Getting Disqualified and What It Means

"I got disqualified! What does this mean?"

If you were like me back in my newbie days, you're probably wondering what getting disqualified means. At first, whenever I disqualified for a survey, I would be happy to see how fast I completed that particular survey. I would then scratch my head and wonder why I didn't earn any points for taking that survey after I check my total earnings. It took me a few days to realize that getting disqualified will not earn you any money (or very, very little).

Getting disqualified for a survey means just that. You are unqualified to take that certain survey, and because of this, you are screened out and not given any money as form of compensation. Reasons for not qualifying for a survey are wide, but the most common faults are your demographics (age, income, etc.) and knowing too little or too much about any given topic. Also, if you are the primary decision-maker for a lot things, you will qualify for many surveys.

When you don't qualify for a survey, (which will be often while you're just beginning) depending on the company you did the survey for, you will get a small amount of money for just trying. This amount is usually sweepstakes entries (pretty much worthless) or a few cents (better), but never more than a dollar. The most I've seen is twenty-five cents.

There's nothing that hurts more than getting disqualified for a survey you've been at for over ten minutes. It happens. Instances have occurred where I reach 100% only to be disqualified. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

"How do you know whether you disqualified for a survey or not?"

Usually when you are disqualified, you redirected to a screen that usually says something along the lines of, "Sorry, but the quota for this survey is filled," or, "Sorry, you've been screened out of the survey."

It's easy to get discouraged when you receive these messages.

But if you keep on attempting more surveys, you will eventually qualify and complete some of them.

Tips On Doing Offers

Have you done what seems like fifty offers on only one single site, only to have ten of them worth only fifteen cents each credit? Can't stand slaving over completing offers, and as a result have over 75% of the same offers pending for over a week? Well, there is nothing you can do (at least legally) to make them credit, but there are some things you can do to increase that approval rate from 20% to 75% or even 90% if you're lucky.

Before Completing the Offer

• Clear your cookies. This is how the company your completing the offers for will determine whether you get paid or not.
• Create a new e-mail address. You should do this often. Sometimes an offer will not credit because you use the same e-mail address on a different offer from the same company. Remember, you do not have to use the email you signed up with to complete offers for most sites.
• Read the requirements throughly if there are any.
• Make sure your browser accepts cookies.

While Completing the Offer

• Follow requirements exactly to make sure you don't do too much or you don't do too little.
• Enter valid information. (Sometimes I don't do this and get credited anyway.)
• Let each page load completely.
• Use Internet Explorer or Firefox to complete the offer.

After Completing the Offer

• Keep every window used open for at least ten minutes.
• Wait. Crediting can be instant or it can take a few days.
• Try the offer again after 24 hours.
• If there is an option, contact the site you did the offer on for manual credit. Make sure you have proof such as screenshots and e-mail confirmation.

If you follow all these rules, you should see the percentage of offers that ever go from pending to confirmed zoom up! So you can go from something like this:

101 offers pending


















To this:

81 offers complete

5 Ways to Get Money From Referrals

Yesterday, I wrote a post that described referrals and the benefits they can provide if someone works hard to get them. All in all, it's rather difficult to get referrals, but if you go at it the right way, you're bound to get at least one.

It's best if you try to earn referrals for new programs, since more people are likely to sign-up if they've never even heard of it before. People don't turn down a new potential money-earner. The problem is that potential referrals are less likely to confide in the new program, so you'll have to add some good proof up. Make sure you don't try to get referrals for a company you haven't cashed out and received payment for, unless the company is very well-known for being reliable.

Good example of proof:

If you ever post a gift card code, make sure you conceal it somehow.
Don't want to get robbed of your hard work!

Here are the top five ways to get referrals:

