In addition to the persuasive power of combining audio and moving pictures, videos currently rank more easily in search engines that static text and pictures, this probably has something to do with Google owning YouTube.

There are a number of production levels that may be used to get into the video directories, in ascending order of complexity:

• Simple text slide-shows with background music, you may be able to find an automatic web page to video tool out there. A couple of online tools that creates nice video montages from your pictures are  One True Media and Animoto.
• Text slide shows with voice narration, adding the human element.
• Screen recordings with voice-over, a good choice for those with a face made for radio or those marketing under multiple pen names. This format is popular for tutorial and webinars. The most popular tool for such productions is Camtasia.
• Mini camcorder talking head videos, a number of successful marketers use a simple $150 Flip camcorder or a webcam for all of their recorders, often candid at your desk presentations (iJustineReviews is a fun example). Seeing that youtube has standardized on Hi Def, it’s probably worth investing in a HD camcorder.
• Quality camcorder productions suitable for broadcast TV, with edits and effects. One recent professional production spoofing viral videos is the Jen Aniston’s Sex Video.

Distributing Your Video

In some cases a video may be played only on the companies web site, although if meant to reach a broader audience or to earn some backlinks to a site it’s best to distribute the video to directories like YouTube. There are a number of similar video sites that will expand your audience. Each video directory has their own submission guidelines, many don’t accept outright advertisements, adding some redeeming qualities to videos, perhaps some instructive or entertainment content can help your videos be accepted.

You can find a slightly dated (2008) list of 186 video sharing sites here.

Automated  Online Video Syndication

Those producing a lot of videos will probably want to use one of the mass distribution services that automate much of the process of submitting videos to multiple sites. TubeMogul provides free syndication to about 28 major video and social sites, they also offer powerful premium video advertising services including pay per video video distribution through media buys that reach 97% of the internet users as well as view analytics.  A paid alternative is TrafficGeyser, the monthly charge is $97/mo after a 1 month trial period, some criticize TrafficGeyser for not supporting some of the more important sites that TubeMogul works with.

Getting on the Air Waves

Big time video marketers capture huge audiences with infomercials aired on paid commercial TV. Some years ago infomercials could be produced on a shoestring, these days they tend to be big budget undertakings.  A low-budget talk show style infomercial may run about $20k, while a high-end production with a 12 person cast and about a week of shooting can total $75k, the Shamwow infomercial produced by the product owner and spokesman Vice cost about $25k. Distribution cost can range from as little as $10-$50 on tiny advertising cable channels, a network station airing may cost $1000-$5000 while a national spot can cost $10,000 per airing. You can get an insider’s view of infomercial production in the CNBC documentary As Seen on TV, here’s a lite tutorial showing the steps in creating and implementing a direct marketing campaign. Spot On Media offers a primer on TV media buys, breaking down the costs to CPM (Cost Per Thousand) their examples range from $0.20 to 0.75 depending on volume, CPM is commonly used in setting the cost of internet banner ads, which are similar TV costs, (remnant CPV popup window ads can be found for as low as $.0.02 CPM).

Low budget TV commercial production services are available Cheap TV Spots creates 30 second spots for $999, FYI Media Services offers 30 second productions for $599 and a few air time placements with 30 seconds costing under $5 and 1/2 hour costing about $35 to $150. Global Vision’s home made looking site offers to create 30 second spots with your provided media for $375, they also provide some insight into the TV time buying process.

Some Direct Response Television resources: The Response Guide Directory of producers, one example all-in-one media production and distribution service is, TVA Productions (Studio City CA). An example call center and fulfillment service for those marketing a typical infomercial product is Moulton Logistics (Van Nuys Ca & South Carolina).  The VisualNet directory lists some 115,000 companies involved in Video and Television production. For those who play it safe, here’s a source of legal forms associated with infomercial production. And finally, one decent book, titled “YouTube® Online Video Marketing for Any Business“, Second Edition, Que, 300 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-4726-6, covers all aspects of creating and promoting a video on Youtube.

Anyone marketing on the internet, particularly those writing ad copy can learn much from the direct marketing companies who have sales figures most of us can only dream of.

