How to earn real money online - Get some tips from my personal experience and avoid scams

Personal Review #9 - CpaLead

2010-07-01T16:10:00.000+03:00

CpaLead is an advertising company based on the Cost Per Action principle (CPA) which means that advertisers pay when your visitors (leads) do a specific action. For example the A company pays 2$ for everyone that subscribes to their newsletter.

Most campaigns allow incentive traffic which makes it much more lucrative. They provide you with a custom gateway which blocks specific content from your site and your visitors must complete one CPA offer before they proceed. For example your visitors may have to complete a CPA offer to down a WordPress template you designed. As you can imagine the sky is the limit to what you may be offering (except for money rewards which are not allowed).

CpaLead pays its publishers via PayPal, check and ACH. Its' payment schedule is NET30 and the minimum amount of money you can request is 50$. Overall it is easy to reach the payment threshold even with a low traffic website or blog.

Publishers that don't have anything to offer to their visitors may still use non-incentive offers which pay more but convert less. Although I wouldn't recommend you to switch AdSense for CpaLead's non-incentive offers, incentive ones on the other hand are really lucrative.

You can also earn an fairly good amount of income by referring other webmasters and thus receiving 5% of their earning as a bonus (they still get the full amount). Sometimes if you are lucky enough to refer some really skilled webmasters you may end up earning more money from them than the amount you earn through your own network of websites.

Don't waste time. Sign up today

Personal Review #8 Webeserve

2010-06-28T22:24:00.001+03:00

Today I will introduce a freelancing platform which is really promising. It is Webeserve, a place where advertisers find their employees to make their mini tasks (something similar to mturk but better).

Employees:

Start making money in minutes by completing mini tasks (0.10$ - 5$ per task)
Get paid via PayPal when you reach 20$
You can work whenever you want directly from your home

Advertisers:

Outsource all the boring stuff you hate when you SEO your site (blog commenting, forum posting, social bookmarking etc)
Set a price per action > example: 0.20$ per Digg
Pay only for good quality work. Provide a good description at your job opening and include some RULES, if the employee fails to comply with them you are not obliged to pay him.

I currently use Webeserve as an advertiser but I had used this service as an employee in the past. Expect to make 3$-7$ per hour as an employee. I make much more as an advertiser myself.

Affiliate Marketing - Promote products online

2010-01-10T17:34:00.000+02:00

There are many sites that offer you a variety of products to promote. If you know how to drive traffic to these products you will earn money every time somebody buys the product. They say an image is worth more than 1000 words, I will show you an example.

1) Sign up to an affiliate program (Clickbank,Commisionjunction,maxbounty etc...)

I personally use Clickbank , you may want to choose an other one because Clickbank pays only by check.

2)Choose a product that you think its easier for you to promote. Clickbank offers a variety of digital products ranging from internet tv to facebook games guides.

3) Drive traffic to the product. You may want to create a blog or site to presell the product there in order to increase the traffic-sales ratio. How to presell it? Write a review of the product, you supposedely bought it and you are very happy about it. A blog is enough for this

4)Repeat , repeat and repeat again. By the time you will see your first sale you will be so excited that it will not be as boring as before.

Have a look at a site made for clickbank. Example

Its not the best but its enough to give you an idea about how others promote the products.

Most products pay at least 15$ per sale, depends on the product you promote.

Happy earning, don't be lazy, work work work...

Personal Review #7 AdSense

2009-12-19T20:45:00.000+02:00

Google AdSense is one of the best CPC (Cost Per Click) ad networks available on the market. AdSense is the first mayor contextual advertisting program and one of the most successful, gaining publisher's trust all over the world. As the ads are related to the content of the site and are more targeted they are more likely to get clicked, thus generating more revenue for the owner of the website.Adsense is mostly a PPC (Price Per Click) network but sometimes it ads the CPM method, which means you get paid per click or sometimes paid per 1000 impressions that you serve those ads. The cost will differ depending on the ads shown or to be more precise, on the content of your website, due to the contextual nature of the program. The strength of the program is the contextual CPC side, you get highly targeted related contextual ads on your website which are more likely to be clicked by your visitors. Recently, a CPA (Cost Per Action) ads were introduced to the publisheres called referrals.

