ALT-2 Getting Paid to take Surveys
Many paid survey sites are scams and many others are not worth the time, but after a bit of research I have found several that are worthy of my recommendation.
One of them, InboxDollars, has made some recent changes that have brought it into the spotlight. The basic format is the same, with $1 paid for a daily survey, cash for WorldWinner games, cash for offers, cash for reading e-mails, and cash back on purchases from sites where many of us shop online anyway. What is new is how they handle referrals. In the past, they offered a $5 commission paid only after each member of your down line actually cashed out the first time. Since the minimum payout is $30, many referrals did not stay with the program long enough to cash out, or, like me, they used their earnings to purchase program upgrades called Gold Memberships. As a result, some of the members, even though they might have been cashing out from time to time, and even with hundreds of referrals in their down line, were not making hundreds of dollars.
Now InboxDollars and its sister site SendEarnings are paying a straight 10% commission. Although I admit that I earned a satisfactory amount from the old InboxDollars, with the recent changes I could be a poster child for "Laughing all the Way to the Bank."
The activity requirement for these programs is not arduous, but do read their guidelines and make sure you are in compliance. One important fact is that in order to get a sign-up bonus, you have to meet the residency requirements. Another is that they can cancel your membership if the paid e-mails they send you are largely ignored or going into your spam folder. Be sure to read their vacation hold policy, too, in order to avoid surprises.
Another desired feature of InboxDollars is that they are now giving active members free referrals though the Gold Membership. Although they stopped selling Gold Memberships last summer, they now give one away with your first cashout. When I bought my first Gold Membership a little over a year ago, things seemed a bit slow, but as of this writing, I just noticed that I picked up over 30 new referrals just in the past week. I cannot be sure which ones were assigned by InboxDollars staff and which resulted from a banner I placed on my blog, but I consider the Gold Membership upgrade to be a valuable resource.
Can you get rich quickly and quit your day job on the earnings from paid survey programs? Don't! But if you use common sense and choose your programs carefully, you can pick up a little extra cash without too much effort and for me learning about this kind of thing is also a fun and interesting hobby.