1. Friends and family ~ Who will trust you more than the people who know you best? You should take care to choose the people who will benefit the most. It's unlikely a doctor working more than fifty hours per day will want anything to do with making a few dollars everyday online. Especially when they can earn more than $20 in just one hour. If you go about this, make sure you don't bother the person is they clearly show that they aren't interested - no one likes an annoying advertiser. This method works the best if you have proof such as checks, gift cards, or the things you've bought.
2. Forums ~ This is how I earned the majority of my referrals for Zoombucks. Forums that get a lot of visitors but not too many new threads is the best for this method, so your own thread doesn't get to the second page in twenty minutes flat. I got my fourteen referrals by posting a thread on CheatingNetwork. Here's the link - http://cheatingnetwork.net/forums/paid-search/78884-zoombucks-similar-swagbucks.html
3. Blog or website ~ If you have a blog or website that already has a fair amount of traffic, you can go ahead and create a post or page on the company you would like to promote. You can even create a blog or website just for the purpose of promoting that particular company! Getting referrals this way is difficult, but the rewards are great.
4. Articles and How-tos ~ If you're a good writer, you can post articles on sites such as Hubpages and EzineArticles. Just make the site you're promoting interesting and attractive (no hyping!) and drive some traffic to it, and you have a good amount of referrals! Do NOT lie though, as soon as your referral figures out the truth, they will leave first chance they get. I also find that I tend to sign-up more for places that people say have some flaws along with it's benefits. If anything is perfect, I will determine it too good to be true.
5. Social Networks ~ Basically promoting through facebook, twitter, myspace, digg, stumbleupon, etc. If you have a lot of friends on facebook that you have taken the time to get to know, it's very likely they'll register as your referral because they trust you. Just make sure not to spam on anyone of these networks because everyone hates and mostly ignores spam. Not to mention you can easily get yourself banned.

Although there are many more ways of getting referrals, these are the one's that I believe are the best and most effective. If you have any methods not listed here that have worked for you, definitely continue using it! :-)

Also, make sure you use your own referral link that you were provided with, or else you won't reap the rewards that your hard work has earned you!

Referrals and How They Earn You Money

You might be wondering, "Just what are referrals, and what's so great about them, anyways?"

For some people who choose to make money online, referrals are their absolute best friends! Especially for those who have a large amount of them that happen to be active. Here's why.

Referrals are basically whenever someone signs up under a certain sign-up link specific to only you. Usually, you get some sort of compensation, sometimes constant. For example, if you refer someone at Swagbucks, you will receive ever SB they earn searching until 1000 SB. Receiving money or some other compensation constantly (some places have caps) is often better than a one-time one. As you can see, Swagbucks has a cap on their referral program.

If the compensation isn't constant, or you receive the bonus as soon as they sign-up, it doesn't matter whether or the user stays active or. But if the compensation depends on what the referral earns, he or she has to remain active for you to benefit. And if there's anything harder than getting referrals, it's getting active referrals.



If you click the picture, you can open a bigger version in another window.

As you can see, most of my referrals are marked 'active.' This means that they have activated or verified their account. It doesn't exactly mean they'll actually continue using the site, which was what I thought as first.

The snipped picture above is my referral page at Zoombucks. I've succeeded in getting fourteen referrals in one week mostly because this is a new, quality money-making site. The conversion there is 100 ZB for $1. So it looks like I've earned around 7 bucks for all my referrals. But, on this site you only get 10% of what your referrals earn. In reality, I've only earned seventy cents from my referrals, and it doesn't look like that amount will be changing because after the first day, they all stopped earning points.

Doesn't sound pretty good, huh? Like I said, the key is having active referrals. If you can get them all to be active, you're good to go!

Let's say all fourteen of my referrals earned 2000 points per month which is $20. That is a total of 28,000 ZB or $280. If I get 10% of that chunk of cash, I've got $28 in my account for doing relatively nothing besides referring. Pretty sweet, huh? (If only I could get that to happen...) Eventually though, if you firmly believe in the product you are referring and you keep on referring people, you will get some people who are there to stay for a long time.

There are also certain GPT companies that allow you to buy referrals with money or points. I wouldn't recommend doing this unless they enabled you to recycle any inactive referrals or referrals that aren't earning much. This seems to be very popular on Neobux.com, a PTC site.

Some referral programs come with multiple tiers, which will earn you much more money than a site with just one tier. Tiers are basically where you can earn the money your referral earns from their own referral. And in some cases, you can earn the money that referral makes from their own referrals. If you manage to get a whole bunch of referrals with programs like these, you will make a bunch of money!

As you can see, referrals can be a great potential money-maker, as long as you know how to get and keep them.

Best Money-Maker Sites (3)

Now, for the last post in the 'Best Money-Maker Sites' series, we will focus on PTS or pay-to-search. Typically, you won't get paid for every search you conduct for these types of sites, but randomly or up to a certain amount of searches. For example, one site might pay you one cent for every search you conduct until you hit fifty. Sounds pretty cool to get paid by doing what you normally do anyway!

I also find pay-to-search sites tend to combine offers, daily clicks, and searching bonuses to create a more rewarding experience.

Although there is a small number of these sites (good ones, anyway) compared to survey and offer sites, I think it's pretty clear which one is the best.

Swagbucks

Here's one of my favorite money-maker companies!
You can earn points by using their search engine, completing surveys, the daily four, offers, games, watching videos, codes, and shopping!

