Take a minute and ask yourself how you prefer to teach things to other people. It often has a lot to do with how you learn (we tend to teach people in the same fashion that we learned a skill). Do you like to read and write instructions? Or do you prefer to listen to someone explain how to do it? Maybe you're the type of person who can't grasp a concept unless someone shows it to you. You're probably most comfortable teaching in the same way. Some people are able to teach well in print and on video, some are really good at only one. Some people are awful at one or the other method.
Here's the good news: no matter how you communicate, you can share your skills, knowledge, or learned opinions on Bukisa, and make money doing it.
At Bukisa, you get paid for traffic to your content on an earnings per thousand ("EPM") basis, so your income is determined by the popularity of what you create. But here's the really cool thing: you can post slideshows, video, audio, or regular old articles about whatever you want. So things that you used to post on YouTube (making Google rich in the process) you can move to Bukisa and get a slice of the action. Podcasts and audio that you didn't have a home for are now folded in as well. And you can even upload slideshows to Bukisa and get paid for whatever traffic they generate. As of this writing, the "Bukisa Index" is 3.45 - so you earn $3.45 for every 1000 hits on your content. That's already pretty unique - most sites will share per-click revenue, but will not reward you only for views.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Two Top-Earning Browser Toolbars
The battle for hearts and eyeballs is heating up, and search is no exception. There are a variety of ways to generate income from searches, but the biggest tool is the advertising that they can place around search results. There are ways for regular joes to capture some of that advertising value. Two of them are reviewed here: SwagBucks and The Bar.
As you search using the Swagbucks toolbar, you will randomly win Swagbucks, most often one at a time, but during special time periods you could earn up to 50. Swagbucks searches Google and Ask.com, but inserts its own search advertising in the results. Because the user base determines the value of SwagBucks advertising products, they're driven to give good incentives to users to download and search via the toolbar.
SwagBucks doesn't stop there - they have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter, and use these service to advertise special "Swag Codes" which can earn extra SwagBucks. And they have a referral program that allows current users to earn up to 100 SwagBucks from each person they refer to the Toolbar. (The link above is one such referral link.) If you like the service and tell your friends, they will be adding to your SwagBucks balance every time they win SwagBucks from a search result.
SwagBucks is very responsible with your contact information. I have not encountered any spam in my inbox or on Facebook or Twitter. They are committed to customer service, and the toolbar is attractive and functional. One great feature is that you can highlight text on a web page and it instantly fills into the search box on the toolbar. Also (at least with Firefox), any search string or incompletely-typed URL that you enter into the address bar is sent to SwagBucks as a search.
If you're looking for excellent search results, and great rewards for searching, SwagBucks might be the way to go.
Four tenths of a cent is not that exciting, but The Bar has devised a way to multiply your earnings - it pays you that same $0.004 for clicks from your friends, and their friends, and so forth, all the way to the famous "six degrees of separation." Depending on how motivated your referrals are, this can add up pretty quickly. When you consider that 1000 clicks is $4.00, it is easy to see how inviting tons and tons of people to this opportunity is an easy way to make some money on the web.
The Bar understands that friend networks of this magnitude are rare, so they offer another exciting opportunity as well - you can offer the bar to any charity, school group, or other organization that is looking for fundraising opportunities. The organization gets a dollar-for-dollar match on all of the activity generated by the members of its referral group. Because of the scale of organization mailing lists, The Bar could become a significant source of donations, just by harnessing the web activity of people.
The Bar has some interesting quirks, including currently running "training" ads that are not paid by advertisers. They're clearly trying to develop an advertiser base. But there's nothing shady or inappropriate. They do collect more demographic information than one normally has to give away, but they aggregate all that data - no user contact information is shared, and ads are delivered based on the user's membership in a specific demographic category. The downside is that your individual earning ability is tiny. However, as a fundraising opportunity (or if you have a million friends!), there is serious income potential inherent in your network.
