Paid Opportunities

If you're a blogger, especially a beginning blogger, looking to make money off your site, getting paid for reviews is a great way to go! Sponsored Reviews is a great site that allows bloggers to connect with advertisers and make quick cash.

As you can see, in 2007 and 2008 I did decent off Sponsored Reviews:



I was pretty selective about which tasks I accepted and applied for. You can make far more than I did if you are willing to write about any topic on your blog. I prefer niche material only.

Anyways, here's the latest info from SponsoredReviews about their newest updates to their program:


* Filter Templates - These allow you to save your filters to be used at a later date. You will find these in incoming bids and find bloggers.
Language Filtering - We have updated every blog in our system with the language that it is written in. You can now filter for blogs written in English, Spanish, German, etc... Etc...

* Pagerank Filtering in Opportunities - While you have always been able to filter your bids by the pagerank of the blog, you can now request to only recieve bids by blogs with a certain pagerank. This will reduce the number of total bids you are recieving.

* In-Line Bid Rejections - You can now reject bids on the fly in the incoming bids screen. This was a big request by many advertisers.
New Filter - Blog Sign up Date - You can now filter to find blogs that have recently signed up. This will allow you to identify blogs that you have never seen before in our system.


I really suggest registering. It's a really easy process and you seriously can have money in your account within 7 days if you register now. Sign up for Sponsored Reviews here.
Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

Here's a few more proof of payments for Novemeber, 2009 that arrived in the past four days -



MaxBounty - $75.96 - Great program for affiliate banners and such.

BigCrumbs - $3.26 Cash back shopping site. I rarely use BigCrumbs because MR. Rebates offers higher pay, but occassionally when BigCrumbs has good promotions I'll buy through them.

Vindale - cool site to refer people to who want to make money by signing up for trial offers. You get $5 for each person you refer. Easy cash.

And I just requested a payment of $44.25 from SurveySavvy and a $30 payment from Mr. Rebates. I'll post them as soon as they arrive.



Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

I’m sure you have seen emails, text messages or even people on Twitter posting things that say:

“If you forward this message so-and-so will donate a a penny for each time it is forwarded!”

I have had numerous people ask me if this is real.
Here’s the truth:

1. EMAIL. “Such-and-such foundation will donate $1 for each time you forward this email!” – FALSE. FALSE. FALSE.
Before you even consider raising money for charity by forwarding emails take this thought into consideration: How the HELL is the company that plans to “donate” going to know how many times the email was forwarded? See, emails are considered private property. Nobody is allowed to enter your email unless you have given them permission. If a friend, coworker, even spouse enters your email without permission you can sue them for “invasion of privacy”.
Even when a court case arises against a suspected criminal, the company who hosts your email account (yahoo, gmail, Comcast, etc) will NEVER provide information unless a subpoena is sent requiring them to hand over the info. AND even in the event that they ARE sent a subpoena, they can ONLY give the info to a police officer/detective, lawyer or judge; again, this information falls under the privacy act and they are not allowed to give it out; NOT EVEN TO A “CHARITY”.

So with this in mind, please tell me HOW any charity is going to know what YOU do in your PRIVATE EMAIL?

BOTTOM LINE: THERE IS NO WAY TO TRACK WHAT YOU SEND…unless it is subpoenaed. Now, to take this one step further; a subpoena can NOT be sent at random. A court case has to be opened in order for a lawyer to request legal information. A subpoena costs a minimum of $600 and can cost thousands for A SINGLE subpoena. The cost of the subpoena is based on the amount of time it takes to recover the information. Meaning, if a company was to “offer to donate funds” for each email forwarded, they would need to have a reason to open a court case and send subpoenas to the email providers FOR EVERY user in the world to determine if they ever got the email and if they ever forwarded it…

This makes no sense. They would be spending billions and billions to donate a few thousand…? What?

