make money on the internet

Over the past 6 months, I’ve tried out a number of make money online sites in my attempts to earn extra cash. I have tried microstock photography, designs for t-shirts, selling text link ads, paid blogging, paid reviews and get-paid-tos, plus the referral programmes that come with these make money online sites.

Each area has its own winners and losers, and I will share my experience about the losers instead of winners because in reality, there are very few winners. However, not all were dumped because they didn’t pay. Some were great for awhile and then just withered and faded away.

PAID BLOGGING
I registered with almost every available paid to blog service as I think that paid blogging is one of the few ways that is worth pursuing. Payment for a sponsored post varies anything from US$1 to US$10. Of course, the higher traffic your blog has, the higher fees you can command.
Blogitive
This is one of the earliest paid to blog sites I signed up with. They were great then, had lots of offers that did not discriminate against new blogs which were quickly snapped up by members. I earned US$130 with them quickly. Then, quite suddenly, the offers stopped after they upgraded their site, their blog died around December 2006 and I’ve never seen another offer listed since.

BloggingAds
Again, very few offers. I earned maybe US$10 from them.

InBlogAds
Never received an offer from them.

SPONSORED REVIEWS
A sponsored review is somewhat different from paid blogging in that the post is more like a review of a service or product, rather than disguised as a normal everyday post. That’s how I see it anyway.

ReviewMe
Accepted my blog but did not include it the list for advertisers as my blog stats did not meet their requirements.

CreamAid
They were great when they first started with decent payouts of US$5 and US$10 but recently, their offers are more in the US$1 and US$2 range even though there is a chance of earning an extra dollar or two if someone clicks on your referral. Plus, very often, publication of posts is delayed till all available slots have been taken up. As a result, no one earns any referral fees.

LoudLaunch
This site has great potential and it’s just a pity how they run things. I have had 50% of my posts rejected for no apparent reason. This means I wasted half my time writing all those posts. The rejection could be because the advertiser is not looking for my kind of blog for his product, or that my blog stats do not meet his requirements. Here is where more professionalism on the part of LoudLaunch can be improved.

T-SHIRT DESIGNS
Being a graphic designer, my very first attempt to make money online was signing on to Cafepress and Zazzle. Their business models are just genius because they provide the blank canvases, be it t-shirts, mugs or bags just to name a few, and designers submit their designs to be printed and sold. You can select what products you want to put your designs on and set up your own page to sell all these products printed with your designs. The earnings can be quite good if you have a website with a large following. Unfortunately, they paid only by cheque which involved lots of hassles and processing cost.

ADVERTISING
I’m not keen on this method as firstly, I believe you need substantial traffic to get a decent amount of clicks if they are Pay Per Click or Action, such as Google AdSense. Also there is the consideration that the ads may turn off visitors. Personally, I hardly ever click on any ads when I visit sites unless I consciously want to support that site. I have just removed the CrispAds ad code after no activity for 2 weeks.

GET-PAID-TO
I signed on to these “get paid to” sites not so much to expect a payout because these sites pay something like US$0.01 for a post, but because I feel these forums are useful to drive traffic to my site.

PayPoster
This site has since become defunct following its owner effectively shutting down the site by trashing all posts and refusing to pay.

PaidLots
This is the sister site of PayPoster and is pretty much dead.

SlashMySearch
This search engine created quite a bit of buzz in the beginning but began its decline when it cut earnings. I conducted my own tracking on how much this site actually pays and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Agloco
This is another get-paid-to-surf where you install their toolbar on your computer. The toolbar itself is not yet launched and those who sign up can earn by referrals. It didn’t work for me.

Helium Knowledge
This get-paid-to-post is slightly different from others as you have to post some kind of information instead of just casual chat. You also earn when others read and rate your posts. I had earned less than US$0.20 after posting about half a dozen posts and abandoned it. Almost 6 months later, when I checked back last week to cancel my account, my balance was almost US$1.90. I cancelled anyway. At the rate it’s going, I will reach the payout amount of US$25 in maybe 10 years if I am lucky.

DayTipper
DayTipper was promising. It pays US$3 for each useful tip approved and published, however it took almost 3 months to publish 2 submitted tips and get paid for them. I still have 10 unpaid tips which are pending but I’m not holding my breath.

So, given so many duds, which money-making sites am I still using?

PayPerPost has really surprised me given that it is quite strict in screening applications and although most advertisers require at least medium to high traffic rankings, there are still opportunities for low traffic blogs. If you wish to sign up with PayPerPost, please sign up using my referral banner.

Text Link Ads has a good referral fee of US$25. If you’d like to support this site, please sign up using my referral link. It’s free, you don’t have to buy anything and just takes a minute to sign up, whether as an advertiser or publisher.

Microstock Photography is my favourite form of making money online for all the reasons I stated here. If you’d like to give it a try, read some tips to help you get started. Also see which microstock agencies and get an idea of what requirements are needed generally. If you’d like to sign up for some of these agencies, please use these links:
Shutterstock
Fotolia
Dreamstime
BigStockPhoto