account a seller account and then begin to list things in your account (eBay). Also, contrary to common belief, you don’t need a high rating in order to make a profit selling things; people are often willing to take a chance on a new vendor. The most effort you every have to put into it is taking a picture of your product and mailing it to its destination when bought.

As far as the best ways creating your own website is perhaps one of the best ways to earn money as long as you stay dedicated, have an entrepreneurial mindset, and know how to obtain traffic. EBay remains one of the most consistent ways to make money, but you of course need stuff to sell and need to travel back and forth to the post office to send most of your packages. Paid surveys and services are OK if you want to make some pocket change, but they aren’t always reliable and often are a pain in the rear end.

Yes, there is an annotated bibliography:

“EJury.com :: The Online Trial Experience.” EJury.com. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. <http://www.ejury.com/&gt;.

“Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons and More Online Shopping | EBay.”Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons and More Online Shopping. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. <http://www.ebay.com/&gt;.

“Google Adsense.” Google Adsense. Google. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <www.google.com/AdSense>.

My Survey. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <https://www.mysurvey.com/&gt;.

Pavlina, Steve. “How to Make Money From Your Blog.” Personal Development for Smart People. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/how-to-make-money-from-your- blog/&gt;.

Pavlina, Steve. “How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog).” Personal Development for Smart People.Steve Pavlina, Jan. 2006. Web. 20 Apr. 2012.  <http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-web-site-or-blog/&gt;.

Pavlina, Steve. “Steve Pavlina.” E-mail interview. 12 Apr. 2012.

 Vindale Research. Vindale. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.vindale.com/&gt;.

“Your Source for Easyonline Homework Help!” Homework Help, Online Tutoring in Math, Science, Physics, Chemistry from StudentofFortune.com – StudentOfFortune.com. Web. 13 Apr. 2012.<http://studentoffortune.com/&gt;.

eJury

So, lawyers need practice, right? How do they do that? Well, one thing they do is use websites like eJury.com to create hypothetical cases and then they go to the public for assistance with the case by having them be an ejury. The incentive for you to sign up for a site like this? Money, naturally. They offer payments via PayPal of between $5 and $10 per case. Now, not just anyone can sign up for this there are rules:

“You must be 18 or older.

A US Citizen.

You must be of sound mind and good moral character.

Reading and writing is important too.

And you must not have been convicted of a felony or be viewed as a criminal in other ways.

Also there is an “Oath” each eJuror must agree to:

You can’t be an actively practicing attorney, paralegal, or legal assistance, nor married to one, or employed by or associated with a law firm. Also you cannot be employed as an insurance adjuster or associated with the adjusting of liability claims.”

This in in quotes because I pretty much copied it out of the eJury “Learn About” page. There are a few other things that you can check out on it at http://www.ejury.com/jurors_learn_about.html.

You might not quickly get cases, because it all depends on your area, but it should be enough for you to get some pocket change in your free time. Anyways, I find it to be a nice small source of income, so enjoy.

The Yahoo Contributor Network

Some of you probably have heard of the Yahoo Contributor Network, others maybe not.  I’m going to tell you about it either way.

The Yahoo Contributor Network is yet another site in 8 that I checked out in order to make money. There are three things you can do in order to make money through this network. First, you can type up articles based on a variety of topics, sometimes there’ll be assignments on a tab called the “Assignment Desk” which give you topics based off of a questionnaire you can fill out in your profile. An example of an assignment is “Write a Poem for Cinco de Mayo”.

The second thing you can do to make money is to post a video, I have not yet tried this way, or even the slideshow option, but that is what is available.

Now these guys have some standards. You can’t just type up an article and get it published. There’s a two week wait period (usually less) for one of the website managers to review your article before it gets sent to the public for viewing. They have a link on the site describing in detail their expectations for articles and other contributions.

Now for a fun fact about the Contributor Network: awards. There are several types of awards, some of which you immediately get paid for and others increase how much you get paid for when an article preforms well. There is “Clout” starting at I guess we’ll call it rank 1 and ending at rank 10. With higher “Clout” you get paid more per thousand views. Yes, they’re running a Performance Payment (PPM) style of payment meaning for every thousand views you get $1.50 and then work your way up to $2.00. That might seem small and make it seem impossible to make anything off of it, but the money does add up and the more articles that get posted the better.

There’s the “Yahoo! Contributor Award” which awards good contributors. The “Rising Star” which is given away every month to contributors that are getting better views. There’s the “Hot 100″ and “Hot 500″ award which are given to the top viewed articles on a monthly basis. The “Top 100″ and “Top 1000″ which are the same as the “Hot 100″ but on a yearly basis. The “Page View Millionaire” is given to those that get… wait for it… 1000000 views! There’s the “Yahoo! Staff”… only given to Yahoo! Staff members of course. Finally there’s the “Best of Associated Content/People’s Media Awards” to give recognition to the best articles.

I enjoy the use of Yahoo! Contributor Network, and while I haven’t made anything off of it I still have time to work around with it and maybe get something out of it. Maybe you can get something from it?

Student… Of… Fortune!

So, I spent some time hunting for ways to make a decent amount of money (well just some way to make a little really), and I came across this website called www.studentoffortune.com. This site is a tutoring website where a person posts a question for something their having trouble with in class with a “bounty” for what they think the question is worth, and somebody else posts a tutorial and the student buys the answer if they like what they see. There are questions valued from $1 to over $50 in some cases, and if you’re good you can make a few bucks off of tutoring. I decided to give it a whirl for a month and came to the following conclusions about the site.

First off, I made nothing from posting tutorials; I’m not even sure my posts were even looked at. Maybe I’m just really bad at tutoring, but I don’t think that’s the case, because most of what was purchased were just answers to the problem with minimal tutoring. I know most people don’t read the terms of websites, but I skimmed it due to a natural wariness about making money online and a major part of the tutoring service was: No Cheating! I’m not sure about what you think, but just giving the student the answer is cheating, if not it’s definitely not tutoring. That is what made me stop trying make money off of Student of Fortune.

Alright, I’m not done explaining some of the site’s terms. The money gets saved to your account, and at any time you can transfer it to PayPal and then to your bank account. There’s a massive commission taken off of your payment 20% to be exact… at least the first time. Yes, your answers can be purchased many times. Every time after the first there is a 40% commission, but it’s money for a short tutorial so the commission is small potatoes. However, most of the questions are valued at $1 so you get only 80 cents from that. If you have time and want to possibly make a few bucks by tutoring students with questions there might be worse ways to spend your time, but I didn’t find it worth my time.

While I did not use it for this purpose, you can choose to use Student of Fortune for getting tutoring if you need help with a class and you school doesn’t provide good tutors for you. There were a few users within the site that had integrity and helped the students solve the problems for themselves, but I suppose if you just want an answer to your question or an essay done for you this might be the perfect site for you, but I’d be careful so you don’t get screwed over. If you want to make a few quick bucks, or need help with a class feel free to check this site out, it just didn’t rock my world or anything.