Techniques long ago perfected in Infomercials that you may also find in Internet advertisements include:

• Demographic Targeting
• Engaging, Memorial Product Names
• Testimonials
• Up Sells, Side Sell, Down Sells (you could be offered 6 options during an order call)
• Limited supply or time – “We can’t do this all day”
• Calls to Action – “Call Now!”
• Inflated Handling & Shipping Charges

Vince (Shlomi), the new generation pitch man for the Sham Wow and the Slap Chop is more than a pith man, he turned out to be the owner of the Sham Wow, financing the infomercial at a relative shoe-string budget of $25,000 some of the lines in the now famous commercial were off the cuff. He turns out to have had a colorful career as an actor, writer and comedian and former member of Scientology according to wikipedia

Controversial or funny products that appear on broadcast TV program usually  most often being mocked, like the Thigh Master, Snuggy or Shake Weights often end up as hits, thanks to the extra exposure.

Watch and Learn from:, the CNBC Production:

As Seen on TV ; Inside the Infomercial Industry (2009)

It gives us a look at some of the most famous infomercial products, and their pitch men in this 150 Billion dollar industry.

One interviewed insider admitted that shipping and handling prices are market tested, the highest figure accepted by the customers is used.  Billy Mays, the pitch man (who has since succumbed to a head injury that occurred during a plane flight) has made sales in the Billions.

The program indicated that a product test period of 2 weeks determines whether product will be a success or failure, if a product makes it to your TV screen, the odds are it’s already a proven winner. The highest cost fctor is advertising, not the product production cost, for a product to be profitable it need to sell for twice the advertising cost.

Money Is Fun.

Sorry, no time for South Park quality animation.

You can view the entire Bezos interview, including brief moments of sanity and the Kindle II on Comedy Central.

Jason Fladlien breaks out in laughter in some of his instructional videos, (don’t recall which) It’s good to enjoy your work.

Chad Hamzeh although relatively new to internet marketing, has been quite successful claiming to have made $350,000 gross in 13 months, which is pretty much the length of his CPA career. No doubt the quick success has to do with his driven, over achiever nature, he was a pro MMA fighter with an 18 fight record before getting into marketing. (There seem to be some parallels with Tim Ferris of The 4 Hour Work Week, who won a kickboxing tournament employing strategy in which he re-gained 28 pounds in the 24 hours following the weigh in.) Chad, who is a Ferris fan also demonstrates his smarts and solid communication skills in this course.

In the Conversion Campus course Chad shares in a forthright manner, his first hand experience with what actually works for him in CPA , (let’s hope he doesn’t get too flashy in the future) , he only recommends resources and strategies that he has had success with, he shares all the details of one example campaign that earned him $2440 in 7 Days. This course doesn’t attempt to teach the basics, he concentrates on insights you can’t gain from reading a manual. The biggest part of the course focuses on the different paid traffic sources ranging from $10 a day Pay Per Click to $100,000 a month media buys. While all the CPA courses emphasize the importance of getting a 24 hour out clause written into a media insertion order, Chad goes on to detail several other important options of an insertion order. Other traffic sources discussed include social media, mainly Facebook, direct site banner placement and CPV. Chad ranks the top 4 CPA networks he works with, but provides a list of some 100 others. He also discusses split testing and tracking, detailing the advantages of the pay per use tracker he uses, which adds a $0.04 to $0.11 CPM cost to your traffic.

You can get a feel for his style by viewing a free 1 hour introduction to the course, in which he provides useful ppc traffic information, and shows the step by step setup of an early  CPA campaign, While I can’t recommend that a beginner start with CPA marketing, (you can blow a lot of money before getting the hang of it, some lost big money following one less then authentic course), there’s enough information on moderate volume paid traffic, like a basic affiliate website might need, to make the course worthwhile for most marketers.

I’ll just provide you the link to the Chad Hamzeh site, where you can sign in to an (unverified) email submission form to get access to the prequel video, clicking the banner currently takes you to the $47 WSO, but expect it to take you to the fancy wrapped higher priced version shortly.