Supported languages for publisher sites

Displaying ads (AdSense for Content) is allowed only on sites with content primarly in: English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Croatian, Korean, Czech, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Finnish, Russian, Slovak, Greek, Swedish, Hebrew, Turkish and Hungarian. In addition, AdSense for search is available in Arabic and Bulgarian. These languages are not supported for AdSense for Content pages. For more info on supported languages click here.

Ad formats and types

AdSense offers the following ad formats for text ads: banner (468x60), half banner (234x60), leaderboard (728x90), button (125x125), skyscraper (120x600), wide skyscraper (160x600), small rectangle (180x150), vertical banner (120x240), small square (200x200), square (250x250), medium rectangle (300x250) and large rectangle (336x280).
You can also display image ads on your site: banner (468x60), leaderboard (728x90), skyscraper (120x600), wide skyscraper (160x600), small square (200x200), square (250x250), medium rectangle (300x250) and large rectangle (336x280).
Video ads are available in these formats: leaderboard (728x90), skyscraper (120x600), wide skyscraper (160x600), small square (200x200), square (250x250), medium rectangle (300x250) and large rectangle (336x280).
You have an option to place various sizes of link units on your sites and AdSense for Search on your web sites, for more info on the available ad formats and sample placements click here.

Google AdSense publisher interface review

When you login to your publisher account the first thing you will notice is everything is well organized and everything is where you want it to be. Google AdSense has the best publisher interface I have ever seen, it is simple, usefull and full of features which make the process of ad placement, monitoring the statistics and tracking your payments status incredibly simple and easy. You can easyly create customizable reports, e-mail specific reports daily, weekly or monthly. The payment history is just amazing, there is all the information you need, from how much you have earned, when was the payment sent, when you can expect it to arrive, the number of the check and much more.

Customer support

Google AdSense has a large database with almost all the questions (FAQ) you might want to ask, well organized with integrated search. I was able to find all the answers I needed in just a few seconds. If you have a more specific question you can easily post a support ticket and you usually get the answer up to 48 hours.

Payments and payment options

Google AdSense offers payments by check (standard or secure express delivery, $24 processing fee) or by EFT (Electroic Funds Transfer available for certain countries only). Payments are made on a NET 30 basis and one thing is for sure, they always pay on time.

Earn money from blogs or websites

2009-12-19T20:38:00.002+02:00

The most common form of genarating income online is by creating your own blog or website and adding some ads to it. As you can see I have several ads on my blog too and everytime someone clicks on them I earn some money. The ads program I am using to monetize this blog is called Adsense. It is the most popular one and it belongs to Google.

Lets continue with my Personal Review #7 : AdSense

Personal Review #6 Share Cash (Pay Per Download)

2009-12-06T20:14:00.001+02:00

Along with my #5 review I highly recomend this one too. After you finish all the offers availble at Cash Crate you should have made some good money but after completing all offers you have to wait a while until others are available. The site I am gonna introduce you today has no limit to how much you can earn depending that you use it in a clever way.

At this site you upload files like you do at rapidshare and you earn money when other people download them. You will be probably wonderig how the site earns money to pay you. The answer is simple, every person who wants to download the file has 2 options:

A) To pay to become a member of the site in order to gain unlimited downloads.
or
B) To complete a free survey everytime he downloads a file.

How much do you get paid? 0.20-0.60$ per download (depends on downloaders country) and much more when someone becomes a member (when I get my first member I will inform you about the exact amount).

The site is called Share Cash and you can find it here

Tips:

Post at various forums popular files like cracks,serials or guides you uploaded at sharecash. Alternatively you can upload "naughty videos" and post your sharecash links at porn forums,blogs etc.
Use a url shortener (like tinyurl.com) to hide your sharecash links.
Remember that all offers at the site are legal and you don't do anything bad, you just force your downloaders to complete a free survey each time they want to get a file from you. Both the site and you earn money!

