There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.
There are some other fairly easy ways to earn money online that I actually prefer to doing surveys and the main one is getting paid to create content. There are three sites where I post most of the things I write — Squidoo, Qassia, and Hubpages. Between the two of them I make more money each month than I do from all the different survey sites put together. It is a more work upfront, but it is fun and I enjoy it a lot more and once I’ve created my pages, I may tweak them occasionally, but they are mostly hands-off so it’s work that you really only need to do once. If you have a lot of interests and ideas, like to write and enjoying sharing information and doing some research, it’s lots of fun and offers a decent return for your time.
The reason I use them is that while on the surface they seem similar, they both have different advantages, drawbacks and features.
Hubpages let’s you post content that you’ve written into single webpages called Hubs. For each Hub that you create, you can add ecommerce modules for Amazon and Ebay. Google Adsense ads display automatically. For all three affiliate programs, you receive a 60% impression share on your hubs. This means that if you have 10 people read your page once, the impressions created by 6 of those people belong to you and the other four belong to Hubpages.
One of the major advantages of Hubpages is that you have your own account for each of these affiliate programs, which means you get to do your own tracking and you get paid directly by the program. It’s also easy to get approved with each program if you sign up for them through Hubpages, so don’t be afraid to apply.
Squidoo is also a content site, but their revenue sharing model is operated a lot differently from Hubpages. Instead of signing up with each affiliate program separately, all of the finances are handled by Squidoo. They get paid by the affiliate and then give you 50%, paid to your Paypal account once a month. The nice thing about it is that it is for every sale as sales are not handled based upon whose impression it is. If someone buys something from your lens, you get half. Simple as that. Each month they also take all of the pooled Adsense earnings and parcel that money out based upon lensrank/traffic to your lens, etc. While I personally prefer getting paid directly, I do have to say that the Squidoo method is convenient and also an excellent set up for anyone who can’t get approved by Ebay or Adsense directly or just prefers not to deal with several different companies.
And then finally, Qassia. This is a fairly new website, but it seems to work similiar to Hubpages, in that you get paid directly from your Adsense account. Currently it is only set up with Adsense revenue sharing, but it is 100% revenue sharing for ads displayed next to your content, which is really excellent. Plus the site allows you to promote your other websites (so you could promote both your Hubs and your Squidoo Lenses) with nice backlinks from their PR5 domain. So I think this is well worth hopping onboard with right now.
American Consumer Opinion Panel is one of the few market research companies that accepts participants from all over the world. So if live outside the United States and you’ve been disappointed by the paltry opportunities to complete surveys offered by other companies, then you should definitely check them out. They also accept American users, so feel free to sign-up if you live in the US.
I’d forgotten about yesterday being Independence Day. I can’t believe this year is nearly half over already. So let’s get back to our topic.
For the past couple of days, I’ve been writing about Online Data Entry job scams. This naturally leads to the question - Are there any real online data entry jobs out there?
First, the bad news:
There really aren’t a lot of pure data entry jobs available on a telecommuting basis. You’ll have better luck finding local employers who need that kind of work done because in most situations you are going to need to pick up the hard copy and then return it to them. Usually you can deliver the work itself online, but almost always they will want the hard copy back.
Where to find local data entry jobs?
Craigslist is your best source. I’ve used it successfully to find all kinds of jobs and for data entry work it is frequently possible to arrange a telecommute option even if that is not what is being advertised. You can also find data entry jobs at places like Monster.com and Hotjobs, but I think for the most flexible employers, Craigslist is always your best bet ,especially for independent contractor arrangements and one-off jobs. Be sure to check the Etc. jobs category on Craigslist whenever you need some quick cash.
So where do I find the online jobs?
So far, I’ve covered what the “affiliate marketing masquerading as data entry job” scam looks like, but that’s not the only scam out there. Some people might even think that scam falls into a grey area since you can potentially make money doing what those sites suggest even though it’s not even remotely what you signed up to do.
The other types of Work at Home job scams include the large scale flat-out scammer who sets up a website, posts a ton of ads at once, collects his money and then disappears forever — or rather disappears for now only to pop up under a new name somewhere else.
