We are conducting a survey asking people about their spending habits concerning entertainment products. Saving discretionary income is a critical step of creating wealth.
However, it can be difficult so save everything, as everyone still has to have a way of leisure. According to recent statistics, large amounts of discretionary income is based on movies and video games. We wanted to quantify this with the poll. Once results are in, we will take median and average data to publish information on how to best reduce spending on entertainment while receiving a similar level of value.
Continuing our research into income-generating websites, we present Inbox Dollars.
Introduction:
Inbox Dollars is a revenue generating website that pays users for multiple tasks such as reading E-Mails, taking online surveys, shopping at online stores, playing games, and testing products. Upon signup, you are immediately given $5.00, but how long does it take you to put that $5.00 in your account? Read on…
How You Make Money
As advised, Inbox Dollars provides a large number of opportunities to earn income. Each avenue can provide decent earnings.
E-Mails. Like Hits4Pay, Inbox Dollars offers $0.02 per E-Mail. These E-Mails are sent to your E-Mail address (unlike Hits4Pay), which can, at times, clutter up your inbox. Because of this, you may want to ensure that you sign up under an alternate E-Mail address to ensure your personal E-Mail doesn’t get flooded with offers. We’ve found that you will recieve between 2 and 3 E-Mails per day, which translates to (on average) $0.40 cents per week. The time it takes to read and be credited for these E-Mails isn’t very intrusive, which is a good thing.
Surveys are generated quite frequently, and earn you between $0.25 and $1.50 per survey. The advantage of Inbox Dollars over other sites is that they do have a large amount of available surveys to take. However, the earnings from these surveys is far lower than other websites like SurveySavy or OpinionOutpost. If you want to make sure you reach the payment threshold, you would be wise to complete these when possible. Most surveys take between 15-25 minutes, so the EPH (earnings per hour) may be low.
Playing Games is an unwise investment at Inbox Dollars. Although they advise that you will earn money on playing games, you are required to upload $10 or $20 to receive a matching bonus. Also as they advise, you don’t earn money from playing, only from when you play with your money. This is essentially no different than gambling, which we strongly advise against. Although it’s certainly fine to play their games, we reccomend you stay away from spending money. After all, your here to make money.
Shopping Online is your best overall bet for making money on Inbox Dollars. Although we don’t reccomend shopping online to earn money back (for that purpose alone), Inbox Dollars does promise a percentage back when you use them as your referral. Typical returns vary between 0.5% to 10% for very specific offers. If you were already planning on buying products on line, then we strongly reccomending going through Inbox Dollars. In doing so, you’ll get closer to the threshold to cash out much quicker.
Product Tests& Offers are the final way of earning revenue. Some offers request you to try products that you will need shipped to your house. The payouts on these offers are quite high (usually above $4.00), so these offers are quite lucrative to sign up for. Some cases require you to pay for shipping, so be aware of terms and conditions surrounding such offers.
Finally, you can also earn money for referring friends to Inbox Dollars. As with all survey sites, this is always a good thing to participate in, as it’s essentially free money.
Legitimacy:
From a business standpoint, Inbox Dollars is certainly legitimate. Inbox Dollars earns revenue through each action you take – reading E-Mails, completing offers, shopping, playing games, ect all generate revenues for Inbox Dollars. From their earnings, they give you a share (estimated at 50%) of their earnings.
The Fine Print
Like other websites, there is always fine print that can cause issues. How long will it take to recieve your check, and what are the stipulations?
You must earn $30.00 before cashing out. At $30.00, Inbox Dollars stands as one of the highest generated earnings to get a check. With a free $5.00 signup, you must earn $25.00 to cash out. This may be a tall order unless you are willing to spend time referring friends, taking surveys, and reading E-Mails.
They require 2 months to process and send your check. The biggest caveat (IMO) with Inbox Dollars is that there is a net-30 stipulation within their rules. Upon requesting payment, it may take up to 2 months to send the check to you.
You must stay active during this time frame. Should you be inactive by having an invalid E-Mail address or have 10 unread paid E-Mails in your inbox, Inbox Dollars reserves the right to strike your account as inactive. In doing this, you may forefit that 2 month process. It is critical you stay active. You can read the ToS here.
There is good news about earnings:
Once you recieve your first check, your account is upgraded to gold status. With gold status, you are eligible to earn more rewards from Inbox dollars, including extra referral income, exclusive offers, and double sweepstakes offers.
