Day 23: Five Strategies for Working Online

There are many different ways to make money online, but whichever you decide to pursue will require some degree of strategy. No matter how optimistic you are to start out, you'll go nowhere if you don't have a plan or don't know how to space out your time and money correctly. Here are some strategies I have found to be useful:

1. If you can multitask, do. Don't overload yourself or take more than you can handle, but many PTC sites will allow you to have something else on the screen at the same time as the advertisement and still give you credit. Even if it doesn't, try to find other things you can do. Do you have homework? Are you working on a craft or manual project? Then have your computer at hand, running through ads while you get something else accomplished.
2. Budget time and money. If you don't, you'll lose it all. Decide before getting involved how many hours or minutes a day you want to devote to this project, and how much money you're willing to invest in it. It's fine if your initial strategy won't work out; you can always change it. But it is important to have something to refer to so that you don't get carried away.
3. Have patience. You won't be an Internet millionaire overnight, no matter what you put into it. Likely it will take months or even years before the income starts paying off, and you need to be willing to work on it steadily until then.
4. Look at all the options. There's always something better out there. With so many programs available easily online, take your time in deciding what's for you. Join a few sites and work on them all at first, and then after a couple weeks see which one is making money. I've already cashed out two checks from Clixsense, and I'm not even close on the other sites. What does that tell me?
5. Set standards. How desperate are you for cash? Are you honestly willing to be a telemarketer or send spam mail to make a few dollars, or do you want to keep your dignity and find other means? There's no right or wrong answer, here, but it's a good idea to know where you stand.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter for more updates and tips or check Clixsense out for yourself if you want to start making your own Internet money!

Day 20.1: It's in the Reputation

I was looking around for the best data entry jobs available yesterday, frustrated at how many scams were out there but still hopeful that there had to be something legitimate and awesome. I've done these searches practically every day since I started this experiment, but yesterday I finally decided to take a different route: I would search according to reputation. I was still on that e-mail processing kick, so for a start I typed in "earn money processing e-mails proof," and that changed everything. Many of the sites that had been on the top of the list suddenly disappeared, and instead I found some others, lesser known, that actually offered proof of their payments.

My biggest find actually wasn't in the area of e-mail processing or data entry at all, but rather a list of the top twenty PTC and PTR (paid to read) sites. Not the same Neobux and Clixsense that I already know about, but sites that actually pay dollars. Dollars? Per click? Honestly, I hadn't even thought there was such a thing. There's a catch, of course--the minimum payout for some of these sites could be as high as $1000, so you can't expect to be cashing out a check every week or two. Anyway, I joined the sites and will let you know how they go. Currently I am compiling a list to describe them that I will share probably today or tomorrow.

I learned a lesson in that. You need to look for reputation instead of claims. Is there any proof of the payments? Are there any forums where people talk about their personal experiences? By the way, that's also how I discovered Instant Cash Sweepstakes, a short survey site which I visit several times a day. It appears that I might have two referrals on there, though I can't say for certain yet. If you are one and you're reading this, thank-you!

I still recommend Clixsense over everything else so far--it's been dependable, consistent, and at the rate I'm going I should be able to cash out $8-10 every week without upgrading. Not to mention, it's the only site that's actually paid me since I started this experiment.

Please follow me on Twitter for updates and tips!

Day 19.1: Data Entry

Yesterday, as I continued my ongoing exploration of ways to make money online, something caught my attention: get paid to process e-mails. This was good pay, too--$15-25 for every e-mail, as many as you want. You're getting serious pay for copying and pasting and then clicking send! Of course, a deal that good is also likely a scam, so I began my research. Sure enough, you have to pay $15-25 just to sign up for one of these jobs, and I found reviews saying that they were pure scams. Looking closely, you can even see on the sites themselves that whoever wrote it does not know English very well and did not bother to put a lot of work into putting the site together. Very fishy! But is there really a job like that? Can you get paid money for processing e-mails without having to pay for it first?

It took some searching before I could figure out just what I was looking for: an online data entry job. "Data entry" encompasses a lot of miscellaneous jobs, such as processing e-mails, taking surveys, and filling out forms. It doesn't sound as glamourous as "Get paid to copy and paste!" but data entry jobs are very real, and there are a lot of legitimate countries that will pay for you to assist in small tasks. However, there are also a lot of scams that claim to be good data entry companies. How can you tell the difference?

• You shouldn't have to pay up front. If they're really going to pay you, then why do they need your money?
• Look at the site. Does it feel legitimate and professional? Can you find all of the answers to any questions you have, and is it free of typos and bad grammar?
• Ask why they need you. Is it a job that they really need humans to do, or is there a computer service that could do the same thing for less? If they really just need you to copy and paste e-mails, why don't they just use an auto-responder instead?

If you want to know for sure what some good companies are, I've joined a few that have proven to be legitimate. Amazon Turk, while not exclusively a data entry company, does include a lot of that same work. Different employers have different reputations, but in my experience I've always gotten paid for my work. Protypers.com is another good data entry service. Though the pay is not much, the job is very simple: fill in captchas to help provide options for the visually impaired. 

Lastly, I have recently joined Onlinejobsfree.com, a fabulous organization that provides you with multiple streams of income by doing data entry work. I've only been a member for about a day, and so I can't offer a full report, but it appears to be legitimate and a great option for people who want to earn some cash on the side but don't want to trouble with possible scams.

Hopefully these tips are useful to you, and remember to follow me on Twitter for tips and updates! You can also join me on Clixsense (my best moneymaker so far!) or freeinternetmoney.com.