Advice of the Day

I never really had a mentor when I started all of this; I sort of picked it up and figured it out on my own as I tend to do. If I had someone giving me advice from the start, there are a few things in particular I’d want to know.

1. Make a separate email account for all of this. I wouldn’t suggest using a fake email because most sites will require you to confirm it, but I wouldn’t want to use your primary email either. I made the mistake of using my primary and I get about 35 emails a day now with my modest operation, as opposed to 3 or 4. I would put Paypal under your primary email, since most of the messages you get from them will be important. I personally also would send eBay messages to my primary, so I don’t miss any messages from customers or notifications that items have sold (plus invoice notifications for monthly eBay fees!). If you check eBay several times a day though this might not be necessary.

2. Always make sure your Paypal password is unique. This seems like a no brainer, but always make sure the password you use for Paypal is only used for Paypal, just like you would do for your online banking. Some scam sites will lure you into signing up and entering your Paypal email address with the promise of having big bucks sent to you, only to hack into your Paypal account if you’re foolish enough to sign up with the same password.

3. Always find out what the catch is. If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Always find out what’s in it for them, “them” being the site you’re signing up with. Paypal takes 4% of your payment when you sell an item; eBay takes 10%, ZipNadaZilch gets money from the companies they direct you to when you complete offers for your credit. If you can’t find out how the site makes money, you probably won’t make money either.

 

To conclude, a little shameless self promotion: http://one.zipnadazilch.com/index.php?referral=998714 It might be a little late to make money before the holidays if you sign up, but there’s always next month’s bills. Sign up for ZipNadaZilch!

Dabbling in the Pay To Click Scene.

Someone recently left a comment on my introduction post suggesting a few pay to click (PTC) sites. I’ve heard of them before but heard they were tedious and not worth the time so I didn’t initially intend to try it out, but I changed my mind. It IS a way to make money from home, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t try it out and cover it here, and because I’m a kind soul I want to give back to the reader who suggested it by using him as a referral. Keep in mind that this is my first attempt at a PTC site, so I’ll be writing as I figure it all out! Here goes nothing.

 

CashAdda will be my first attempt. One thing I noticed right away is that the minimum cashout is $0.01 (except through Payza, then it’s a dollar), and you’re eligible to cash out once you have $0.02 in your account. They pay through Paypal, Payza, and Perfect Money. Members with a free account, however, must have clicked 20 ads within the previous 7 days in order to be paid. Another thing I noticed is that an email subscription is compulsory in order to get paid. …Meh, I can deal with that, I guess. I really should make a new email for stuff like this. After glancing at the forums I jumped right into ad clicking. Like traffic exchanges, you have to stay on the page for a certain amount of time in order to have your account credited and then do a simple task such as choosing which image out of a row of 5 is upside down, to confirm you’re human. Yay, I earned… $0.0003. They really should have put emphasis on the UP TO part of “earn up to $0.01 per click.”

 

After about 5 minutes of clicking ads, I’ve formed a general impression of the site which I think can be summed up to “meh.” I have a newfound hatred of the phrase “wait please…” and in the short time I’ve been clicking I’ve gotten 3 error messages where I had to go back and redo the ad because it messed up somehow, and about 5 times CashAdda’s thingy at the top wouldn’t load to give me credit so I had to redo it. Opening multiple ads at a time in new tabs only serves to frustrate me further because half of them have to be redone anyway.

 

Okay so, obviously the ad clicking part isn’t for me. However, there are several different options under the “Earn Money” tab on the website. Time to check out the cash grid. It’s basically the same thing, with a chance to win a lot of money if you get super lucky. You have 25 tries per day and there are 560 different squares on the grid. At least each try yields a different pretty picture, so I can choose based on the location of the polar bear’s nose, or the monkey’s eye, or wherever my mouse happens to land. Fun, right? While clicking I glanced along the right side of the page and was again dismayed. Although the page says you can win up to $1000 dollars, I didn’t see anyone that won recently that got over a penny. Apparently though, someone won $1000 on November 15th and 17th. Might as well use up my 25 tries.

 

No wins on the grid, so I moved on to PTC Wall where I found an ad that pays a penny with an extremely long timer. Of course, it detected an invalid click after I waited a full minute. On the second attempt it kept loading eternally, and the third try yielded another invalid click. Whatever, I’m not trying that hard for a penny. Skipping over the traffic exchange because I’m already signed up with 5 different sites for that; skipping the click-to-like page because I don’t want a bunch of crap on my Facebook unless I make a fake account for it. Watching videos wasn’t too bad; I was even a little entertained, but there were only 3 available. Each gave me 5 CashAdda Coins, which apparently equal $0.001. I’m not sure how to convert that to cash or why they’d even bother to use a different currency on certain things, but okay.

