4 Days of My Life...Gone!

Well the last 4 days have been absolute hell. Last Thursday my computer started to act a little funny. Things would take a long time to load, items would not close, little things I really did not pay much attention too. I have a up-to-date security system, Zone Alarm, that could find nothing more than a few tracking cookie's, so I was not concerned. On Friday I started to get Internet Explorer errors and would have to shut down every few hours or so. It was quite annoying, but I could still work. Then about 40 minutes into a very long survey, it did it again. I can't tell you how upset that made me. I am really surprised I still have a keyboard and a mouse to work with. So then I spent about 30 hours in the last 2 days trying to find the problem. Every 20 seconds or so Internet Explorer would encounter a problem and have to close. I even had to go to a friends house to research the problem on his computer because I could not use mine. To make a long story short, I finally had a friend of mine who is a tech guy for his company, help me with the problem. He has spent over 4 hours on it himself. He said it could be a virus that got by Zone Alarm by a way I did not understand, or he said it could be a quirk with Internet Explorer. Anyway, it is now running better, but still every so often I get the error again. I have a lot of work to get caught up on, and I just lost 4 days. Sorry for the lack of updates, I am hopefully back on track.

I'm Getting Overloaded With Info

I am sorry this post is taking so long to get out. March has been a busy month so far. In addition to the paid survey sites, I have started to market the Key-To-Cash program as best that I can. As of right now I have no one signed up. I have joined four really good traffic exchanges to get traffic to the Key-To-Cash sign up page. I have put in about an hour a day, and have sent the page out over 850 views. In addition I have had the banner viewed over 170 times. As you can see by the banner on my blog to the right, I have also joined, SpinSuccess. Because I really have no experience what so ever with search engine optimisation SEO, I thought I would pay the $29.95 to have these guys do it for me. They manually get you registered with 100's of search engines, of which I know nothing about. I'll give you a update in a month to tell you how it worked. I have also joined ClixSense.

I'm going to jump ahead of my self a little to catch everyone up on what I am doing with the blog. Right now I am trying to drive traffic to the blog and to the Key-To-Cash program. The traffic is not really targeted traffic, just surfers. I hope that just by the numbers, a blind squirel might find a nut. To build up my traffic numbers, I load Traffic Swarm, Dragon Surf, Hits 4 You, and ClixSense into my tabbed browser and start surfing. I put ClixSense in there for a very good reason. You are required to have the site open for about 20 seconds for each of the traffic exchanges. If you load 3 of them in your browser and surf, you have some seconds left over. That is why I make up that time with ClixSense. They pay $0.01 to $0.05 to surf their ads. Why not make money while you wait if you are surfing anyway. Well it is not very much money, but it is something! You do have to upgrade for $10.00 though or you will run out of ads to view.
I have a ton of surfing credits to use now and I have made $4.80 on ClixSense at the same time.
If you are going to do the traffic exchange thing, you might as well do ClixSense at the same time, if nothing more than to have something to show for your time.

This month I am going to work a little harder on the GPT sites like Cash Crate. I have been a member with 5 of them, and I have made a little money on each. There was more opportunity to make money on each but I did not have the time with everything else. I am going to try to make $300.00 a month, just by using the 5 sites. My next post will outline the 5 sites I am going to use, but there are a lot of them out there. $300.00 might be pushing it a little, due to the fact that a lot of the offers are duplicated between the sites. All I can do is try though.

Getting back to the Key-To-Cash experiment, I am getting a little sceptical at this point. I think that the program will work, I have no doubt about that. I have seen it work over and over in other instances. The problem I see with it is that it plays right into my personal weakness. I do not like to ask people for money. If I have a product to give someone in return, like a house, or a bookcase, or something like that, it is a different story. My early conclusions to the program is that it must be used by the right person, or else you will go no where. $25.00 is not a lot of money though to see if you have what it takes, if you are unsure.

My Every So Often Rant

On a blog that I like to visit, CashCrate Tips the author has a section where she posts her "daily rants". I thought this was such a good of a idea I thought I would add a couple of my own rants to my blog. This involves the survey companies that ask you to do a survey for a sweepstakes entry. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am very passionate about the value of one's time. I feel that we all have a limited time on this earth, some have a lone time, and some way to short. Regardless of how much time we have, every one's time is of equal value. Anyone who believes that their time is more important than another's, is selfish and rude. As a employer I always expected to compensate my employee's for their time no matter what I asked them to do. It is up to that person to judge if their time is worth that or not. The survey companies that would like you to take a survey, for which they are getting paid, and do it for free, or what they like to call a sweepstakes entry, is being rude and irrispective. And that's all I have to say about that.


Coming up: The last of my survey site reviews. This is a group of "get paid to" sites.

Paid Survey Site Scams? Not Really.