2. TEXT MESSAGE. Again, you’ll see texts stating that popular companies will pay a penny or two for each time a text was forwarded. AGAIN, FALSE. Just like with email, cell phone records are private information that require a subpoena to be released. It is IMPOSSIBLE for any company to find out what you do on your private cellular account. You can send messages, receive messages, etc and nobody will ever know…unless there is a legal need for the information.

3. TWITTER. If you use twitter, you probably have seen people post tweets saying “Retweet this and such-and-such company will donate a penny for each RT” or “So-and-so will donate a penny for each time #topic is posted”. Twitter does not fall under the privacy act. Since Twitter posts are public record, it *is* possible, to an extent that a company *may* be able to count each time a topic was posted. However there are a few doubts I have about this actually working…

A.) Cost. In order for a company to tally the amount of times a #topic was posted they would have to pay someone to search twitter and by hand, tally up each time the topic was posted. This could be an endless job. If the company is donating a penny for each time a topic is posted, depending on how long it takes to tally the topic, they may be paying more in employee wages than the amount of the donation.

B.) Inaccuracy. What about profiles that have been blocked to the public and only allow friends to view them? A large amount of Twitter profiles are set to “private”, so I have no idea how these companies plan to tally the amount of times these people participated in “helping the cause”. How would it be fair to discount people who have chosen to keep their information private but have still helped aid in the supposed donation campaign?

C.) Why aren’t these GIANT companies ADVERTISING their campaigns? Why have none of us ever heard direct from the company who is sponsoring these campaigns that they will be donating?
When companies make large donations, they make sure it is known to the public – it’s kind of a marketing campaign. The company knows that by making a donation they will get tons of free publicity; so they make sure that they broadcast their donation all over the internet, radio, television and newspaper. If a company was planning to make a large donation based on Twitter #topics, you’d think they would announce this on their website and so on.

IN THE END…
Yes, it is likely all a bunch of scams. I have yet to see any “donation” made.
If you see an email or get a test message that talks about donations, you can always contact the company directly and ask if the donation info is legitimate. 99.9% of the time they will have no idea what you are talking about.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW:


If you genuinely do want to help a cause, instead of forwarding scam emails or text messages, research the charity and find out what you can do to help. If you don’t have the finances to donate a dollar, then consider offering your time or expertise.

Please do not forward these scams. You are not only wasting your time but you’re also wasting other peoples time; time that could be used to REALLY help a cause.

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

Today I accepted my first Sponsored Tweet offer; pay is $15.98 to post ONE Tweet on my Twitter account! Not bad, eh? I thought this is the perfect time to allow my buddy CKFighter to explain how Sponsored Tweets works and the financial success he has had being a Sponsored Tweets member


In this blog entry we will be talking about sponsored tweets. This third party platform allows you to set your own price for tweets. Advertisers look at your profile and analyze it to see if it is worth the money that you are charging. If you are, then they will make you and offer than you can accept or decline. You then get paid your price for sending out the tweet. So let’s start with the basics, and that is making your profile and setting your price.



1. This is where you set your charge for a tweet. There is a suggested price beneath it that I suggest you stick to, if you are going to bump it only do it by a little no more than 10%. Keep in mind what you charge is not what the advertisers have to pay. They have to pay double, in which half the money goes to you and the other half goes to sponsored tweets.

2. This is where you put your keywords so that advertisers can find you better. Zero in on your niche and use those key words. When an offer comes it will be emailed to you at the email you give.




In this screen shot you’ll notice there are three tabs that show the process of the sponsored tweet. The first is the one that says, “open”, this is where you offers are waiting for you to accept them. The next is the one that is labeled “pending” in which any offers your accept go back to the advertiser for final approval. Once it gets to complete it means the advertiser has accepted your condition and will send out the tweet from your profile and then pay you for your service.