 

After what I’d estimate to be an hour or so of playing around on this site, I have a grand total of $0.0183. Oh boy. I’m not very impressed with PTC overall, and I don’t think I’ll continue. I made easier money working for ChaCha, and even that was slave wages. If you’ve had a different experience, feel free to let me know in the comments.

P.S. Apologies for any grammar mistakes or boring writing, at this time of night we’re lucky I’m not asleep on the keyboard!

Proof that ZipNadaZilch Works!

The first of what I hope to be many payments from ZNZ. Email me at the address shown as the recipient on the pic if you’re interested 😀 And here’s my referral link: http://one.zipnadazilch.com/index.php?referral=998714

ZipNadaZilch, LLC- Legit!

This is the site I mentioned before that I was referred to from a community page on facebook, and it was my first experience with referral based marketing. They work as a sort of online marketing hub for Fortune 500 companies, sorta like PaySpirit from my previous post claimed to do. I’m not allowed to recommend which offer to complete or do a walkthrough for completing your credit, but I can tell you which offers are available on the site I chose to use, one.zipnadazilch.com: freecreditscore.com, Beezid penny auctions, Discover card application, creditreport.com, Hydroxatone, Equifax, GoDaddy domain, Pimsleur Language Learning, WorldWinner, CashNetUSA, Elite Cash Wire, GoDaddy International Hosting, iBid2Save, LogMeIn Remote Access and Management, Quibids penny auctions, Republic Wireless, Sirius XM Radio, Sittercity, and Live Person Psychic Readings. If you choose a trial offer, you have to complete at least 80% of the trial time in order to receive credit, but you can cancel after that if you decide you don’t want to continue with the service. That being said, ZNZ wants me to tell you that they highly encourage you become a long term customer, because that’s how the Fortune 500 companies (and, in turn, ZNZ) make their money. If you choose a one time payment offer such as GoDaddy, you can’t cancel your service and get a refund because it will result in ZNZ suspending your account.

There are currently two free offers on the site, and one that only costs a dollar. Being the cheapskate I am, I chose a free offer. If you choose a trial offer and decide you want to cancel it before time runs out, be sure to know ahead of time how to do so. On the offer I chose, you had to call customer service in order to cancel and listen to one of their trained monkeys rattle off a sales pitch a mile long before you could get in a word edgewise to tell them that you only called to cancel your service, after which they give you another mile long sales pitch. In the end though I did get to cancel my trial without too much hassle, and I received my credit. The service wasn’t bad, but I can’t afford it right now. It’s maybe something I’d look into once I get a “real” job again.

About payment- They offer Paypal and Payza payments for one referral, a check for two referrals, a 16GB iPhone 5c for 24 referrals, a 16GB iPad w/Wifi for 22 referrals, and a custom order that you can acquire by contacting support to find out how many referrals it will take. I chose Paypal, of course. I had trouble finding a referral so I asked my mom to sign up, which was allowed because she’s in a different household and under a separate internet connection. She was planning on applying for the Discover card already, so she completed her credit that way. Once she was credited for approval on her card, I got $20 in my account, waiting to be cashed out to Paypal. I requested a cashout and 8 hours later they updated the status of my order to inform me that I had to submit a photo ID for proof of identity and email it to them. I was a little dismayed that it wouldn’t just be instant payment, but I took a crappy picture of my ID with my webcam and sent it to them. Apparently it’s protocol to request your ID for your first cashout, according to Terms and Conditions… Hopefully that means payment will be faster next time.

Thankfully, signing up for ZNZ is free. You will usually have to give your credit card info to the company in charge of whatever offer you choose, but ZNZ never receives that info. You give ZNZ the following: name, address, email address, and photo ID when you cash out for the first time (You’re allowed to block out your DL number, they only want to verify your identity).

The bottom line is, ZNZ seems to be legit. Will update if I have any problems with getting paid. It seems to me that the biggest thing to remember is to cancel your trial on time if you don’t plan to continue the service, because they WILL charge your card if you don’t cancel in time. That’s the subject of most of the bad reviews I’ve seen for ZNZ.

