Originally I was interested in offering a service converting cassettes to CD's which is still active today, I started blogging in order to create some backlinks to my cassette to CD website. I then got interested in paid blogging and this was briefly very successful before Google stepped in to remove PR from blogs that engaged in providing paid links (what do they think directories do?).
Paid posting alone could net you a several hundred dollars a month in those days, but those that were doing paid posting are now forced to diversify. I have never been keen on 'paid to click' or paid to read' programs as I can't see any real benefit IE.. I wouldn't feel like I was contributing anything for the payment (also the pay sucks...). So my second stream has been paid surveys and I will talk through the schemes that I use or have used and rate them according to my experiences:
Ciao (rated 3/10)- I used to do these surveys and cashed out twice, but I became frustrated by the amount of times I would spend more than ten minutes on a survey only to find I was not eligible for the survey and would not get paid... The annoying thing was that it was always the same type of questions and if they paid any attention to my profile they would know full well that I would not be eligible for the survey - enough about them, I dumped 'em and will not be going back!
PureProfile (rated 7/10) - much better system where you get paid for filling out certain parts of your profile to start with and they use this data to filter the surveys you are sent. Not only this but they pay you a small amount even if you turn out not to be eligible to complete the survey. It may take me a while to reach payout, but the process is painless, no problems so far with PureProfile. My second favourite service at the moment.
dNeero (rated 8/10) - this is a great scheme and likely to payout quicker than other schemes. the surveys are always short and easy to complete occasionally requiring you to sign up for something, but nothing too onerous. They pay you a set fee for the short survey, then you can earn more by posting the survey widget on a blog based on the traffic it receives. Not only that, but you get paid a percentage of the earnings of your referrals. You get a referral when someone joins after clicking on a survey widget on your blog... like the one in the post below this one.. I think it will not be too much longer before I reach payout on this one. Two or three tier referrals are available I think which is a nice passive earner if you can get some fairly active ones...
YouGov (rated 6/10)- The lastest scheme have tried... Like Pureprofile, they pay a small amount regardless of whether you are eligible for the survey and mostly they send surveys which are geared to your profile. Like PureProfile, I think it will take me a quite while to get to payout (hence the lower score), but I have had no problem with this scheme so far...