In Conclusion:
Inbox Dollars is a good provider of revenue generation for those interested. They combine the paid E-Mail service of Hits4Pay, the surveys of SurveySavy or OpinionPost, and affiliate offers at a cost of a very high requirement to be paid. If you can stick with Inbox Dollars, it is a good system when used in tandem to other websites. The *best* part of Inbox Dollars (IMO) is the cash back shopping which is useful when you buy products from E-Bay. If you buy $500 on products online from a store you know is legitimate, then you would get $5 closer to the threshold at a 1% bonus.
Review Score: 7.5/10. The pay threshold and lack of high value surveys keep this from being a gold mine. However, it’s better than other services, and certainly legitimate. The key is consistently check E-Mails and do surveys in your downtime.
Uncle Sammy wants you to make a buck helpin' him out
I had the opportunity to help the country out, as well as make a little bit of extra money. It didn’t pay incredibly well – about $8.00 an hour – but I was able to take the day off and still earn income from my normal job, essentially doubling my income for that day. There are also opportunities to work later in the day as a counting center worker, which makes in the area of $12.00 an hour, and can be done after your regular job.
At multiple times through the year, we participate in this wonderful thing called the democratic election process. In tens of thousands of buildings across the country, the government hires average citizens to become election officials.
It’s decent work. You put in a lot of hours (usually around 15 the day of the election), but it isn’t particularly taxing, and requires no special set of skills. Better yet, they hire almost anyone to be a poll worker.
Do you meet these strenuous requirements?
Registered voter (which usually requires you to live in a county in the USA)
Are over the age of 18 (not the case in all areas. I’ve seen poll workers as young as 17)
Aren’t a convicted felon
If so, your a prime candidate for a poll worker. It’s a very good way to earn extra money while helping out the country. On your way to wealth, every little bit of extra income helps, and this is no exception. Many areas are in need of poll workers, so the likelihood of being accepted as a poll worker is very high.
Training is not very strenuous, but is required. Expect to commit to approximately 2 hours of training prior to the election. In my state, they offer an extra bonus for those with internet access that are willing to do online training.
Who do you contact?
The best and easiest way to get the process started is to contact your local election officials. They are always looking for people of any age willing to work. The EAC has a nice FAQ to advise prospective poll workers on what the steps are, as well as contact information concerning your local officials. You can find that link here.
Tips to help you prep for working the polls:
Wear comfortable shoes. Some poll workers get the job of initializing machines for voters. Such a task will have you walking quite a bit during the day.
Be professional. You are being a civil servant, so put your best foot forward.
Don’t rig the election.
Keep your political views to yourself – at least when voters are around. You can always vent when voters aren’t around.
Find the contact list of other poll workers and contact them prior to election day. It always helps to know who your crew is. I had the pleasure of working with some very interesting, intelligent workers that I would have not had the great opportunity to work with, and I am sure you will too.
There are probably a few other suggestions, but those may prove to be the best. Despite the idea that elections are this stoic, somber activity, it’s quite a bit of fun, and easy work. Although it doesn’t pay the best, it beats doing nothing, and earning nothing. Keeping active is critical to your path to becoming wealthy.
Would you like a new part-time job that pays $10 an hour regardless of skill set? Read on..
There is a new company in your area seeking interested, semi-dedicated workers. They are paying approximately $10 an hour, or more based on your current lifestyle.
If you’d like to fill out an application, please visit:
Your kitchen!
In today’s kitchen, many people practice the fine art of takeout and fast food. Is the kitchen an object from days gone by, a nostalgic area that serves little purpose in today’s household?
Despite our culture’s fascination with restaurants and fast food joints, your kitchen remains as one of the best places to save money in your household.
Our society is a constantly evolving and changing entity. What is common one day can be out the next (think: Pogs, Tamogatchis, and Cabbage Patch Dolls). Other things become commonplace over long periods of time such as cars, the Internet, and DVDs.
One such trend is concerning how we spend our money, and where we spend it, on food. Since the early 1900’s, our preferences and cost of living concerning food has changed greatly. According to Forbes in 2006, we learn the following things:
In 1901 the average American household spent 50% of their income on food.
Of that 50%, a mere 3% was spent spent going out to eat.