Here is ZNZ’s page on the Better Business Bureau’s page. They have had 13 complaints in the past 3 years but were cooperative in resolving issues, so they have a score of A- on a scale of A-F. http://www.bbb.org/wichita-falls/business-reviews/internet-marketing-services/zipnadazilch-in-wichita-falls-tx-95007

Here’s ZNZ’s Frequently Asked Questions. http://www.zipnadazilch.com/faqs/

Here’s the gallery on ZNZ, showing proof of payment from other users. I’ll post my own proof when I get paid as well. http://www.zipnadazilch.com/gallery/

And last but not least, here’s my referral link if you want to sign up and earn $20 per person you refer. Feel free to email me with any questions I didn’t cover here if you’re interested! http://one.zipnadazilch.com/index.php?referral=998714

greenwell.kayla@yahoo.com

UPDATE: It’s not in my Paypal account yet, but my very first payment from ZNZ has been approved! Will update with a screenshot once it clears.

P.S. It only took so long because it’s the first time I’ve cashed out, plus the first pic of my ID I sent (taken with my laptop webcam) wasn’t readable so I had to send another and wait for it to be looked at too.

Can’t wait to be paid!

UPDATE: Got paid! Final veridict: ZipNadaZilch is legit and I’m super happy!

PaySpirit- Fruitless Efforts

I have approximately zero faith in this site, and I haven’t even fully tried it out yet. The same person who referred me to ZipNadaZilch posted her referral link to PaySpirit on Facebook, declaring that each time someone clicked it she would receive $5.00, and for each person that signed up she would receive $10.00, the idea being that those who signed up could also receive that amount, plus a $25.00 bonus for signing up. I was immediately suspicious because no website is going to pay out $5.00 per click. I messaged the lady (We’ll call her K) saying that $5.00 seemed like an awful lot just for one click, and her response was “I know right! You have to make $300 before you can cash out but I already have like $200 now!” So for the sake of research, not expecting to receive any money, I registered with the website and began gathering clicks, with the help of a few traffic exchange (TE)  websites.

When you click on a referral link, you’re directed to a site called mytaskpay.com, and PaySpirit isn’t mentioned anywhere on the page. In fact, the testimonials at the bottom of the page praise another website entirely called getpaid4visits.com. The web page proclaims, “MyTaskPay.com helps young professionals & earners – large & small – collect better, more useful data across all channels with engaging, interactive, smart & powerful source of earning money by doing simple tasks.” At the top of the page it also says “Small task takes just 30 seconds to complete and earn $10 per task.” Yeah, right. Nevermind the fact that after you sign up for PaySpirit, the only apparent task is plaguing the internet with your referral link. I don’t want to spoil the outcome for those of you who are sitting on the edge of your seats, but I did already read a review about PaySpirit, and it wasn’t very promising. I decided to press on anyway, because if the one review I did read is correct there should be more of them to inform the public.

Upon signing up, I made a few more observations. On the main page (Which can’t be accessed by the Main Page button on the navigation bar because it’s not a real link), you are told “PaySpirit.com is a new innovating job site, where you will be hired to do some task, different in type and number. and you will be paid a estimated reward for that instant in your account, after it the job poster will review the service and approve the status for your payout, then you will be paid for your http://work via western union. Money gram is also coming soon. You have to create a account with us to start and login to your member area, and do daily your jobs and you will be really great after using our service. We guarantee you that you will earn 1500$ in your first week by simple task of 5 – 10 minute”. I elected to leave the inaccuracies unedited. On the member login area, there is a username and password text box, then a shortcut below to register if you don’t have an account, but there’s no apparent way to recover or reset your password if you lose it. Oh, and guess what? According to the F. A. Q. if you don’t log in for more than 30 days, all your earnings are lost. Joy.

Thanks to the TE usage, I nearly have the $300 in just one day (I’ll make a post sometime recommending some good TEs for you guys.). PaySpirit promises to pay via Western Union banks in about 30 days after you submit your request, and on the F. A. Q. it lists other payment methods including PayPal, which will always be my choice. Once I reach the $300, I plan to request a payout and see how it works. I’ll be sure to update and let you all know how it goes.

Edit 1: In the time it took me to write this post, I surpassed the $300 limit and I’m now sitting at $310. Below my account status, it says “Congratulations you have reached minimum payout, you are now eligible to get Payment,” and a button below it says “Click me to request for payout and get your cheque.” However, below the button it says the following, “Stake 1: For 200$ : Withdrawal will be processed within30 days
Stake 2: Make 500$ withdrawal will be processed within week.
Stake 3: Make 1000$ Get instant withdrawal Today!
You can choose any Stake by earning more.”