11/2010

Zynga, Owners of Farmville and Mafia Wars

Succeeds in Shutting Down Some 20 Game Cheat Sheet Sellers

First filing suit against numerous strategy book / cheat suppliers, primarily selling through Clickbank, on Feb 2010, the sites named in the suit included:

Mafiawarsblueprint.com, Farmvillesecrets.com,  Rollercoasterkingdomsecrets.com, Fishvillesecret.com  Fvsecrets.com, Mafiawarswizard.com, Mafiawarscheater.com, Farmvillewizard.com, Farmwizard.com,  Farmvillemillionaire.com, Farm-Expert.com, Cafeworldguide.us, Mafiawarsannihilation.com, Farmvillegamecheats.com, Mafiawarsblueprint.com, Farmvillesecrets.com,  Fvsecrets.com, Rollercoasterkingdomsecrets.com, Cafeworlddomination.com, Fishvillesecret.com, Farmvillemillionaire.com, Farm-Expert.com

It appears that default judgments and voluntary dismissals occurring through Nov. 2010 seem to have caused the sites to be shut down, evidently it’s about trademark &  copyright infringement, presumably game cheats can shorten the total play time, lowering their revenue.

This is tough news for hundreds of affiliates promoting these products. Zynga sussed out the true names of some of the Click-bank operators using ‘stage names’ in their business, probably not the best time to come out.

Zynga VP, Bill Mooney was a trial lawyer for 5 years, presumably he masterminded the actions, he’s had an interesting background, writing for TV programs and animations before joining Zynga.

Zynga is no stranger to lawsuits, a class action lawsuit was brought against them and Facebook in late 2009 for facilitating scam product offers through Zwinky toolbar installations.

You can view a presentation in which Zynga founder Mark Pinkus admitted using shady methods to keep the doors open. At about 10:40 of the video following is said:

“I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it.”

This is just one individual’s clumsy attempt to summarize the case,  follow the links above for more a more authoritative accounting of events.

11/05/2010

FTC Gets $3.6 Million Judgment Against Companies that Debited Money from Bank Accounts Without Permission

A 2007 complaint filed by the FTC and seven states alleges that Your Money Access, LLC and its subsidiary, YMA Company, LLC,  processed unauthorized debits on behalf of deceptive telemarketers and Internet-based schemes that were violating the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule and state consumer protection laws.

The companies provided access to the banking system and the means to extract money from consumers’ bank accounts, a critical role in such schemes. The FTC alleged that in many instances the merchants either sent consumers relatively worthless items or completely failed to deliver the promised products or services.

To file a complaint with the FTC, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357)

Those with no special technical skills can make honest money writing short articles to help feed the insatiable demand for fresh material needed by webmasters to maintain search engine raking. Working as freelance contractors can pay about $2 for rewriting existing material and $4 to $10+ for original 450 word articles written order. Most people pick up work at freelance connection sites, like elance, or through article writing brokerages.

Essential skills include fast accurate typing skills, to make decent money you should be able to knock out a pack of 10 articles in a day. An ability to artfully incorporate specified key word phrases as well as producing engaging magazine quality copy will help secure the better paying contracts. A downside of working on the internet is you are a member of a world wide pool of competing talent, many residing in 3rd world countries with low costs of living.  Those with a 1st language mastery of American English grammar and culture should emphasize these advantages in their resume.

Here are a coupe of general writer resource sites that should help you get oriented:

PoWar Writing Career Center be sure to check out their Jobs Section.

The Burry Man Writers Center resources for a worldwide community of writers (with an international flair)

About Freelance Writing .com is a freelancer blog

Writing Job Brokers who will provide you assignments

Blog Posts for Sale is a small writing broker, any one have experience with them?

Here’s a review of 26 sites that pay for blog posts

One pitfall writers have to be aware of are bid requests that require sample material, these ban be bogus offers designed to collect dozens of samples for use without compensation. One broker who’s practices have been questioned is contentcurrent a broker claiming  a 1000+ writer force, requests a full 500 page article sample as part of the application process, this mini review and it’s comments criticize the operation.

The Paid to Forum Post community, a sister site of  contentcurrent, non-the-less may be worth a visit.

Freelance Connection Sites with a emphasis on writing

odesk is a major general freelance site with some 2000+ writing jobs

Get a Freelancer another general freelance site listing 1500+ writer jobs

Sunoasis Jobs for Writers, Editors, and Copywriters

Writing Careers ,com amasses some 1500+ freelance writer jobs from various sites.

FreelanceWriting.com a writing job news aggregator.

Other Methods to Write for Money

AssociatedContent pays about $4 for quality articles of your choice, there are residual benefits for popular articles.

DayTipper reportedly pays $3 for each published tip.