By 1997 the average American household spent just 13.3% of their income on food.
Of that 13.3%, Almost half (42%) was spent going out to eat!
With such a large amount of the average families’ budget spent on restaurants and not groceries, we’ve seen an explosion of fine dining and fast food joints all around America. To quantify this in dollars: Fast food establishments brought in $6 billion USD in 1970. By 2000 the fast food industry had grown into a $110 billion dollar a year industry. This doesn’t include a whopping $173 billion dollars added by fine dining restaurants, bringing the entire industries value to roughly $300 billion dollars a year.
So what does this all mean? Many Americans are paying someone else on the hour to make their food for them. Now, your time may be more valuable than $10 an hour, but for many Americans, this is not the case. We are spending much of our budget on unhealthy and costly foods.
In part of developing a good budget, it is very important to ask these questions concerning your habits with eating out:
How much money do you spend per month on eating out?
How often do you eat out?
Do you eat out with your family?
Do you eat out because of work?
These questions are critical in determining how much money you can save by paying yourself to cook. If you find yourself spending over $100 a month on dining out with your family, you may be a prime candidate for getting hired on to your kitchen as a part time job.
But What If I Can’t Cook?
Cooking is not a mystical, long-lost art or a skill that takes years to hone. Since we are blessed to be in the so-called ‘information age’ there is a wealth of free information concerning how to cook. One such website is allrecipes.com which features recipes for some of the most sought-after foods available in very easy to read formats.
Cooking may take some time to develop into an art form, but here are some starter tips:
Begin with boxed meals available at your local grocers. Many meals can be made simply by throwing the premade ingredients into a skillet and following easy instructions on the bag. Meals usually cost between $4 and $6 per package, and can feed 2 people. That translates to $2-$3 per person which is most likely cheaper than what you spend at a fast food joint.
Learn to make your favorite meal at home. There is nothing better than the satisfaction of learning to make a top-quality, tasty meal at home. Enjoy the Olive Garden’s Fettuccine Alfredo? At $10 per appetizer at the restaurant, you can learn to make this dish for $2-3 per serving. A gourmet hamburger? Expect to pay $10 at your favorite restaurant including some fries. The same thing can be made at home for under $3. French fries remain one of the most marked up food in the world, as a large fry weighs in at 7 ounces or nearly 1/2 a pound and cost $1.99. Potatoes at the grocer cost as low as 25 cents a pound or 12.5 cents for a large serving.
Learn to pack lunches to work. Eating out at work can be a nasty habit – it can be hard to take food to work at times, but once you learn how to do it, you’ll save yourself hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. A healthy sub at Subway costs $5.00 when your trying to eat cheap, but the same sub can be made for $2.50 using the same fresh ingredients. Another key is finding out what kitchen appliances are available at work – many include items such as microwaves which can be used to reheat very tasty recipes which are microwave-friendly. Chinese and Italian taste incredible reheated in a microwave, and are very cheap to make cook at home.
We’ll be featuring more ideas in the future showing exactly how much money can be made on an hourly basis by cooking at home!
In our series of survey sites, we analyze the pros and cons surrounding various websites that promise steady income. Many websites promise to offer easy money by working at home, but how do they operate? How do I really make money from them?
Introduction:
Hits 4 Pay is billed as a website to ‘Earn Extra Cash To View Advertiser Offers’. The websites advises users that by viewing various ads from sponsors, you can earn cash. In addition to this, they are also offering to give you $10.00 USD to start out. But how exactly does it work?
Overview:
As billed, the Hits 4 Pay system pays you $0.02 per ad you view. The requirement is that you click on an advertiser offer and keep the browser open for 60 seconds in which to view their materials. Once this is completed, you are immediately credited with the money.
Ads are determined by defining a group of ‘Interest Categories’ in which you sign up to. If you are purely interested in money, then it would be recommended that you select most, or all available interest groups. Hits 4 Pay states that you will be able to view between 1 and 10 ads per day ($0.02 to $0.20 per day). From my personal experience, you will view 2-3 ads per day with about 40% of all categories selected for interest.
Legitimacy:
As a professional business analyst, I have the opportunity to work with advertisers that serve billions of ads per month. A way that many websites earn money (even this one) is via displaying ads on websites.