In the negative review I read, the guy who tried it only attempted to cash out the $200. Let’s see what happens if I reach a higher amount, shall we? For science. Will update with results, of course. Click if you feel like expediting the process: http://PaySpirit.com/?id=kayg13

Edit 2: I’m mysteriously unable to access the PaySpirit website now. When I try to reach it, the URL redirects to getperfectjob.com and I get a 403 (Forbidden) error. Interesting, maybe they banned my IP address? So we’re clear, here are the websites that seem to be affiliated with them:

getpaid4visits.com

mytaskpay.com

getperfectjob.com

payspirit.com

Edit 3: The curiosity was killing me, so I tried to access payspirit.com again under a proxy with my IP address changed. I was again redirected to getperfectjob.com and then to mytaskpay.com. So turns out I wasn’t IP banned, the site was taken down I guess. I’m going to assume mytaskpay.com and all websites affiliated with it aren’t legit. I’ve never heard of anyone getting paid from them or seen any proof, but if anyone has proof to show me that points otherwise I’ll be happy to update it.

Edit 4: Providing a more complete list of websites related to this sort of scheme:

1. hxxp://www.visitpayment.com
2. hxxp://www.YouthMonthlyPay.com
3. hxxp://www.Pay4visits.com
4. hxxp://www.getpaid4visits.com
5. hxxp://www.thepaidtask.com
6. hxxp://www.eachvisitpaid.com
7. htxxp://www.EarningVisit.com
8. hxxp://www.PayLinker.com
9. hxxp://www.eachvisitpaid.com
10. hxxp://www.50dollarjob.com
11. hxxp://www.earn4family.com
12. hxxp://www.apocketmoney.com
13. hxxp://www.mystandardjob.com
14. hxxp://www.getperfectjob.com
15. hxxp://www.paybulb.com
16. hxxp://www.assignpay.com
17. hxxp://www.PocketMoneyJob.com
18.  hxxp://www.hiredpay.com
19. hxxp://www.youthwealth.com
20. hxxp://www.mytaskpay.com
21. hxxp://www.timelyjob.com
22. hxxp://www.Earn4Family.Com
23. hxxp://www.thewebjob.com
24. hxxp://www.paynile.com
25. hxxp://www.cashforvisits.com
26. hxxp://www.theweeklypay.com

Source: http://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2013/10/23/earn-50-to-100-usd-daily-easy-from-us-fake-websites/

If you signed up for any of these sites with your Paypal address and used the same password for it, be sure to change your password asap in case these sites are phishing for your info.

Selling on eBay- Legit, especially if you have stuff! (Who doesn’t?)

I’ve been selling things on eBay for about 5 years now. I started when I was 16 years old, using my mom’s Paypal account and sending the money I made to her bank account to give to me. My first sale was an extra clarinet I had from band after I upgraded to a new one; I sold it for about $200. Bottom line is, if you have things to sell, eBay is great. If you have a printer and shipping supplies and use USPS (for free pickup at your house) you never have to leave your house to get paid. If you don’t have any of those things, go to your local library for printing and your post office for everything else. Being the seasoned vet that I am, there are a lot of things I learned the hard way and I’d love to pass the knowledge on to you.

Lesson 1. Don’t set the starting price of your auction lower than you want to get for your item. I made this mistake on my very first listing, setting the price on my clarinet for $200 to attract buyers and assuming the final sale price would hit around $500. To assume makes an ass out of you and me, don’t do it. Unless your item is super hot and flying off the shelves, ask for the price you want to take.

Lesson 2. It’s a good idea to list an auction starting price AND a buyout price. Some people will look forever to find the perfect price and bid competitively until they get the item they want at a price they’re satisfied with. Many people though, myself included, will often filter out any listings that don’t have a “Buy it Now” option. When I want to buy something, I want to buy it now and I don’t like having the chance of being outbid at the last second if I DO decide to wait. Listing as both an auction and “Buy it Now” will increase potential buyers.

Lesson 3. eBay takes a percentage of what you make, but not immediately after sale. At the end of each month, eBay will email you an invoice that equals 10% of your total gross sales (plus listing fees if applicable, I typically don’t have any). Don’t forget about this fee and spend all of the money you make, because eBay will take it directly from your bank account whether you have it or not and overdrafts suck.

Lesson 4. Paypal takes a percentage of what you make, immediately after sale. Paypal takes 3% of your payment from each transaction, last time I checked. [UPDATE: It’s 4% now.] No potential for overdrafting here since it’s done in the same transaction, but it’s still nice to know what you’re getting into.

