Search Results
2011 Earning Review
12/20/2011 | 
Author I can’t believe how fast the year has gone by and it is almost holiday season again. During the end of the year I usually like to reflect on my goals on earning money online through various methods. Things that I did well and things that I did poorly.
Here is my earning for 2011 (you can see my 2010 earning here):
| Here is my earning summary for 2011: | |
| Adsense Earning | $1,166.68 |
| Amazon Affiliate | $132.01 |
| MySurvey | $60.00 |
| HCD Surveys | $10.40 |
| Pinecone Research | $63.00 |
| SurveySavvy | $32.75 |
| Swagbucks Amazon Gift Card | $110.00 |
| instantcashsweepstakes | $13.19 |
| Communispace | $270.00 |
| Adgitize | $71.45 |
| Borders Reward Bucks | $15.00 |
| MyPoints Gift Card | $25.00 |
2011 has been an incredible year for me as I moved from a very stable job to contracting. While contracting offers more money than a stable job, you are well aware of the fact that you might be gone tomorrow. As a result I am a lot more focused at work than compared to before. Sadly that means I didn’t have as much time to do paid surveys and other online activities in comparison to before.
Overall, I am really happy that my Adsense earning and Amazon affiliate have increased quite a bit compared to last year. Even though if I subtract the cost and divide by the hours I spent on those activities my hour wage is probably still in single digits. 
I do have to say that at the end of the day the only thing that really mattered is write high quality content. If your site produces high quality content, eventually you will gain readership and money will gradually come in.
Even though my earning looks high, my cost has increased quite a bit too. My hosting & domain cost came out to be well above $600 for the year. This is a result of me purchasing way too many domains thinking each one is a great idea. The reality is I am both unmotivated by those topics and just don’t have as much time at hand. As a result lots of domains just sit there wasted. (My new year resolution include clean up the domains I have and only keep the ones that I will work on.)
Either way I hope you have a good 2011 and here is to a better 2012. Happy holidays everyone!
Posted in 
Neobux updates mean lower member earnings?
I have never been a large fan of pay to click (PTC) programs as I find surveys to be a better way of earning a little extra income online. Neobux is one of the exception and I have used it for for the past couple years. Usually you receive 4 ~ 5 ads to click at the rate of $0.01. So effectively you can make $0.04 ~ $0.05 on a daily basis. If you do the math it comes out to be around $15 a year.
Recently there is an important announcement posted by the administrator in their forum regarding a new advertisement policy.
Here are the two key changes from my point of view:
1. The advertisement will be worth $0.001 per click instead of $0.01..
2. Referral commissions for standard members changed from $0.005 to $0.0005.
By the same token, it seems to be the cost of advertisement cheaper as there are a lot more advertisers. For the last few days when I logged on I see around 10 ~ 15 ads so essentially you can only earn less than 2 cents a day for clicking on a lot more ads. Suffice to say I will no longer be using Neobux but rather go back to doing short surveys like Instant Cash Sweepstakes.
SurveySpot Review
SurveySpot is a survey site that offers participants cash and sweepstakes for completing surveys. Each survey is valued at a price of $2 to $10 depending on the length of the survey. Their survey is targeted toward individuals eighteen or older and living in U.S., U.K, or Canada. Overall, I find the interface fairly straight forward to use even though a lot of times I don’t qualify for the survey.
The payment threshold is set at $5. Once you reached the threshold you can request a payment by check that usually takes between six to eight weeks. If you are looking for a survey site to generate some additional income, be sure to check out Extra Cash & Rewards section for additional sites and ideas!
2010 Earning Review
As 2010 comes to a close, I can’t believe it has been a little more two years since I first started this blog. When I first started blogging I was looking for a way to generate passive income and keep track of frugal online resources.
| Here is my earning summary for 2010: | |
| Adsense Earning | $90.03 |
| Amazon Affiliate | $40.80 |
| MySurvey | $60.00 |
| HCD Surveys | $20.00 |
| Pinecone Research | $78.00 |
| SurveySavvy | $28.50 |
| Swagbucks Amazon Gift Card | $160.00 |
| instantcashsweepstakes | $67.60 |
| Communispace | $215.00 |
| Adgitize | $11.01 |
| Borders Reward Bucks | $15.00 |
| MyPoints Gift Card | $50.00 |
| Here are some gift card I won from drawings/contest | |
| Dick’s Sporting Goods | $50.00 |
| Home Depot | $25.00 |
| iTunes | $25.00 |
| Apple Store | $100.00 |
My total earning for the year 2010 was $1035.46 with a cost of $140.40 domain and hosting fee with BlueHost. $1035.46 – 140.40 = $895.06. Comparing to how I did for 2009, I would say it is about the same which is fairly disappointing. The majority of the earning is still derived from time intensive activity like surveys sites and activity sites like Swagbucks.
While my income for Adsense stayed the same Adsense income for this specific blog dropped dramatically. It is this year that I realized in order for coupon sites to make money on Adsense you will need tremendous amount of traffic due the low CPC for keywords in this niche. On average I only received $0.25 for a click for this site in comparison to my other site which has a rate of $2+ per click. The lesson here is choose your keywords wisely if you really want to make money through Adsense. As an attempt to move away from Adsense earning for this site I started Amazon affiliate program which I made $40.80. Not bad but definitely something to work on for 2011.