Personal Review #5 Cash Crate (Complete free surveys and many other stuff)

2009-12-06T19:49:00.002+02:00

Ok, PTC sites are ok for starters from countries that have a low living cost. But what should you do to earn money if you need 600$+ per month just to make a living? I haven't written for a while because I was testing out some methods to scale up my earnings. After investingating a dozen of sites I found one that pays well, you can earn your first 50$ in one hour (depends on your country and how many offers your can do in one hour).

You have to do simple things like adding a facebook game at facebook (takes 1 minute to do) to completing free surveys or completing free trial offers. Simple tasks pay less than completings surveys but it is a nice additional source of income.

The only site that I have found that paid me and did so in a week upon requesting payment is Cash Crate

Join Cash Crate here for free and don't forget to come back to my blog to tell me your experiences.

Personal Review #4 : Neobux

2009-10-24T15:20:00.002+03:00

Great site. I will add more information soon

Pros:

Great graphical design. It is the most eyecatching site of its kind
Great security measures, including 256-bit SSL
Instant cashouts!
1c and 2c ads

Cons:

Direct referral limit. It starts from 30 and increases every 3 days

Payments

PayPal
Alertpay
Neteller
2$ minimum cash out
Instant cashouts

This the most popular PTC (Pay To Click) site right now. It is definetely not a scam, I have already cashed out 2$ from Neobux via PayPal.

Click on the banner to join for free

My oDesk profile

2009-10-17T18:30:00.002+03:00

I believe that a picture is worth one thousand words. To make a long story short, here is a snapshot of my oDesk profile.

It contains my achievements until now.

You can find my oDesk review here

You can find my oDesk tips here

oDesk Tips & Tricks

2009-10-17T15:35:00.000+03:00

oDesk is a powerful tool for every freelancer but many casual internet users fail to make any money at all. The most difficult part is to get your first job, after that you will have some (positive) feedback on your profile which will help you to get more jobs. As your feedback increases you will have more job opportunities and you can increase your hourly rate.

In order to make a good start you need to focus on improving your profile.

Add as much information as you can. The more proffetional your profile looks the better the chances you have to get hired.

Add your Skills
Add your Employment History
Add your Certifications (if you have any)
Add your Education
Take oDesk Tests to show off your skills (important!)

Take your time and improve every aspect of your profile before applying to any jobs. This is the most effective way to use your time. If you apply to a job without adding anything to your profile, you don't have any chance to get hired.

Bid low on your first 3 jobs, you will have more chances to get chosen and you will acquire your first feedback. Take some time to make a good cover letter when applying to a job.

Cover letter tips

A short CV has better chances to get read. The buyer (oDesk terminology for boss) will most likely have 40 CV to read. If it is too long he won't bother to read it all and he'll skip the biggest part.
Give him a motive to choose you amongst others. Read his job post and what needs to be done and tell him how you plan to accomplish his task.
Generic CVs don't stand a chance. Buyers never bother to read them.
Make sure that your CV doesn't have any grammatical mistakes by reading it one last time before actually aplying it.

You can find my oDesk review here

Click on the banner below to join for free

You can find my WordLinx review here

Personal review #3 - Fishing4mails

2009-10-10T14:25:00.002+03:00

I haven't fully reviewed this site. I will investigate more but it seems to be a valid site.

[EDIT] I don't recommend this site. It seems to be paying but it is currently very inactive. It pays less than Neobux or Wordlinx.

You can find my WordLinx review here

You can find my Neobux review here

Ok this site is a bit weird. It has many types of tasks you can do to earn money.

Most of them are these:

View ads
View sponsor e-mails
Sign up at sites
Referral contests
And much other simple tasks

You can make much money if you sign up at sites (up to 0.25$ per sign up). It isn't recomended as your main PTC (pay to click) site but it can easily add up to your online income.

Payments:

PayPal
Every 30 days

Fees:

No fees
Free membership

I will add more information as I investigate this site.

Click on the banner below to join for free.