A way to create a little residual income is to create a revenue generating blog, there are numerous free hosts that split the advertising income, here are 30 Adsense Revenue Sharing Sites for Residual Income and Link Building.
If you make some headway doing freelance work, you might consider some course material…

One course I liked, the Freelance Article Writing Secrets Course by Kenneth Rearden containing  5 1/2 hours of recording showing how to build a business and multiply your returns, unfortunately seems to be out of print.

Some commercial writers resources

I’ll leave it to you to evaluate these more affordable selections (found on affiliate sites)

Overnight Writing Income – Hands Down The Best Guide For Beginners.

You Can Make Money Writing – Making Money Online With Simple Articles That Almost Anyone Can Write

Writing Rituals For Marketing Writers & Copywriters -  Teaching how to maintain a writers mindset.

Get Paid To Write On The Internet - How To Get Paid With Very Little Or No Experience!

Write Where The Money Is – Fire Up Your Income As A Freelance Writer

Other forms of competition article writes face include private label rights (PLR) packages of pre-written articles,  some of these web site start kits authored by writing crews in India, are very inexpensive, there are compilations of 80,000 articles sell for pennies an article. Unfortunately, these stock articles do little to improve a web site’s ranking, due to search engines devaluating these unoriginal  “duplicate content” pieces.

Solution to the duplicate content problem include hiring someone to rewrite the articles or automated text re-writer programs, referred to as article spinners. The output of these text manglers is often barely readable gibberish though the latest spinners  intelligent use if thesaurus and grammar rules make more passable text.

Making the Big Bucks

To make a real living one probably has to move beyond piecemeal article assembly. Kenneth Rearden describes making $125 an hour in his article writing business by setting his own site supplying quality customers with premium articles, article packages using labor saving style templates and outsourcing.

Creating your own blog may not provide immediate returns, taking perhaps a year of development and regular article writing to produce a blog that with luck will have a big following that merits decent advertising revenue, from that point you can collect passive income with a moderate upkeep effort.

Highly paid writers do copywriters for marketers, creating engaging persuasive copy for web site sales pages and emails, the big names make thousands for single sales letters that are part of million dollar marketing programs. Frank Kern & Yanik Silver are copywriters who teach their techniques, for a price.

The fake news pages with newspaper like titles report on individuals earning $25 for each posting they make for Google. (even in the golden age of internet money making it was never that easy) To get started one just has to “pay $1.97 or $2.95 for a home worker starter kit”. This low figure gets people to more readily give up their credit card number, only to find they have been billed a $50 to $79.90 monthly membership fee, for which they may get a DVD containing malevolent viruses or information that can be found at no cost on the web.  These scammers have made millions from people who were already facing hard times.  The fine print on the bottom of the sales page the fake news leads to states in part:

Results may vary.  This offer is not endorsed or sponsored by Google or any news organization shown herein.

This scheme employ the standard scam tactics: unrealistic earning claims, fake endorsements, tailored for the readers geographical local,  fake “seen on” news channel references, combined with an audacious mis-representation of Google’s business practices.

The large number of separate entities running slight variations of this scam has made it difficult fo class action lawsuits,  the FTC, or Google to stop. Usually a number of complaints about deceptive billing practices can result in the site’s Merchant Account, ad their ability to process credit cards canceled. Google is going after Pacific WebWorks, a card processing site along with 50 unspecified suspects.

It’s disheartening to see the most powerful company on the web, withe the directive: Do No Evil,  has been unable to stop this abuse of their name and reputation from continuing for more than 3 months.

Google’s blog is warning customers to be wary of the following work-from-home for Google programs with the names: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

Anyone can do business with Google starting with a $5 Adwords account start-up fee, but not as an employee, but as promoter buying advertising space on Google.  the payoff (if any) is typically a moderate percentage profit over the ad cost. The majority of new Adwords buyers loose money at first in this increasingly competitive arena.

A typical fake Work For Google news page

• Update: many of the programs mentioned below have had their  “day in the sun” and may no longer available, See the review of a new bargain priced WSO CPA course “Conversion Campus” going at the moment for $47

There seems to be an “old Boys Club” of elite internet marketing Gurus who got in the game early, the names John Reese, Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, Perry Marshall, Yanik Silver and Brad Anthony Jenkins-Fallon come to mind. Through joint ventures and mutual promotion they have  maintained a mystique surrounding their secret guruish knowledge for which they can charge a premium fee. You have to wonder, if they were not teaching moneymaking, but rather how make recreational web sites.  It’s been suggested in some of the discussion forums that one can learn enough to succeed with a book or 2 along with some time spent in online marketing forums.