As for blog giveaways, I definitely recommend people entering blog giveaways as I have won a number of them in the past two years. There are usually a lot less people entering and your chance of winning is much greater than your typical drawings. For the new year, I will have to find better ways to focus my time if I want to increase my earnings. Look for my next post where I will discuss my blogging resolution for 2011 and whatever your blogging goal is, best of luck for the upcoming new year!
InstantCashSweepstakes.com introduces $2 drawing every 4 hours
Instantcashsweepstakes.com officially introduced a new $2 drawing every 4 hours in addition to daily $50 drawing. I have been a fan of InstantCashSweepstakes.com ever since I won $50 drawing earlier this year. If you haven’t heard of this website, it allows you to do short surveys (multiple choice questions) in exchange for a chance to win small amount of cash. You will also win tickets and coins with each set of survey questions where you can purchase additional entry into the $2 and $50 drawings.
On a side note, they mentioned on their blog that any account that is not active within one month will have their earning forfeited. So if you decided you no longer have extra time for short surveys but still have vested money in your account, be sure to cash out the money within a month. Good luck!
Free Subscription to Forbes Magazine via Reward Gold
Reward Gold is offering a free subscription to Forbes magazine for answering their surveys. If you are a fan of Forbes magazine, definitely give this a try!
AskYourTarget Market.com
I am a big fan of Instant Cash Sweepstakes ever since I won the $50 drawing earlier this year. Although I have visited InstantCashSweepstakes.com much less frequently I am still making money as a result of my referral’s participation (thanks my referral!). InstantCashSweepstakes.com allows you to take short surveys for a chance of winning small amount of cash. Although the winning amount is small, they offer 100% match for the winning of your referrals. Hence if you have a lot of referrals it really adds up quickly.
On the other hand, this company has another website called AskYourTargetMarket.com. It is exactly the counter part of InstantCashSweepstakes. If you are a researcher and you would like to get response to your set of survey, you can gather 50 responses starts at $29.95 or 100 responses for $39.95. The price is inexpensive for anyone who has worked with survey companies. So definitely keep them in mind if you do a lot of research relate work!
I’m A Winner – Instant Cash Sweepstakes
After I got home yesterday and logged onto my computer, I realized I won the $50 daily sweep stake at Instant Cash Sweepstakes. For those that doesn’t know about Instant Cash Sweepstakes, ICS is a fun little three question survey site that gives you the chance to win cash each time you participate. The usual rewards are small (a couple cents) but you can play once every three hours.
In addition, you win lottery tickets for daily $50 drawings. Personally I like the site for the fact that surveys are easy and short. It is perfect when I need to let my mind relax for a short period of time before plunging back into my work. Try it out yourself!
Make Money Writing for eHow
One of my resolution for my frugal ways is to work toward generating more residual income. Even though my revenue for last year was acceptable, it was based on a lot of time consuming tasks such as answering surveys and remember to search on reward sites such as Swagbucks. This year I would like to focus on writings that will can generate residual income without needing me to click my fingers away.
One of the programs I am planning on spending more time on is eHow. At one period during last year I noticed that a lot of my Google searches were returning links to a site called eHow. Upon further investigation, eHow is a user generated content site in which people shares their specific knowledge regarding how to accomplish a specific task. The site is owned by Demand Media and you can read up on its history on wiki.
However, unlike the other sites, it actually shares the ad revenue it generated from website to the writers. (Although it doesn’t disclose how much of the revenue is shared with the writers), I did find a blog of a work from home mom who is generating substantial income as a result. I have say that reading her blog is an inspiration. For someone who has to take care of her kids and have limited amount of time daily, she proved the importance of quality of writing over quantity. She even started an eBook regarding how to make money on eHow. She is a proven case that the site works and can be used to generate residual income. Granted not everyone will be as successful as she is but I believe every little bit helps.
Why did I remember eHow all of a sudden? It is because to my surprise I actually received a payment from them. While the amount is not a lot, it did rekindle my wish to write better articles and see whether I can be successful in generating residual income. So if you are knowledgeable and would like to earn residual income, be sure to check out eHow!
2009 Earning Review
I started this blog a little more than a year ago as a reference for myself in regards to different ways to make money online, good reference websites and frugal tips as the economy started to tank. Maintaining a website takes a lot more work than I expected even with WordPress (One of the best blogging platform out there).
| Here is my earning summary for 2009: | |
| Recurring Earnings | |
| Adsense Earning | $92.49 |
| MySurvey | $120.00 |
| HCD Surveys | $20.00 |
| Pinecone Research | $45.00 |
| SurveySavvy | $24.50 |
| Swagbucks Amazon Gift Card | $145.00 |
| youdata | $9.16 |
| instantcashsweepstakes | $2.33 |
| Communispace | $130.00 |
| Adgitize | $18.76 |
| Inbox Dollars | $27.00 |
| Borders Reward Bucks | $15.00 |
| MyPoints Gift Card | $85.00 |