3. This is very important; in order to get paid the CPC (cost per click) for the advertiser needs to reach below $1.50. The lower the CPC the better since this means that the advertisers are getting a lot of views for the money they are paying for. If you don’t reach below 1.50 CPC then the program will retweet twice until it gets there. If it still doesn’t reach you will still be paid but it might hurt your ability to get future offers, so really set that price right! You want to consistently be below $0.50 CPC

Now for some tips on how to get more offers than your competition. What it comes down to is how powerful your twitter profile is. Take a look at the screen shot below:




4. Ratio - You want this number to be as high as possible. I would recommend no lower than 2. You could have 800 followers but it doesn’t look good when you are following 1700 people. This makes you look like a spammer and it also tells advertisers that you don’t have a true following to a given niche and that instead you have a high follower count only because of random action.

5. Klout Score - This is a MUST have. The kscore is the best tool you will have in the bag for getting offers. You can get a klout score by going to kloutscore.com. This site measures the influence you have on Twitter. The closer you are to 100 the better. Try and get to at least 35, which will put you ahead of a lot of people. A high kscore shows advertisers that you are involved in the Twitter world and that your opinion is respected increasing the odds of clicks on the links you send.

6. Grade – This is calculated automatically; obviously the higher you are the better. If you can get your grade to 95 or higher you are looking pretty good.

As you can see from my profile, I may not have the most followers. I only have 360. However I have received more offers than accounts that have much more followers than me. This is because I have a great grade, a good kscore, and a solid ratio. My advice is to work at getting a strong base and influence in twitter and then look to build your audience from there. If you do that, then you can up your price as your account becomes more and more attractive. If you want to sign up, here is the link http://bit.ly/165WcN. If you have any questions, hit me @CKfighter on twitter. Good luck and have fun!

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

As predicted, this month was a giant increase in Squidoo earnings - and it didnt take much at all, just a simple updating of my page.



As you can see, the payment is for the September earnings, so I expect to be getting a larger payment in another 60 days.

I totally recommend Squidoo to anyone who wants to promote their ventures, get paid to write and so on. It's truly the best way to get totally free links and even earn a few bucks while driving traffic to your site(s). If you have nothing to promote, then make a few pages about people, places or things you love and earn some cash! Check out my last article about Squidoo here or you can check out my Squidoo "lens" (Squid terminology for "pages") here:
Victorias Secret Wholesale lens I made.

Making a lens isnt hard at all. Its pretty fun. You can add all your fav features - Twitter, Facebook and just about anything else you want to it (I think the weather channel was even an option). So if ya have some good recipes, sign up for Squidoo and post them and earn cash for visits. Or, if you know how to make crafts, why not share them on Squidoo and earn a few bucks to cover some of your supplies!

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

I got another payment from Shared Reviews -



Not a huge one, only $25.00. However, that does put me over $113 so far.

In addition to earning cash for writing reviews and profit sharing based on how the websites advertisement revenue does, Shared Reviews is also giving out "Cash Rewards". Here's the blurb on it:

"Heading into our fifth month of Cash rewards, and the cusp of the holiday shopping season, we're excited to continue with another $2,000 in cash rewards this month, and to pre-announce some changes coming for the December cycle. The first set of changes will be a category overhaul, we hope to clean up, consolidate, remove redundant, and add new relevant categories.

The second big change will be the addition of a new referral program here at Shared Reviews. We will add a new interface for you to track all of your referrals going forward, and you will earn referral bonuses on any earnings of anyone who signs up listing you as a referral! You will earn a bonus of 10% of all of your referrals earnings for a given cycle for a 12 month period from the date they sign up. This will only count for referrals who sign up after the new program goes live.

Here is the breakdown of how each category's share of the $2,000 will be split in November:

1st: 40%, 2nd:25%, 3rd: 20%, 4th: 10%, 5th 5%

1) Vote allowances are going to remain with the same amount allocated last month.