Websites traditionally earn ad revenue in one of three ways:
Cost Per Metric (CPM) – Under this type, the advertiser pays based on the number of impressions delivered to a web page. Typically, the payout is per 1,000 ads viewed and is usually $0.30 to $1.00 eCPM (Estimated Cost Per Metric – in this case 1,000 ads).
Cost Per Click (CPC) – This type pays out only when the ad is clicked by the user. Rather than focus on the number of ads shown, it focuses entirely on the number of times the ad is clicked. Ratios are usually expressed in CTR or Click Through Rate. CPC rates can greatly vary from $0.04 cents per click to as high as $0.50 per click, depending on the type of ad shown.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – Finally, some advertisers pay out based on the actual acquisition of the user into the service. Similar to CPC, the user must first click the ad, then purchase, register, or complete whatever is being marketed. CPA rates are the highest of all 3, which can greatly vary from $0.20 CPA into hundreds of dollars for things such as filling out required information to receieve a credit card.
Hits 4 Pay uses the 2nd method – CPC – to generate revenue for their site, primarily. Instead of keep the earnings entirely for themselves, they share it with you, the person clicking the ad. Because of this split, it’s a viable way of building a website, as well as paying clients. The website also includes standard banner ads which they do not share with you, the client. We do not see any major qualms with this website.
How To Make Money With Hits 4 Pay:
Despite the legitimacy, and ‘free’ $10.00 for joining, there are a few major caveats to earning money. Many of these can be overcome by being shrewd concerning the website.
Users must build up $25.00 USD in their account before the funds are sent via PayPal. This requires you to view 750 ads to allow you to withdraw. At an average 5 ads per day, you would need to visit the site every day for 150 consecutive days. Certainly not an easy task for the average person. This is how Hits 4 Pay manages to give away a ‘free’ $10.00 to users: They know that very few people will actually view 750 ads.
Referrals are the key to the Hits 4 Pay system. They use a multi level marketing (aka Pyramid Scheme) to entice users to reccomend the service to friends. If you are to have any success with the system, you must sign people up. For every person you sign up, you earn $0.01 for every ad they view. It’s essentially free money.
Always sign up under a referrer. Again, the key is to make sure that someone is earning money for each viewed ad. Hits 4 Pay allows for 2 levels of referrals – which means that if you sign up someone, then they sign up someone, both you and the person you signed up will make money. This means that for every ad viewed, $0.04 is generated for the clients, as opposed to $0.02 per ad.
View multiple ads at once. Should you view each ad invidiually, wait 60 seconds to view another one, and continue on this manner, you will earn approximately $1.20 per hour. Such a payout is certainly not worth looking into. However, you can circumvent the system slightly to view ads quicker: As long as you click the ad, and keep it open in the browser, you’ll earn money. You will want to shift-click each ad, allowing you to open the ad in a new browser window. Once the ad is open in a new window, refresh the Hits 4 Pay website. Your next ad will be available for viewing while the timer is counting down for your other ad. Continue to do this until all ads are open in your browser windows. Such a system speeds the process up very quickly: You can increase your rate of viewing ads from $1.20 an hour to approximately $12.00 or higher per hour. Of course, you won’t be able to do this consecutively every hour as you won’t have hundreds of ads to view, but it does allow you to have more time in which to spend on other sites, making money.
In Conclusion:
Hits 4 Pay is a decent system in which to earn money. It is completely legitimate, despite the caveats surrounding the length of time needed to view enough ads to collect the minimum $25.00. If you have a few friends looking for easy part-time work and can ensure they sign up under you, it’s not too bad of a system.
Should you manage to have a dozen people underneath you, and they also referr a dozen people, you should certainly be able to generate quite a nice income from this site. Of course, building such a number of people into your referrals may be difficult.
Review Score: 6/10. Decent way to earn money if you can find people to subscribe underneath you. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to generate a good income.
If you are interested in this website, please click the link below!
The internet is a very large, growing marketplace. Millions of people earn household incomes by using the internet. We’ve all seen ads trying to sell systems, schemes, and programs to allow people to cash in on various aspects of the internet. Unfortunately, many of these programs are designed for the advertiser – the person telling you about getting rich – and not yourself.
Despite the schemes, there are ways to make money on the internet that require little to no special skills, just dedication. Many programs focus on the notion that few people will see their program to fruition. Therefore, the most important skill to making easy money on the internet is awareness and dedication.