SwagBucks
SwagBucks bills itself as "the Internet's Premier Currency," and they're not far wrong - by my calculations you can get as much as $0.50 per SwagBuck earned, depending on the value of SwagBucks at the time. The fact that the SwagBucks team understands that they should track the value of their currency is already a very good sign. I should point out that you can purchase a limited and rotating selection of mp3 singles for a SwagBuck, so in that case you're getting what is normally a $0.99 value. Also, many retailers are offering $5.00 gift cards for 5 SwagBucks. Bigger prizes fluctuate more, though, based on a variety of conditions.As you search using the Swagbucks toolbar, you will randomly win Swagbucks, most often one at a time, but during special time periods you could earn up to 50. Swagbucks searches Google and Ask.com, but inserts its own search advertising in the results. Because the user base determines the value of SwagBucks advertising products, they're driven to give good incentives to users to download and search via the toolbar.
SwagBucks doesn't stop there - they have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter, and use these service to advertise special "Swag Codes" which can earn extra SwagBucks. And they have a referral program that allows current users to earn up to 100 SwagBucks from each person they refer to the Toolbar. (The link above is one such referral link.) If you like the service and tell your friends, they will be adding to your SwagBucks balance every time they win SwagBucks from a search result.
SwagBucks is very responsible with your contact information. I have not encountered any spam in my inbox or on Facebook or Twitter. They are committed to customer service, and the toolbar is attractive and functional. One great feature is that you can highlight text on a web page and it instantly fills into the search box on the toolbar. Also (at least with Firefox), any search string or incompletely-typed URL that you enter into the address bar is sent to SwagBucks as a search.
If you're looking for excellent search results, and great rewards for searching, SwagBucks might be the way to go.
The Bar
The Bar, by Boloto Group, operates on the same premise as SwagBucks, but they reward users for every click of an advertisement from their special ads sidebar. While you're browsing, you can click on the "ER" or "Ads" button, and receive ads from the ER Network that are targeted to the demographic information you provide. The Bar gives you four tenths of a cent ($0.004) for viewing ads, which open in a separate window. The emphasis is on video production, but there are also ads that simply lead you to interesting web pages.Four tenths of a cent is not that exciting, but The Bar has devised a way to multiply your earnings - it pays you that same $0.004 for clicks from your friends, and their friends, and so forth, all the way to the famous "six degrees of separation." Depending on how motivated your referrals are, this can add up pretty quickly. When you consider that 1000 clicks is $4.00, it is easy to see how inviting tons and tons of people to this opportunity is an easy way to make some money on the web.
The Bar understands that friend networks of this magnitude are rare, so they offer another exciting opportunity as well - you can offer the bar to any charity, school group, or other organization that is looking for fundraising opportunities. The organization gets a dollar-for-dollar match on all of the activity generated by the members of its referral group. Because of the scale of organization mailing lists, The Bar could become a significant source of donations, just by harnessing the web activity of people.
The Bar has some interesting quirks, including currently running "training" ads that are not paid by advertisers. They're clearly trying to develop an advertiser base. But there's nothing shady or inappropriate. They do collect more demographic information than one normally has to give away, but they aggregate all that data - no user contact information is shared, and ads are delivered based on the user's membership in a specific demographic category. The downside is that your individual earning ability is tiny. However, as a fundraising opportunity (or if you have a million friends!), there is serious income potential inherent in your network.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Easiest Way to Get Paid Online
I'm going to let you in on a little secret - I love Twitter.
I love it like "ten thousand tweets and counting" love it. I love it for the conversation, for the amazing things I learn, and for the community of friends that I've built.
I was shocked when I went on Magpie recently and learned that my main Twitter account could make me an estimated $250 per month, just by inserting ads into my timeline. That's not bad for doing something I'd be doing anyway.