Here is the current structure:

ShareScore: Amount of votes per category
0-24: 1
25-74: 2
75-94: 3
95-100: 4


ShareScore: Total amount of votes available to you
0-24: 100
25-74: 200
75-94: 400
95-100: 800

2) Vote bonuses for publishing new reviews and referring new members to the site remain at 15 additional votes for a newly published review, and 20 additional votes for a new referral.

3) This Month’s Contests will remain the same as last month, they are:

1) Most Votes Cast:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW:


2) Most Published Reviews:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

3) Most Votes Received:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5 "

So check out Shared Reviews and write about stuff you love, pimp your ventures and get paid!

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

Check out the email from Sponsored Tweets that came today:

"We had some people complain that SupaTweeta II was limited to U.S. residents only. I am proud to announce a new SupaTweeta Challenge that is open to U.S. Residents and our international friends as well. This program will be similar to our previous challenges, however it is not a contest. The top referrer in this challenge will get the opportunity to be hired for a $1000 sponsored tweet which will be facilitated through the system. You can transfer the $1000 to your PayPal account from Sponsored Tweets and do what you like from there.

The Challenge
Use your referral link inside Sponsored Tweets to sign up new Tweeters to the system. You can use the standard tweet, display ads or get creative and make something new.

The challenge starts today at 12:00pm EST and ends November 16th at 12:00pm EST.
The person with the most valid new referrals during the challenge period will be bonused with the opportunity to be hired for a $1000 sponsored tweet.

Your referral Tweeter accounts must be over 120 days old by contest end (you can’t just setup a bunch of Twitter accounts and refer yourself).

Referrals prior to today do not count for the challenge. Everybody starts fresh!
Valid for people 18 years of age and older only. Void where prohibited by law.
Do not use Twitter bot spamming (or any spamming for that matter) to drive registrations. Doing so will make you ineligible, you will be reported to Twitter and your SponsoredTweets account will be suspended."

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW:




Totally worth the try! So sign up for Sponsored Tweets and tweet away! Not only will you get cash for posting Tweets but you also have a chance to win $1,000!
Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

From time to time I find a deal that is just too amazing not to post on the blog; and this is without a doubt one of those deals!

I just ordered from Omaha Steaks and only paid $1.97 PER STEAK - Filet Mignons & Top Sirloins and more! - and YES, this INCLUDES SHIPPING!

Here's how I did it:

I purchased “The Grand Pack” (item id: 42069XE)


"The Grand Pack" is regularly $179.00 but is on sale today for $79.99 (BEFORE THE DISCOUNTS!)
Plus I added on today’s featured item; 6 Stuffed Baked Potatoes – Regularly $19.99, on sale for $9.99:



So the total would be $89.98, BUT, I used the coupon code for $20 off and also FREE SHIPPING; making the new total $69.98 –



BUT…

I also used Mr. Rebates to click through the free rebate link prior to ordering, so I got an additional 4% cash back, making my real total only $67.18!
There are 34 items all together which means that each item only cost $1.97! You simply can’t beat that, especially since it’s some of the best steak that can be had without going to an actual steakhouse.

Like I said, you just can’t pass the Omaha Steaks offer up.

If you’ve never ordered from Omaha Steaks, I highly recommend it! The steak is fantastic and the company has a real 100% money back guarantee – if you don’t like anything in your order they will immediately refund you – no questions asked. I’ve ordered from Omaha many times and have been very happy. My parents ordered about three times. They didn’t care for the fish they purchased with the third order. Not only did they get fully refunded for the ENTIRE purchase, but they were also send a voucher to get freebies! How awesome is that?!

So if you’re looking to save money, here’s the time to buy! If you get “The Grand Pack” and add on the extra potatoes, you’ll have about a weeks worth of incredible meals for a family of four. All you need is a head of lettuce and some tomatoes to make a side salad to go with it!

Check out Omaha Steak here.