Lesson 5. Figure the shipping price before you list. It might (i.e. probably will be) more than you would estimate, and can knock you out of some profit and in the hole faster than you can say “Shipping is overpriced.” USPS is normally the cheapest shipping service unless you’re selling something large and/or heavy. To find out how much it will cost to ship your item go to their website and use the “Calculate Price” option, then use a random destination zip code within the US, since you don’t know where it’ll be going yet. A good rule of thumb is to round your shipping price up a little to cover packaging, handling, or any other unexpected expenses. Just make sure it doesn’t knock you out of pricing competitively. Edit: here’s the link to the postage calculator: http://postcalc.usps.com/

Lesson 6. Speaking of pricing competitively- if you can’t make money doing so with your particular item, eBay probably isn’t the place to sell that item. For example, the market for small electronic accessories like headphones and cables is flooded by sellers from Hong Kong with “Buy it Now” prices for $0.99 with free shipping. You can’t make money in that market on eBay, and I don’t recommend trying. Sometimes, however, you can compete in certain markets with overseas sellers because customers ordering within the US will get their items in 3-5 days instead of 2 weeks.

Lesson 7. When figuring your sale price based on how much profit you want to make, be sure to consider fees, packaging, and shipping. Pretty much self explanatory. Do a little math and see how much you want to profit, after expenses. Avoid paying for packaging by saving old packaging or making your own boxes from cardboard, removing old labels and putting yours on, resealing, packaging with old newspaper, et cetera.

Lesson 8. Be professional, fair, and polite. Build a good reputation for yourself as a seller, and your feedback score and percentage will speak for itself. Don’t be afraid of going the extra mile to make a customer happy; you won’t be sorry.

The bottom line: definitely legit, and a good way to make space if you’re a bit of a hoarder like me. If you don’t have stuff to sell you can search for treasures at yard sales, thrift shops, or anywhere else where things will be cheaper. If your item doesn’t sell on the first listing, don’t get discouraged. There’s a convenient feature under the “Unsold Items” category where all you have to do is push relist then confirm, so getting your item to sell is smooth sailing after the initial listing. [Edit: I’ve since discovered there’s also a checkbox right before you confirm your listing that will automatically relist an item up to 3 times for free if your item doesn’t sell. Cool beans.] I’m sure there are things I forgot to cover, so I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Just hit me up!

Working for ChaCha Text Message Answering Service- Legit, But Not Worth the Time.

For the sake of chronological order, I’m going to start with ChaCha, which I tried out in high school. You may have already heard of them; they’re a free text message answering service. You can ask them anything from business phone numbers and locations to help with homework questions, and everything in between, all for free. The downside to using ChaCha is, the answers aren’t guaranteed to be correct. In fact, it almost always takes me a long time to glean any sort of relevant or useful answer from them, and it often ends in frustration and repeated messages to my phone saying “Hmm, looks like we already answered that question. Try asking another!” (or something to that effect). So what’s the issue with ChaCha? I’m willing to wager it’s a combination of its employees and its quality control over those employees, not to mention low pay rate and a huge emphasis on quantity over quality.

 

From what I understand, ChaCha isn’t currently hiring, but I’m still technically on their payroll from several years ago and I can go expedite questions whenever I wish. I don’t because I only get paid $0.02 for each question I answer. Yep, two pennies. Each question that’s assigned randomly to you has a time limit of about 4 minutes. On many of them you can simply choose an answer stored in the database where the same question has been asked before, but on queries where you have to formulate your own answer it often takes the whole 4 minutes (if you try to be one of the few who give correct answers rather than rushing through as fast as you can). If you work for 5 hours in a day, you’ll get a whopping $1.50, and that’s assuming you don’t have to wait for questions to come in (a common occurrence). If you’re going to be on the computer for 5 hours a day anyway it might not be a bad idea, because it has this nifty function where a sound effect goes off when you receive a question, but be prepared to drop everything within a few seconds lest it be reassigned to another guide. If you do that every day, you get 45 bucks in 30 days, oh boy. Here comes the kicker- there are two ways to be paid through ChaCha, direct deposit to your bank account and instant payment via Paypal. The direct deposit is sent out once a month with no fee, but you only get paid if you have more than $150 accumulated for payout. If you don’t have enough for direct deposit you can choose instant payment, but it costs you a fee of $1. That might not seem like a lot, but remember that it’s almost a day’s worth of work.

The final verdict by yours truly- Yeah, it’s money, but it’s not enough to be worth your time. I got enough to cash out once in all the time I’ve been signed up with the site, for $14 after the fee. I got a new bra out of it, but how many hours of labor went into it? There are MUCH better ways to make money, even online.