The average value of each SB (the currency) is one cent if converted into money or other prizes.

You tend to win points for searching 2 - 5 times, usually 3 times per day. You will win no less than 7 to about 11 each time you win. The most you can ever win is 1000 SB, but that is very rare. On Mega Swagbucks Day, which is held on Fridays, you can earn bigger amounts like 21 and 40.

Surveys can be completed for 50 SB (fifty cents) to 300 SB (three dollars). These surveys can be difficult to qualify for and sometimes, just by clicking the link you are immediately screened out. You must fill out a profile before you are permitted to take surveys.

Which brings us to the daily four. The daily four is basically four tasks that give you one SB each everyday. Visiting the survey area gives you one SB. Just having the toolbar installed, completing NOSO, and voting on the daily poll brings one SB each everyday as well, for a grand total of four SB or four cents. It doesn't sound like much, but if you do this everyday, you will receive one-hundred twenty SB per day. Free money is free money!

By watching videos, a little load bar on your screen will move closer to 100%. Every time it reaches 100%, you will be awarded with five SB. You can also earn SB randomly by playing games if you received an invitation or are one of the beta testers.

You can earn a good amount of money completing offers, which will help you get your rewards much more faster. There are a very healthy amount of offers currently available, with many more being added every week. Offers, surveys, and shopping will probably earn you the largest amount of SB in exchange for money and prizes.

There are also sweepstakes that are 100% valid (I've won one!) that you can get entries to by buying them with your SB or by taking surveys.

Now, for the prizes:

• $5 Amazon gift card - 450 SB
• $5 Paypal - 700 SB
• $10 Barnes and Nobles - 1,250 SB
• Ultimate Game Card - 550 SB
• $20 Target e-Gift Card - 2,350 SB
• Nintendo Wii System - 15,312 SB

There are many other prizes as well, such as more gift cards, game consoles and accessories, jewelry, trading cards, books, magazines, and much more! There are also $5 Amazon certificates for Canadians as well!

In one month, I easily earn $25 worth of gift cards with at least 1000 SB left over for the next month by using a combination of the above methods. This is an easy $300 per year in Amazon gift cards!

Let's say you win about 3 times per day, with each rewarding you about nine SB. That is twenty-seven SB per day or eight-hundred ten SB per month. Almost $10! Now let's say you earn fifty SB per day. That's 1500 SB per month which is more than $15 in Amazon gift cards per month!

So, do yourself a favor and join Swagbucks for an easy (at least) $100 per year!

Best Money-Maker Sites (2)

So now that you have a really good survey site under your belt, it's time to add another type of site that will earn you some serious money: offer sites.

If you remember from my second blog post, offer sites are websites where you are paid to do various tasks which mostly involve filling out forms, taking quizs, and completing survey paths (surveys aren't the same as survey paths, by the way). These tend to be less straight-forward than surveys, as the advertisers try to trick you into doing more than what's needed to receive credit.

Also, offer sites are well-known for not crediting for due offers. About 60% - 85% of my offers actually ever credit, sometimes less, sometimes more. This is typically the advertisers fault, not the actual company letting you do the offer. So if your offers don't credit and you need a bone to pick with somebody, most often than not, contact the advertisers.

Now, to get to the best offer site selected by me and by many other people is Cashcrate.

CashCrate

If you conduct some searches, most likely, people will be recommending Cashcrate as the #1 offer site. This offer site has been up as one of the longest, has many offers to complete for money and not points (Sites that pay money tend to pay more than sites that offer points in exchange for rewards). They have great customer service and their offers usually credit.

Unfortunately though, I've only been using this site for about a month, so I don't have much experience with this site, nor a check (Yes! They pay the money by check! Or direct deposit if you're an elite) to show. It's basically the same as other offer sites, only much better in the little time I've been using it. So far, I've earned $17.55 and the cashout threshold is $20. I'm pretty close, aren't I?!

Anyways, I find the offers on here credit more and more often than any other place, (but that's just me) yet I also find they credit a whole lot slower. One offer I did for $1 took two weeks to credit, but it finally did. Eh, as long as I eventually get the money in my pocket, that's fine and dandy!

The ways you can earn money on this site are as follows: by completing the immense inventory of free offers; completing surveys similar to the ones on Opinion Outpost, although they pay less; shopping; and referrals. The first two you should know by now, as for the last two...

For shopping, whatever you buy, you get the listed percentage back. Simple enough. There are stores such as Apple iTunes, Babies R Us, PetSmart, Home Depot, and twenty more.

