Mom Makes Money from Home!

Can You Really Make Money Doing Paid Surveys?

2008-07-11T12:01:00.008-05:00

Everybody on the web says you can make money doing paid surveys...

You can make money taking surveys... but not very much! It may have been true at one time that survey companies paid out nice amounts, but with the high volume of people signing up for these programs, most companies have switched to a points or sweepstakes reward format. In other words, when you complete a survey, you are awarded points that can be accumulated and used towards various prizes and/or you are entered in a weekly or monthly sweepstakes-type drawing. Keep in mind that it takes A LOT of points to get anything at all.

In general, I have found that it doesn't really pay off to participate in survey programs. Let me give you a typical scenario...

You keep seeing offers to make money with surveys online and decide to try it out. You do a search, come up with a list, and sign up with several companies. Hopefully, you learned from your internet search not to sign up with any company asking for payment to join. And if you were smart, you opened a new email account to use for this little venture.

It's fun at first, but you keep wondering when you'll get offers for cash reward surveys instead of just points and sweepstakes entries. Also, you spend a lot of time answering preliminary questions, just to find out that you don't actually qualify for the real survey! You're getting a little tired of wasting your time and your new email account has filled up so much that you can't tell which emails are from the actual companies you signed up with and which are spam (most are spam). You get fed up and say "Forget it!!" having wasted a lot of time only to earn less than $10 a month (and that's if you were lucky enough to get cash paying offers!).

This is the reality of what happens when you sign up with survey companies. A bit disappointing, isn't it? The above scenario is what happened to me, but I've heard the same story from others as well. If you're reading blogs about surveys, most likely you will end up doing them anyway, so let me pass on a few pointers I've learned along the way.

Do NOT sign up with Greenfield! It is a complete waste of time. I've never met anyone online who actually qualified for any of their cash paying surveys. They send you emails pretty much every day but they all require those preliminary questions, which can take you 15 minutes or more to complete! And then you don't qualify...
As mentioned above, do NOT sign up with any company that wants YOU to pay THEM. Legitimate marketing companies do not charge you to join them. Anyone wanting you to pay will most likely just be giving you a list of those legitimate companies- a list you could have found yourself with some help from any search engine. Plus, the accompanying "reviews" that come with these lists for good survey sites are usually just bait to lure you through their affiliate links and make them even more money.
Open a new email account to deal with all the survey offers. You'll probably be getting a lot of spam with all those offers and you don't want them cluttering up your real email account
Do NOT sign up if you don't have a lot of free time! Surveys usually take more than a few minutes to complete. At least the paying ones do.
Do NOT expect to make a lot of money doing this! Because you won't. Don't expect more that $10 or so per month, total.

This being said, surveys can be fun sometimes. http://www.iceboxadvisors.com/ has surveys that ask for opinions on products that big name companies are considering putting out. My last survey was about new frozen food appetizers. Another one was about new varieties of a popular peanut butter & chocolate candy. You can earn a dollar here and there with Ice Box Advisors, but the surveys are infrequent. Just so you know, there is not an affiliate program, so I'm not motivated in a monetary way to recommend them. This is just one of the more interesting programs that I'm in.

Another one I like is http://www.your2cents.com/. Again, I am NOT an affiliate. I receive a few surveys each month from them and they pay between $1 and $5 each. It's not one of those waste of time companies like Greenfield, either. I actually qualify for the surveys they send me!

A fun program for your children is http://www.kidzeyes.com/. Sign your kids up and they will earn points that can be redeemed for cash. They are also entered in drawings for fun prizes like video game consoles and MP3 players. I have heard of other people being sent samples to try at home (Nesquick, waterproof disposable camcorder, dried apple chips) but so far we've only been offered surveys. My son is 8 years old and he enjoys doing them.

I'd like to say a few words here about Pinecone Research. When I was looking for good companies to sign up with, I found a lot of forum posts about Pinecone Research. This company was reputed to pay very well (at least $5 per survey, sometimes more) but was very hard to join. You could not just go to their website and enroll. You had to be on the lookout for one of their elusive banner ads to pop up on different sites and follow that link. Very mysterious, huh? There were actually sites giving updates about where the banners where spotted and how long they were up!

Unfortunately, Pinecone Research is no longer paying $5 a survey. It is now $2. And they will drop you like a hot potato if you don't log into their site on a regular basis OR if you fail to respond to one of their emails. I happened across a banner ad, signed up, made $2, then decided it wasn't worth the hassle...

To sum up, yes, you can make a few bucks from surveys, but not much. You need to decide if it's worth the effort. Be very selective deciding which companies to go with. Don't pay to sign up with ANY company. Don't join them all! Doing so will just leave you the frustrated owner of a spam stuffed emailbox. Do your research and don't bother with companies that only offer sweepstakes entries or points for prizes (not cash).