One good source of internet business information, including a dizzying library of instructional material is  Stompernet. Their membership fee is, I believe $800/mo with additional conferences and coaching programs available at a higher price. Good news about StomperNet: their Stomper 999 promotion offers a membership for $199/mo that includes access to their library of 1400 training videos.  A couple of their newest products are excluded (SMARTS and Formula 5) and you can bet there are plenty of seminar/coaching opportunities. Check the offer when I checked it out about 10 days after the announcement one could still access 121 sample files from their library and the complete Stomp The Net II package for FREE some of the free files were 1 hour seminars promoting the stomper culture and describing the new tools added to the stomper package. Try the Stomper 999 link here.

Endorsement videos and conference videos I have suggest a large component of their clientele are online store/service operators. Established businesses might easily justify the membership cost, if it yields just a 1 or 2 percent profit improvement.  Stompernet has a stunning library of instructional material available as well as a growing faculty of recognized experts.  Low budget beginners in need of a well rounded education in the basics  can find membership training sites in the $50/month range that might be a worthwhile investment.

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One  program created by a pair of non guru behind the scenes guys, that recently received some attention is the Arbitrage Conspiracy. Citing examples of 6 and 7 figure incomes. the possibilities are intriguing.  This 12 week training program originally started in January 2009 is available? in a canned recorded form for $1997.  I have seen a fair portion of this package and to the extent of my abilities  find it creatable, sharing more of the secrets of the high earners than some of other programs offer.

Wikipedia says; In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets.  The Arbitrage Conspiracy course, taught by a pair of energetic Egypt French Canadians?  Aymen and Emmanuel the course teaches the process of buying keyword targeted pay-per-click advertisements from Google, Yahoo and MSN, and selling the captured advertising leads to cost-per-action advertising networks, making offers requiring visitors to fill in contact information.  This process is more commonly referred by other authorities as PPC to CPA.

A successful campaign for the beginner yields a 10% to 100% return on investment with a 1 month turn around time , established operators with high traffic histories can ngotiate slightly better returns as well as 1 or 2 week payment turnaround times.

The key to making enormous profits in their system’s formula is testing the performance of large numbers of offers using streamlined techniques employing various labor saving tools , and of course a large amount of operating capitol or credit.  The lessons are geared to make students with virtually no technical background into experts in the fairly narrow set of skills the system requires. Their motto is Crank, Ramp and Bank.

The process to achieve their level of income involves trying all all CPA offers in a sort of random testing method. There’s no room in this system for being overly ethical, while not violating the law some of the offers they show as examples, like the Win a $500 gift certificate, just enter your email address offer,  has fine print also requires completing 12 marketing offers and referring a friend who also must also complete the offers.

Postscript:
It would be unrealistic to expect all of their students, including outright novice, would come out ahead in the high risk-high reward approach being taught.  Several complaints were posted on forums by members were were unable to get a refund which were limited to the first 30 days, the guarantee was your money back plus $500 if you were unable to make a profit.  At least one complainant had produced the due diligence records required by the guarantee terms.  Reportedly the membership forum’s “how much did you earn” survey showed 75% lost a considerable amount of money. The were some preliminary announcements of a new 12 week session to start in July 2009, couldn’t confirm this.  Here are a couple of critical discussions of the program: Warrior Forum Review, The Truth about Aymen, arbitrageconspiracysucks.com, arbitrageconspiracydiary.

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Another course teaching PPC to CPA technique is CPA Ninja (Matt likes to call it The Baddest Assed CPA Course EVER), created by Matt Trainer and Marty Rozmanith this product sells fo $997. ( It is a canned series of informal broad brush  lessons while the Arbitrage Conspiracy 12 week series was more of a class like setting with weekly assignments and live webinar sessions.) both of these programs suggest the option of testing cpa offers with direct ppc links, switching the winning offers to intermediate pages with higher google quality scores in order to lower ppc costs.  The plans differ in the landing page design.