You can find my oDesk review here

You can find my WordLinx review here

Personal review #2 - oDesk

2009-10-09T15:30:00.002+03:00

Now for my favorite. oDesk is the best freelancing site out there. You can work and get paid or post your own jobs.

Fees:

Free membership
10% commission from your earnings

Payment methods:

PayPal
Moneybookers
Direct Deposit / ACH
Wire Transfer
oDesk Debit MasterCard (payoneer)

Pros:
One of the most organized freelance sites with no hidden fees, fast support, active forum and thousands of job posts to choose. Definetely the best out there.

Cons:
Much competition. It is hard to find a job if you are completely unskilled because most of the simple jobs are filled from India, Philippines, Pakistan etc.. for a pretty low amount of money.

Rating: 10/10 The best option available at the moment to make some decent money online.

Click on the banner below and register for free. Don't forget to come back here when you accomplish your first job to share your experiences. I have already made more than 600$

You can find my WordLinx review here

Personal review #1 - Wordlinx

2009-10-06T00:31:00.001+03:00

WordLinx is a pay-per-click advertising system. Advertisers pay members $0.01 USD per click to view their website ads for at 30 seconds each. WordLinx charges advertisers a small commission of 10% plus $1.99 per order to cover admin and running costs.

Example:
Advertiser pays 100$ +10$(site commission) +1.99$ (for site maintenance and expenses)
Sum 111.99$
Members get 100$
Site profit : 111.99$-100$=11.99$ As you can see this site is clearly sustainable

Facts: To help you browse this post easily I have written in bold the key features of this site

Worldlinx is a 5 year old PTC ( Pay To Click ) site, as you can guess it is the older PTC site up and running.

WordLinx does not use the traditional 30/60 days for payment, most payments are processed within 48 hours of request. Not only can you earn money by clicking ads, WordLinx also offers paid emails. Wordlinx uses PayPal for the payments.

Rogue, the company that owns WordLinx is now a limited liability company, registered in England and Wales as Rogue Media Ltd.

Earnings:

Members are paid $0.01 USD per click to view a 30 seconds ad.
You can earn much more money by referring other people to join the site.
You will earn $0.05 USD for every new member that signs up and clicks several adverts.
You'll also earn 5% of their earnings from clicking adverts and 5% (up to $25.00 USD!) per sale if they buy visitors.
If your referral upgrades to a paid membership, you will earn $0.50 USD on 3 levels.
Pro members earn double.
You can have an unlimited number of referrals ( Important ) .

Payments:

PayPal only
Minimum amount you can cash out: 10$

Cash out fees:

Automatic Payments have a WordLinx fee of 5%. You will not be charged a fee by PayPal as that is paid for you. For example, if you withdraw $10.00 USD you will be paid $9.50 USD instantly.
Manual Payments have a PayPal fee of up to 6.9%. However, you will not be charged a fee by WordLinx. For example, if you withdraw $10.00 USD you will be paid $9.31 USD within 30 days.

Summary:

Pros:

The most reliable Pay To Click site out there. Definitely not a scam.
Unlimited number of referrals means that you can potentially make a huge amount of money if you promote your referral link effectively.
Membership is absolutely. You have the option to upgrade your account but nobody will force you to do so.
The site and its ads load really fast

Cons:

High minimum for cashing out (10$).
The ads are posted at Wordlinx during the whole day. This means that you have to check Wordlinx regularly in order to click many ads.

Personal Rating : 9/10 Definetely worth to try it out.

Post your questions here and I will answer them.

Click on the banner and register for free.

You can find my oDesk review here

User suggestions and reviews - Must read

2009-10-06T00:01:00.001+03:00

I will now start publishing my reviews of my favorite sites but you can also help me by sending me your reviews of sites I don't mention based on your experience. You can also correct me if my information becomes outdated.