The next type of scam is the one that suggests you are going to be working directly for them and are going to be paid by them, but when you send them your money you get a list back with a bunch of forms and an outdated list of employers to contact on your own who may or may not (most likely scenario) hire you.
Someone else has already dissected this scam extensively so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. Instead, just visit Clerical Work at Home Scams. The website she is talking about has gone offline, but the Wayback machine still has it so you can see exactly what she is talking about. A.V.I Data Processing Center is the scam site in question.
This leads me to one other point. If a website appears to be suggesting that you will be working directly for them and also paid by them, but they:
IT’S A SCAM!
They want you to pay for the information
Never pay to work for someone else. You do not need to send money to real employers to show that you are “serious” about the job or for the paperwork or software to do the job. If you work as an independent contractor you will frequently need to spend your own money on hardware — such a a second landline telephone, a headset or a transcription machine, but you will buy that stuff yourself at your local Radio Shack or someplace. If you are doing work for someone else, they will always supply you with any software and paperwork required for free. You might have to spend money on ink to print it out. That’s it!
Question the Earnings Potential
The next way to recognize an online data entry job scam is an outrageous statement about earning potential. Being able to earn $500 a week doing data entry jobs is not unimaginable, depending on your job market and skills, but $500 a day for an entry-level job requiring few skills? It’s completely out of the question.
Offline data entry jobs where you actually have to show up at an office to do the work pays anywhere from minimum wage to $11 or $12 an hour. You might see data entry jobs for $14-20 an hour if you happen to be in a community with a very low unemployment rate and a high demand by employers to fill these sorts of jobs, but at those wages, you’ll need both experience and very good keyboarding skills, especially with a 10-key numeric keyboard. You’ll most definitely be given a typing test or an test on the 10-key to get a job like that.
Any telecommuting job opportunities naturally would pay in the same range as any other type of job in the same field. In fact, you’ll frequently find that they’ll pay lower wages because they can leverage the marketplace. Why hire workers from big cities like Los Angeles, New York or Chicago where the average pay scale needs to be higher to cover the higher cost of living when you can hire someone in other parts of the US or even overseas where wages are quite a bit lower?
The Alluring Evidence — Beware the Paypal Screenshot
This is the first in a series of posts I will be making about “Work at Home” job scams. My first topic is “online data entry jobs”. In this first post I’ll be discussing how the scam works and in my follow-up posts I’ll discuss how to recognize a scam when you see one. The third follow-up will be on real job opportunities — none of which cost job applicants money to apply for.
Online Data Entry Job Scams
You’ve seen the opportunities on Google and they used to be all over Craigslist until Craigslist started charging advertisers money to make job postings in their major markets. It goes something like this:
Make Money Working from Home
No Experience Necessary
Data Entry Jobs paying up to $500 a Day
Learn more now!
And then you go to the website and find out you need to pay anywhere from $17 to $97 to get more information about these jobs. Thus breaking rule no. 1: Never pay to work.
The fact that the “data entry at home” job opportunities have dried up on Craigslist as a result of them now charging for job postings is one of the first clues that those jobs were scams in the first place. Any real employer, even small ones, are willing to pay to post their jobs. Craigslist is much cheaper than advertising in most metro Sunday papers. They only charge $25 for a job posting in a major city like Boston. Real employers never require an application fee from job seekers.
How does the Data Entry Job Scam work?
Greenfield Online
is a market research company that has been in business since the 1990s. They have all kinds of paid surveys available. Most of them pay cash, but shorter surveys are usually for sweepstake entries. It’s usually a good idea to do the sweepstakes surveys in the beginning just to show that you are an active user. Paid surveys run anywhere from $1 to $20 or more.
OpinionSquare is a market research firm that aggregates data for their clients on consumer internet usage. In exchange for downloading their software and taking their surveys, you earn points that can be cashed in for rewards & giftcards and get entries into their prize drawings. They also occasionally send out surveys that will provide you with cash or giftcards for participating. They never sell your personal info to anyone else & have a strict privacy policy.
If you’re in the US, you can get a free sample of Arm & Hammer’s baking soda toothpaste. Just click on “oral hygiene”, fill in your info and wait for the toothpaste to show up at your door!
I’ve actually used this toothpaste before and love it. Love all baking soda toothpastes actually.