• While Arbitrage Conspiracy discusses using copy-paste i-frame code, a violation of rules google seems to tolerate, CPA Ninja describes the use of WordPress Direct BLOGs to supply quality landing pages without programming.
• While Arbitrage Conspiracy almost exclusively talks about using ppc traffic, CPA Ninja considers ppc the least desirable of 3 traffic sources, Matt citing Google in particular as a nightmare.  User installed adware (evil stuff) providing url targeting cpv/ppv popup ads are Matt’s 2nd favorite source, his favorite traffic source are media buys “an unlimited traffic source”  including banners, adsense like text insertions and offline TV, Radio and Print ads. Media buys start at $5000 but more commonly bought in $10,000 blocks.   That calls for a steady hand.

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Annother, more sober look at the heady world of PPC marketing is provided by Gauher Chaudhry’s Pay Per Click Formula 2. He’s another Canadian, but sounds like a regular guy. In his more professional instructional style, he gives a thorough overview of the major PPC providers, as well as a quick look at a dozen other paid advertising providers, with insightful comments on each  of them. This pachage covers a broader range of subjects than the previous packages described, he describes the various free traffic techniques in addition to PPC and other paid traffic,  as well as describing a larger number of tools. While some of the others mentioned here as well as Gauher consider SpyFu an essential tool for quickly becoming competitive, Gauher’s magic bullet is TrafficRegenerator, a software service that carries the exit popup strategies to a new level, sending visitors to additional offers when it’s anticipated they are about to leave, this process can be repeated more than once, wringing out the maximum profit from each paid visit. His 18 modules containing close to 200 videos and ongoing webinars provide a solid foundation as well as advanced training in select areas. Produced roughly at the same time as the Arbitrage Conspiracy, Gauher contrasts his point of view to ‘others’ in the field more than once. His more conservative approach to CPA offer discovery suggests that 3 out of 10 offers tested will turn out to be winners.

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Eben Pagan who made his first internet fortune with his dating strategy courses taught by his psudonyme David De Angelo, offers seminars and coaching priced in $5k to $10k range, he recently made aviailable The Guru Mastermind Home Study Course, a set of live seminar recordings covering information product marketing selling for $2000. This program is now closed, but you can get a feel for his style and have a look at some lengthy program excerpt videos he has retained in the blog.

]]> http://workhomebusiness.org/high-end-training-for-the-well-funded-career-change/feed/ 0 http://workhomebusiness.org/starting-making-money-with-a-get-paid-to-service/ http://workhomebusiness.org/starting-making-money-with-a-get-paid-to-service/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:21:18 +0000 admin http://workhomebusiness.org/?p=252

You won’t get rich, but if your 13 years or older, with no special skills, you can make a little recreation money in exchange for sharing your contact information with marketing companies.  Always hungry to find new potential customers, companies offer a bounty for new customer leads, some paid “find new customer” services will share their bounty with you, the new customer. One of the better known services is CashCrate.com.  For starters they will pay you $1 for filling in your detailed profile. Even the under 18 crowd limited to only free offers and surveys can exceed the minimum $20 monthly payout,  doing surveys for 50 cents a pop.  If you are at a point where every dollar counts, it may be worth giving up some anonymity to the marketeers.

One precaution you have to take before joining CashCrate.com, get a ‘disposable’ email address to which you will have the various advertisements (junk mail) will be sent to.  DO NOT give out your primary email address.  Google gmail is a popular free email service. Here’s a review of the top 18 free email services.

Although most solicitations will come thouugh email, t’s also best to give out a secondary disposable phone number, if you have one.  Register your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry to stop most telemarketers.

The pay to install toolbars etc., that you are asked to download may not be worthwhile. While not doing anything illegal, some just collect usage statistics, others may add popup window advertisements…most annoying.

GPT (Get Paid To…) sites like CashCrate.com present various activities such as survey taking, game testing or product evaluation as the chores your being paid to perform, while the reality is in most cases, your personal contact information is being collected for a marketing company, with Cash Crate and you sharing the commission for bring them a new prospect.

CashCrate.com also had promotional deals with about 20 major online stores, for example Cash Crate for example members save 5% on your their online Walmart purchases.