You can send me your reviews at: happybloger@ymail.com
IMPORTANT -> Your e-mail title must be: "User Review" to help me spot it amongst spam

When I post a personal suggestion I will post it in this form :
Personal Review #1 - asdf.com
while your reviews will be posted in this form:
User Review #1 - asd.com

I am not responsible for user reviews. If they turn out to be scams I will change their subject to "Verified Scam Site". Help me spot scams to make this blog a valuable tool to find the best sites and create a scam list.

On the other hand I am fully responsible for my personal recommendations and I will do the best to give you the most accurate reviews based on my experience on these sites.

Feel free to start sending me your suggestions at happybloger@ymail.com

You can find my oDesk review here

You can find my WordLinx review here

Introduction to PTC sites : What you need to know before joining them

2009-10-05T22:38:00.000+03:00

Most PTC sites have a short life circle because they are unsustainable. The reason this happens is the fact that most of these sites are scams and try to make as much money possible before everybody realizes that they don't pay. Another reason for their short life is bad management, let's have an example:

An X site emerges. It promises to pay every member 5cents per click and 2 cents for its of your referrals clicks. It sells its service to advertisers for 6$ per 1000clicks. Lets assume that 1000 users click the advertisement and all of these users are somebody's referrals. The users earn 5$ altogether while the people that referred them to the site earn another 2$. Somebody payed the site 6$ and the site payed its users 7$ to fulfill its service. This site doesn't make a profit, it actually loses 1$. It also has its maintenance expenses. All this means one thing, it may pay the first wave of users that reach the minimum payout but it will eventually stop paying its members as more people reach their payout because it doesn't make a profit. Some sites pay high in order to promote their site amongst others and lower your profits after they reach a certain number of users. While others don't pay their members and take all the money in their pocket.

Important rules you must follow to avoid working for free:

Rule #1 Always check the amount advertisers have to pay and do your math to check whether the site you are willing to register is sustainable or a scam.
Rule #2 Never give money to register to a site. 99% this site is a huge SCAM. These sites should pay YOU. YOU shouldn't pay THEM.
Rule #3 Check the origins of the site. How long has it been around? Its dangerous to join a new site unless you have a real life friend who has joined it and has been paid.
Rule #4 Most sites offer advanced/paid membership which will help you earn more. Is this worth? If you really want to try it out, do so with the money you actually earned from the site. Not with your pocket money.

I will soon post some PTC sites I have worked for and my opinion for each of them.

You can find my oDesk review here

You can find my WordLinx review here

A short introduction!

2009-10-05T00:41:00.000+03:00

Can you get rich from the internet? Maybe... Will you? Probably not!

The information I will provide is by no means a get rich quick method.

There are plenty of ways to make money but the ones I will focus will be the legal ones. You can make some pocket money through PT sites or work as a freelancer and earn your leaving.

I will provide a small summary of the type of sites I will review.

Freelancing Sites:

Many companies and individuals are seeking professionals to work for them there. These sites helps them find online employees while they make profit by commissions.

For example: You earn 1000$ but you receive 900$. The 100$ goes for the site. This is generic, some sites take 6-7% commission while others a bit more.

I personally made more than 600$ by working as a freelancer for 75 hours. Is this much? I bet it is not a big amount for you but it is enough for me to pay the rent and the bills for 1 month and I only worked for 75 hours.

But things aren't that easy. It is really difficult to get your first assignment but it gets easier on the way.

PT or PTC sites:
These kind of sites pay you to do certain things like:

View ads
Register at given websites
View advertisement emails they send you

Most of them are Pay To Click (PTC) sites which provide you with ads to view for 30sec each and pay you 1-2 cents for each ad.You are probably thinking something like:
" OMG ONLY 2CENTS!!! "
Thats what I thought too but there is some potential in these sites. You can refer other people to work at these sites and earn 1 cent for each of their clicks. Imagine 100 referrals clicking 6 ads a day.

6 clicks=6cents
100 people * 6 clicks=6$ a day or 180$ a month

180$ for doing nothing? Not bad for some pocket money. The more people you refer the more money you earn each month. The only obligation is to click at least 4 ads a day to be considered active at the sites. Its less than 5 minutes to do so.

I will soon post a complete review of my favorite PTC sites with extended information.