Referrals are someone signs up under your link that is only specific to you. Depending on your rank, you get a certain percentage of their earnings, or all of it, depending on the site. For Cashcrate, their referral rate has two-tiers. That means you get points from your referrals and the people that your referral refers. Make sense? If you would like to see the requirements and percentages for each status, here's the link: http://blog.cashcrate.com/features/referral-levels-explained/

Besides making money, you can also earn points to redeem for prizes! You can earn these points by doing offers under two different companies and winning game tournaments. Some prizes available are as follows:

• $10 Amazon gift card - 250 points
• $15 iTunes gift card - 300 points
• $25 Petco gift card - 500 points
• Nintendo DS Lite - 2,700 points
• Nintendo Wii - 4,000 points
• Playstation 3 - 8,000 points
• . . . and much, much more!

You also earn 1 extra point for every dollar you make! So if you make $250 dollars in money by check, you can get another $10 in Amazon gift cards! Pretty nifty, huh?

Cashcrate also values community! They maintain a blog that they update twice per week, sometimes less, and they also have a forum for their Cashcrate members! And what would be a community without contests?! Cashcrate holds daily ones on Facebook and Twitter that can earn you money and other prizes!

So, whaddaya think? Join or not to join, that is the question. You get a $1 bonus if you pick the first option! Not that you have to of course. . . (You know you want to!)

Best Money-Maker Sites (1)

Now that I've given you a piece of information to get started on, next you need to find the actual sites that will get you the most money! There's no need to join any scammy sites, or the companies that pay you the least amount of money for your time. It's the difference between earning fifty cents for fifteen minutes and three dollars for fifteen minutes. That's a rate of $2 per hour or a rate of $12 per hour; take your pick.

There will be three blog posts to this 'Best Money-Maker Sites' series, so look out for more blog posts!

This blog post will be focusing on the survey site that has made me the most money.

Opinion Outpost


• This is what the homepage of my favorite #1 money-maker survey site online.
• The two years I've been a member of this site, I've made $1,040.30 dollars in two years. I find that simply incredible for a stay-at-home mom.
• Ain't it purty?

On this survey site, I receive about 1 - 5 surveys per day by email, each rewarding about 10 - 50 opinion points. "What the heck are opinion points?" you may ask. Simple; the currency that Opinion Outpost uses to reward it's member for each survey they qualify and complete.

Great. So, what's so great about earning points instead of cash? These 'opinion points' can be exchanged for prizes and rewards. And it just so happens that one of these rewards pay money by check. If this doesn't fancy you, (I can't imagine why paper money wouldn't) currently, you can also redeem your opinion points for either an Amazon.com gift card or a Citi gift card. It's your choice. *psst, psst, get the money by check!*

The best part about Opinion Outpost is that, unlike many other companies, the conversion rates (opinion points to money) are the same for all three rewards. Every single opinion point is worth ten cents when converted into money. Now, don't worry, you won't be taking any surveys worth (money-wise) ten cents anytime soon.

When you don't qualify for a survey (which is often, sadly) they give you three choices. Sweepstakes, Instant Win, and the other, I believe is Charity. I skipped these because I never believed any of them worth my time taking an extra click simply because I didn't think they were true.

One day, I was frustrated from taking more than 15 surveys, all for cash, and none of them I was getting qualified for. On that same day, I took an Opinion Outpost survey for 50 opinion points, or five dollars in money. I disqualified of course, in my stroke of good (not) luck.

Furious, I blindly clicked on a button which happened to be Instant Win, and I won $50 dollars in money just by clicking a button. It was the first time I was glad I didn't qualify for a survey! Needless to say, I always take the time to click one of these options because I know I have a free chance (no matter how little it may be) to earn something or give back to the community.
So far, you might think that I'm either:

A - hyping               or                B - downright lying

Well here's some proof for ya:



I feel so proud of myself for making this much money!



So, you must be wondering how you can get started. All you need to do is click on the link I provided above the screenshot of the site, and once you get there, click the sign-up now button on the homepage. Enter your info, and submit. Then, go to your inbox and make sure you find the verifying email and click the link inside. This is vital if you want to receive money-paying surveys via your inbox.

Also, if you missed the information while signing up, you have to be 18 years or older and live in the USA or Canada. The way my twelve-year-old daughter (Yup! She's doing surveys, too!) gets around these barriers is by me making an account for her under my name. Whenever I receive any checks, I give what's due to her. As for the country thing... You can always move! *kidding* There is also a limit of one account per household. Which sucks.