BONUS!!! Check out this awesomeness:
After you make your purchase you'll be able to get 12 FREE steak burgers by telling your friends about any of the specials. All you have to do is enter your friends email address and it will tell them about the special. Or, you can send the email to yourself and when it arrives, click the link in the in the email then copy the url that pops up. It will look like this:

http://omahasteaks.popularmedia.net/click/share/6cf1380d046131edada5a0c5124b7a3a/16e142233dd7309da64edfaaa9cf7c29

Now you have your own little affiliate link that you can use to earn free steak burgers! = )

*Here's the coupon code I used to take $20 off any purchase: RW214225794KYJC and the PIN is: 518321
* The Free Shipping is on the website in the right hand sidebar on most of the pages. You will see a "Free Shipping" banner. Just click on it then pick out what you want. I think any purchase over $59.99 qualifies.

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

You may have heard that Max Bounty has completely revamped their website and they are kicking off the launch of the new site with a ton of cool contests!
I am absolutely thrilled with the new & improved MaxBounty. The new site is so easy to navigate and crisp looking.

MAX BOUNTY CONTESTS & MORE:
Want a shot at winning totally free cash? Check out the different options -

1. REFERRAL PRIZES: Blog, post, tweet about MaxBounty and get publishers to sign up through your affiliate referral link. By bringing new publishers into the network, you’ll not only earn 5% of their revenue for a year, you’ll also be included in the contest. You can watch the "referral race" by checking the totals on the scoreboard - http://maxbounty.com/contest.cfm - and those with the highest numbers win.

Prizes are as follows:

- $650 for generating the most referral income
- $250 for generating the most approved referrals
- $100 randomly selected from all participating.

The contest is live right now and lasts until Nov 30th with prizes awarded on Dec 1st. So post that review of MaxBounty, use us as your message board signature, get the word out and hopefully you’ll win!

2. NEW PUBLISHER INCENTIVE: New publishers - you can also win a free $1,000 performance bonus! Any new publisher who joins Max Bounty after October 29th, 2009 is elegible to win -

To receive the $1000 performance bonus, publishers must generate a minimum $1,000 in campaign earnings in each of the first three complete calendar months after they are approved into the MaxBounty network. So if you have a busy blog/site, a lot of Twitter followers, a strong pull on facebook or love to frequent forums, why not register? Many of the merchants through MaxBounty have payouts in the $30 - $40 range - so you would only need 28 signups in 90 days to get the $1,000 bonus!

Check out MaxBounty Today! It's 100% free. So far I have earned $1,142 plus some referral cash through MaxBounty:



If you're looking to join today and start making some fast cash to hit the $1,000 new publisher bonus here's a few programs that I use A LOT:

After you create your account, log in and select the "Search Campaigns" tab in the upper left hand corner. You can then browse the 12-page list of different campaigns you can use or you can start with these goodies:

Campaign 2632: SnapRewards NON-INCENTIVE: You'll get paid $1.70 for each person you refer who creates a free account and confirms their email address. Very easy to get registrations.

Campaign 2575: FREE Money at Fusion Cash: $2.00 per each free confirmed registration

Campaign 2439: PineCone Research: $2.00 pay for each free account created

Campaign 2554: Opinion Outpost (French Canadian): Have strong Canadian traffic? Earn $2.00 for each new registration with Opinion Outpost free/paid survey company

Campaign 2574: Money4Gold UK: $13 pay for UK traffic. Anyone looking to sell "junk jewelry" can request a totally free informational packet and you earn $13 each! Make sure you promote to UK citizens.

Campaign 2486: Google Partner Profit: Pay on Google Partner Profit is $27.00 per lead. I hate this program because I think it's a scam. I have even written bad reviews about it and included my referral links and still got registrations.

Campaign 935: The 2010 Entertainment Book: This is a wonderful USEFUL thing to promote. You'll earn over $14 for every person who purchases an Entertainment book. You can easily sell books by writing articles about how useful it is and adding coupon codes to your articles. If you have a niche site, be sure to tell your readers about the coupons in the book that fit your niche!