For Credit Card Owners Who Want to Spend Some to Make Some to Make Some

In addition to the simple lead collection offers, various product trials or sales are offered 18 and over CashCrate.com members who have a credit card.  Some of these offers can turn out to be a good deal. Products offered in TV infomercials are sold on the internet as well, in place of paying for TV air time, web site operators are pain a commission for finding new customers

Does the Shamwow guy have you considering a purchase? buy a set of ShamWow towels through CashCrate.com and you will receive a $6 rebate from Cash Crate. (bear in mind that like the typical infomercial product, the $19.95 (+S&H) product actually ends up totaling  $32.90 ($19.95 + $7.95 + $5.00 for separate handling of purchase and bonus)

Asleep at the wheel exploits: Like the mail in rebates that have become popular with the retail stores, many of the offers you will encounter have a an initial low trial/sample charge that will be followed by higher charges later, if like the rebates, human nature has causes you to forget to mail in the rebate or cancel the product trial.  The marketers come out ahead by playing the odds that many customers will slip up, DON’T be one of them. Keep good records, mark those trial end deadlines on your calendar.

You can get the same Video Professor, sample DVD for a $6.95 shipping fee offered in te infomercials, and receive a $25 kick back from Cash Crate, who is getting a finders fee considerably larger than the $6.95 you are paying for the sample. Bear in mind that like the old Columbia Record Club offers, this sample is setting you up for a continuity program in which your failing to decline the automatic followup charges will result in your being charged full price for the sample DVD,  followed by a larger DVD bundle.

Read the fine print in each offer, particularly if a credit card purchase is involved.

The most tricky complicated deals are the various gift offer involving products or gift cards worth $100 to $2000. Before providing them any information, be sure to examine the bottom of the page, most offers detail your requirements to collect the gift there. They all require multiple product offers commitments, some ‘free’ trials some purchases or subscriptions that might add up in the long run. The larger offers require you refer 1 or 2 other households to also complete the offers before you can collect your reward. I don’t know the percentage of applicants that manage to complete all the required offers without getting disqualified for some technicality. I believe some do, be sure to read the small print at the bottom and click the information links there before committing to one of these combination offers.

Those promoting CashCrate with a more optimistic tone, exhibiting big payout checks are getting a piece of CashCrate’s income from every new productive member they recruit. They are’t earning the big checks doing surveys.

Like the amazing 18th century chess playing machine “The Turk” that won nearly every match, but turned to have a hidden human operator, the instructions you issue to the Amazon Mechanical Turk are executed by humans the “Artificial-Artificial Intelligence” behind the Turk.

The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)  provides human workers to perform micro tasks. The most common tasks pay 1 to 10 cents, some better paying HITs at the moment include: Write a quick 110 word response to a web page article for $0.30,  Create a 9 minute audio to text transcription for $0.79, Re- Write An Article Of At Least 500 Words for $1.00.

While most of this work is done by people in the 3rd world, some middle class Americans tackle these chores like a crossword puzzle, perhaps collecting a stunning 45 cents for an hours labor.

To have a look, go to Amazon Mechanical Turk, click the link:  View Them Now.
If you want to learn more about how turking is done, spend time on The Turk Nation Forum.

Here’s a more detailed description of Turking provided by ,chickenmeister a member of the forum

Mechanical Turk is a service that Amazon provides, where requesters can post tasks (called HITs – Human Intelligence Tasks) that workers can do. These tasks are usually things that an automated system wouldn’t be able to do well or efficiently.

There are a wide range of HITs. Here’s a short list/summary of the types of tasks:
- audio transcription
- gathering data off websites
- writing articles
- fill out surveys
- tagging images
- transcribing data from images
- posting comments on blogs/youtube videos/forums
- bookmark sites with social bookmarking sites (i.e. Digg, etc)
- answering questions for answer/question services/websites
- pretty much anything you can imagine

I generally categorize HITs into two categories — the quick and easy, and the long and tedious. The quick ones pay a lot less (typically 0.01 to 0.10), but you can do them much more quickly, and there’s generally several thousand of these available. The more difficult ones pay more, but they can take hours to do. Doing either of these will generally work out to be about the same, pay/time-wise.

The process generally goes like this:
- requesters post the tasks
- you browse the list of tasks, and find one you would like to do
- you can preview the hit before doing it
- if you like what you see, press the “Accept” button
- you can perform the task
- there is a time limit assigned to all tasks, but usually there is plenty of time
- once finished you submit the HIT
- the requester will review your work and accept or reject it
- if accepted, you get paid

The payments are transferred to your Amazon Payments account, from which you can transfer to either your bank account or an Amazon.com gift certificate.

I generally average about $10 per day, but it’s been kind of slow lately, so it’s probably less right now. I started in late June, and I’ve accumulated $325+ so far.