I hope this post has helped you learn a little more about making money doing paid surveys.

How Can I Use Viral Marketing To Make Money Online?

2008-07-09T00:28:00.003-05:00

What the heck is "viral marketing" and how can I use it to make money online?

Whatis.com defines viral marketing as "any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect." In other words, someone tells a few people about a certain subject (usually a product or service) and hopefully they will find it interesting enough to tell other people about it, too. Think of viral marketing as a kind of chain letter, but without the usual threat of doom for not passing it along.

In order to take advantage of viral marketing, first of all you need to have something to sell. There are several options. The most cost effective method is to create your own product or service. Ebooks are ideal. Consider a topic you already know quite a bit about. The subject can be as broad as "Tropical Fish Care," or as specific as "How To Breed Albino Bushy-Nosed Plecos" (targeting a specific audience is called "niche marketing," by the way).

Once you have your product, you will need to sell it. There are many ways to go about doing this. One way is to sell it yourself. Set up your own website and start your viral marketing campaign! You can also find people who will be willing to sell your product for you. They are called affiliates. There's a lot of free info on the web that can give you ideas and tools to help you market your product or find affiliates. Here's a good source.

But what if you can't (or don't want to) write your own ebook? Don't worry- you can get "resale rights" to ebooks other people have written and sell them as your own! It's sometimes called re-branding. Again, there's a lot of info out there on how to do this.

Another way to use viral marketing is to become an affiliate and sell someone else's product. You usually earn a percentage of any sale you bring in. There's a vast range of products you can be an affiliate for. These include "real" products (like books, make-up, vitamins, etc.), services (such as mentoring new business owners or rookie stock traders), and information products (ebooks).

I decided to give viral marketing a try after reading Harvey Segal's free ebook The Ultimate SuperTip.

I'd like to point out that this entire post is my own original writing- a summation of information I've been researching on the web- not a "cut and paste" blurb from an affiliate sales guide.

I read the ebook and chose to sign up after doing A LOT of Google searches to make sure it wasn't a scam. I was really surprised that I never found a single negative comment about Supertips! I invite you to do your own search. All I could find were positive remarks.

Harvey Segal is considered to be a very successful internet marketing guru. He is particularly well known for his work with ClickBank and for his "SuperTips" ebooks. He sells several other ebook titles dealing with different aspects of internet marketing, but this one is FREE.

The Supertip book contains a lot of additional information about the topics I've mentioned in this post, but the most interesting part is the famous "Chapter 5." This is where it's explained that the book itself is a prime example of viral marketing. It also tells you how to join the affiliate program which pays 100%. Pretty cool idea, huh? Just read the free ebook to see how it works!

Once I saw that there were no red flags indicating a scam, I wanted to find out just how much money people are actually making with this. I did more Google searches and the range I found was between $50 and $600 a month. In other words, it probably won't make you stinking rich, but it can bring in some extra cash. It's small amounts, but continuous income of any kind is certainly a good thing!

Even if you're not interested in signing up, it's worth a read for all the internet marketing information. No personal information is required to download the ebook. You're not even asked for your email address so there's no worry about getting put on some annoying spam mailing list. And hey, you can't beat free!

Reading The Ultimate SuperTip is a great way to learn about making money from home using viral marketing!

How Do I Make Money From Home?

2008-07-08T16:28:00.003-05:00

Let me count the ways...

Do a Google search for "make money from home" and you will find thousands of listings- mainly for people wanting you to make them money! There ARE legitimate ways to bring in some cash from the privacy of your own home but they are seriously outnumbered by scams and schemes. Here's just a short list of some of the money-making ideas I've come across on the web:

affiliate programs
blogs
paid surveys and secret shopping
sweepstakes and contests
writing articles for pay
ebooks (writing and/or selling them)
viral marketing
ebay sales
"real" jobs- telecommuting, freelancing, etc
"get rich quick" schemes
home businesses

Some of these can give you a real income, others... not so much! I've tried several of these methods and I'll be sharing my experiences in upcoming posts.

But I'll tell you now- there really are ways to make money from home!

Mom Makes Money From Home!

2008-07-07T14:58:00.004-05:00

Welcome to Mom Makes Money from Home!

The purpose of this blog is to give readers new ideas about ways to make money from home on the computer and to give feedback about things I have tried online to bring in some extra cash. I will let you know what works for me and more importatntly, what does NOT.

I've been a stay at home mom for three years. It's been great up until now, but times are getting tougher (don't even get me started on gas prices...) so I need to find ways to bring in more money for my family. I bet you do, too!

I hope you visit often. ^_^