Well, I can't do all the work for ya, so sign up, grab your referral links and start promoting! Just think, if you start making money with MaxBounty today, you could have $1,000 in free cash in your pocket for tax season!


Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE

You may have already gotten emails that look like this:



As you can see, these emails are from “Go2Inbox”. Go2Inbox is a site that is getting a name for being the first company that “Pays you to forward emails” – but before you register and begin forwarding emails all over, let me tell you a little about how this REALLY works.

Each email that is sent to you is the same as a “paid to read email” - this means in order to earn funds you have to click the advertisers link inside the email, view the webpage for X-Amount of time and earn credits. Now, as far as the “paid to forward emails” goes – YOU WILL NOT GET PAID TO FORWARD EMAILS. You will ONLY receive credit if the person you forward the email to opens the email, clicks the link and remains on the webpage for X-Amount of time. So if your friends like to read spam, you might make a few bucks. If your friends don’t like to read spam, you will likely lose your friends.

Now this is where things start to get sketchy (sketchier?) – ok, pay isn’t in USD, pay is in Rs, which stands for “RuneScape Gold” or “Rupees”. According to the website, the “average user is earning 400 Rs a month!" – Uh, to give you an idea of what a Rupee is versus USD, 1,000 Rupees equals $21.35 in the United States. So 400 Rs isn’t even $9 in American money. But if you’re willing to deal with the confusing currency and still try the program; here’s a little info you might want to hear:

Go2Inbox is a pretty new site. Although they make it sound like they have been around for sooo long. I have already found several complaints about the site stating that they are not paying users as promised.

A FEW OTHER THINGS:
I haven’t officially confirmed if this company is indeed a "scam." In my book a "scam" is a company that falsely advertises their website; so if they are not paying users or falsifying earning *potential* they would be a SCAM.

I would like to point out that I also can’t find a single proof of payment anywhere online although the website claims the “average user” is earning enough to cash out every month…you would assume that at least ONE of these “average users” would have posted their earnings somewhere…

Second, sending spam is illegal. Ok, there’s a loophole in the system because you’re sending spam to your “mailing list”, so chances are that the people you are spamming are your friends.

HOWEVER, did you know that any advertisement/ promotional material sent has to contain an unsubscribe link as well as the companies name, address and phone number? If this information isn’t in the email you *can* get in trouble for spamming. The emails I was forwarded didn’t contain any way for me to be taken off the “mailing list”, and therefore are spam. Friends, I love you guys, but I don’t want to read advertisements or click links so you can earn money. I’d rather you click links and you earn money and I click links and I earn money. Summary: please don’t spam your friends. As mentioned, youre NOT getting paid to simply “forward” the email, you’re only getting paid if your friends click the link and follow the directions. In addition, do you even know what you’re sending to your friends? How would you feel if you sent an email about a scam program to a relative and they registered for it and lost $6o+? The emails you are sending out to friends and family are junk. They are not credible companies; they are paid advertisements. Someone you send an email to may not be aware that you just want them to click the link so you can make a penny and actually make a purchase.

Third, there’s no referral program for this company. This means that no matter how hard you work you’re stuck relying on whatever pennies you make.

THE DIFFERENCE
A “REAL” Paid email program (DealsNCash, Hits4Pay) offers you an easy-to-understand structure. YOU read emails, you get paid $0.02 - $0.05 each. If you invite your friends who WANT to read emails, each email is sent to them THROUGH the company. Each email is labeled “PAID EMAIL” so they know that it is an advertisement. If they read the email they earn $0.02 - $0.05 and you also earn an additional $0.01. If your friends refer friends you also earn $0.005 for every email they read. Pay is done monthly. This is an example of a REAL, LEGIT “Paid to read” program.

Return to Paid Opps HOME PAGE