And Magpie isn't the only service, either. Both TweetBucks and Sponsored Tweets offer similar services. TweetBucks is basically a one-stop shop for affiliate links for a whole bunch of merchants. You shorten and tweet a link from one of those merchants, and you'll get a commission on the sale. Sponsored Tweets is more on the Magpie model, with straight-up ads from merchants and companies trying to get the word out.
There are two quick ways to make yourself attractive to these services. First, if you are passionate about a particular topic or cluster of topics, you can start a Twitter account that is specific to that topic. (Starting an account about how much you love the Donald Trump MLM does not count!) Then, you can select some merchants that you're going to talk about that fit with your interests. As people follow you (because they're interested in what you're interested in), they will click on both your commercial and noncommercial links with relatively equal frequency. You can disclose when a link makes you money (and you should do this), and so long as the number of "ads" doesn't seem ridiculous, you will not lose followers. Then, when you've got a decent following and an established track record of tweeting about your topic, you can register for Magpie or Sponsored Tweets (or both) and have a good chance of attracting ads in your interest area. Now, if your interest area is "stuff that Proust ate besides cookies," you might not attract many advertisers. But if you're interested in things that other consumers are interested in, you'll probably find some matches.
The other way to make Twitter ad networks interested is to grow an organic base of followers who are just interested in you and your opinions. This is less attractive to advertisers, because if you're like me, you tweet about a lot of different stuff (the channel is not narrowly focused, so advertisers aren't sure what they're getting). But, if you have a nice base of followers and you tweet with sufficient frequency, you can still make the most of seasonal shopping and other events that happen for everyone. And, like my example shows, there's still a chance to make some decent money with just a boring old Twitter account.
I love it like "ten thousand tweets and counting" love it. I love it for the conversation, for the amazing things I learn, and for the community of friends that I've built.
I was shocked when I went on Magpie recently and learned that my main Twitter account could make me an estimated $250 per month, just by inserting ads into my timeline. That's not bad for doing something I'd be doing anyway.
And Magpie isn't the only service, either. Both TweetBucks and Sponsored Tweets offer similar services. TweetBucks is basically a one-stop shop for affiliate links for a whole bunch of merchants. You shorten and tweet a link from one of those merchants, and you'll get a commission on the sale. Sponsored Tweets is more on the Magpie model, with straight-up ads from merchants and companies trying to get the word out.
There are two quick ways to make yourself attractive to these services. First, if you are passionate about a particular topic or cluster of topics, you can start a Twitter account that is specific to that topic. (Starting an account about how much you love the Donald Trump MLM does not count!) Then, you can select some merchants that you're going to talk about that fit with your interests. As people follow you (because they're interested in what you're interested in), they will click on both your commercial and noncommercial links with relatively equal frequency. You can disclose when a link makes you money (and you should do this), and so long as the number of "ads" doesn't seem ridiculous, you will not lose followers. Then, when you've got a decent following and an established track record of tweeting about your topic, you can register for Magpie or Sponsored Tweets (or both) and have a good chance of attracting ads in your interest area. Now, if your interest area is "stuff that Proust ate besides cookies," you might not attract many advertisers. But if you're interested in things that other consumers are interested in, you'll probably find some matches.
The other way to make Twitter ad networks interested is to grow an organic base of followers who are just interested in you and your opinions. This is less attractive to advertisers, because if you're like me, you tweet about a lot of different stuff (the channel is not narrowly focused, so advertisers aren't sure what they're getting). But, if you have a nice base of followers and you tweet with sufficient frequency, you can still make the most of seasonal shopping and other events that happen for everyone. And, like my example shows, there's still a chance to make some decent money with just a boring old Twitter account.
Welcome to Surfing Pays!
I just got done with a massive project of surveying all the different ways that you can make money just by surfing, searching, and using the web as you do every day. I thought it might be cool to share my results, so that's what this blog is about.
Looking forward to breaking down the best of the best in paid surfing opportunities with you! Feel free to contact me with any tips you might have.
Looking forward to breaking down the best of the best in paid surfing opportunities with you! Feel free to contact me with any tips you might have.
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