Well here is the rest of my list. These sites have produced little to nothing for me in the past 6 weeks. There are many people on the Internet that would like to call these scams. That is just not the case. Many of the following survey sites have not sent out surveys to me simply because I do not fit the profile that matches most of their surveys. I'm ok with that. There are also a few on the following list that are there because they sent out 2 or 3 surveys a day, but they are only for entries in sweepstakes.

I am not going to grade these sites for the fact, I just don't have enough interaction with them yet. After a few more months, I may review them if needed. I am not going to put my referral link to these either. I feel doing so when they have not really worked out for me, would be some what deceptive. I am trying to stay away from that in my blog. Please use your own judgement on these sites, some could be very productive for a different person, and I would not want to steer you away from a good site. For example, the Contractor Advisory Board never sent one survey out in 6 weeks, then yesterday I got one for a lawn tractor review, it took about 10 minutes and I made $20.00. So here is the rest...


Netverdix.com...No surveys

MySurvey.com...Surveys every day but qualified for very few, and surveys were long for little money.

VocalLabs.com...I had one survey in February where I had to call Best Buy and give my impressions on their customer service. I made $1.00 for this.

FocusFwdonline.com...I am getting more surveys the last couple of days, but in February I only did one for $1.00

Contractor Advisory Board...$0.00 for February, but I did just have a survey for $20.00 that will go towards March totals.

JuryTest...$0.00 with no surveys, but I bet it would be interesting to get on one of their jury panels.

Buzzback.com...$0.00 for February, and no surveys.

MyPoints.com...A lot of surveys for sweepstakes entries. Points are worth very little for surveys.

Esearch.com...$0.00 one survey in January and that is it so far.

Nielsennetpanel...MyHughesnet security program did not work well with their software you have to install.

Greenfieldonline.com...Nothing but sweepstakes entries. Check out my" I got a rant!", post.

SurveySpot.com...Same thing, nothing but sweepstakes entries.

ExecutiveAdvisoryBoard.com...I only had 1 survey and that was in January, it was worth $10.00.

Ipsosi-say.com...Very few surveys, worth very little.

Surveys.com...I have not been a member very long, a review is still to come.

That is my list of the Paid Survey Sites that have not been very good for ME. I would like to say again that the results might be totally different with someone who fits a different profile. If anyone out there has had different results, please let me know so I can pass it on.

Paid Survey Site Reviews Pt.3

Synovate

Synovate is probably better known as GlobalOpinionPanels, so if you try to look it up, use that name. This is another site that uses the point system. In January I only received 60 points=$.60, so I was about to put this on the back burner. In February I was able to increase my total to 5,210 points= $5.21. Minimum payout is $5.00 and they send a check. The website can be a little confusing with the two names, especially if you have a lot of sites to manage. The members section is just ok, you are not able to get a history, only a total points. 7 out of 10





Your 2 Cents
This was a pretty good site, in general. I only received 4 surveys in February and I only qualified for 1. That 1 survey was worth 6000 points! In cash terms it was $2.00. At first I did not like it that they assigned these ridiculous amount of points compared to cash value, but they all seem to do it, so its just part of the game I guess. It takes a minimum of 30,000 points to cash out, and they will send you a check. The survey I did take was short for $2.00, and the couple I did not qualify for were worth between $2.00-$5.00, that is why it is still on my list of good ones. The members section of the website is also nice in that you get to see all the surveys you have been given, whether you qualified or not. 7 out of 10

Opinion Place

I have mixed feelings on this one. I did not receive any surveys in February so my total was $0.00. The one survey I took in January though, was credited to my PayPal acount the next day. AOL is actually the backbone of this company so you will get paid, you just might not get paid a lot. The website is not very user friendly either. I would have thought AOL could have done better. 5.5 out of 10

Valued Opinions

I receive surveys from this company on average about every 3 days. The surveys are reasonable in length, and usually $2.00-$3.00. In February I made $8.50 with this site. The bad part of this is they only pay by gift certificate to Amazon, Blockbuster, and Macy's. The pay out is $20.00. The members site is not as good as some, but you still get to see the important things about your account. I did not start getting a good flow of surveys until after I filled out my profile surveys. Hint: fill out your profile surveys. I have to give this site a 6.5 out of 10. (I don't shop at Amazon, Blockbuster or Macy's)

Zoompanel

ZoomPanel was a little different than most of the survey companies, they sent out surveys almost every day. They were only worth 10, 75, and only sometimes 150 points. 150 points =$1.50. I made 400 points in February, or $4.00 if you like. Not a lot of money, but they always give you some points even if you don't qualify for the survey. Usually it is only 5 points=$.05, but it is something every time. Not a good members site, a little hard to navigate around and find your account detail. I forgot to mention the pay out is at 1000 points=$10.00 6.5 out of 10