This one isn't about Soup at all!

We've talked before about DollarSurveys. It's the easiest way to make fast money (in small amounts) that either of us has found thus far. No sign up, no membership, no frills. You complete a survey, you get a buck. Directly to your PayPal account, with no need to furnish 47 kinds of ID or go through about 15 middle men to access your money. Sounds great, right?

Well, it is and it isn't. I've made 6 bucks from them. Now, you may be asking yourself: Six bucks? After two solid months of doing the blog? PITTANCE! First off, six bucks isn't nothing. That's actually a fair amount of money in the internet-free-money game. Secondly, I haven't been taking my survey every day (because I'm lazy). However, I can't deny that if it is as easy as I've been claiming, I certainly should have made more than the price of an SDB.

The issue is that in order to make the dollar, you have to 'qualify' for the survey. What this means is that the people who are offering these surveys are only interested in certain demographics...and if you're not in that demographic, you fail out of the survey. No big deal, right? You can just try again. Except that those survey bastards sometimes put the demographic questions at the end of the survey. So you just spend like 15 minutes answering questions about pie or contacts or motor oil for nothing. Sucker.

Well, fear not! After completing my 7th successful survey today, I feel like I'm not qualified to give you some lessons on how to succeed. We'll do a sort of walkthrough about the survey I just took, with some great tips by me.

Surprise! It's about soup!

Firstly, it pays to be general. The first screen you will see at Dollar Surveys will have a bunch of statements with checkboxes. Things like "I have 10-13 year old kids," and "I purchase food," and "I will lie like a sailor at the slightest provocation." The answers to them are pretty self-evident. I check anything that seems like a potential survey topic, and leave blank anything that seems like a trap. Now, if you are a moral person, you may have some qualms about disrupting the scientific methodology by checking boxes that are perhaps less than perfectly accurate representations of the truth. That's fine by me. You can rest your conscience and check only the ones that are strictly true.

I believe in more of a fundamental concept of truth...I may not actually purchase toys for 10-13 year old children--but I damn sure have an opinion about them. Also...this screen is the first of the trials between you and your money. Sure, the penitent man will pass, but the dishonest opportunist gets the internet bucks, kids. Remember that bit where guy gets his head cut off and it rolls for like a hundred feet? Don't let that be you.

You will then be sent off-site to whatever survey distributor you get selected for. If you use NoScript, make sure you immediately temp-allow the whole page. Many many surveys have been ruined by NoScript. If the survey sight can't load it's own content, it sends you right back to the DollarSurveys failpage, and you get no money. Should have kneeled, brah.

Make sure....you remember....to turn off NoScript.

The first couple of questions are usually going to be your gate-keeper questions. These are the ones you see the most often:

Do you work for a marketing firm/ad agency/etc?

What is your yearly income?

What is your race?

Where do you live?

How much schoolin' did you get?

The answer to the first one is always no. It's the same as the rule for McMonopoly...the one about how you can't win if you or your family work for the company. Survey's do it because if you are affiliated with a rival product, you may 'tank' the survey intentionally. Would people really do that? Seriously? Man, soup industrial espionage....who knew? Anyway, chances are you don't work for any of those companies anyway. I mean, those jobs pay in money (the real kind)...if you're clearing sweet money checks like that, you're probably not going to be on here learning how to hussle 4 cents a day.

The rest of the questions don't have a correct answer. It varies depending on what the company is looking for on any given day. Really, the only advice I can give you is to pay attention to the "product family" referenced in question 1. If they're making sure you don't work in Soups/Broths/Stocks, it's a good bet that the survey is going to be about some manner of tasty canned fluids. If your demographic doesn't make the cut, you know to switch it up a bit the next time Soup comes around again on the wheel.

That not good enough? Ok, I'll do you one better. Here's a golden demographic rule: Nobody likes the poor. They usually ask you about income and employment, and you truthy types may feel obligated to respond 'unemployed' and 'less than $15,000'. Perhaps you're thinking that this is an innocous question asked because they just want to know more about you. Perhaps you think that everybody's opinion matters, and that your opinion on soup is worth just as much as someone who eats it off a golden spoon.

You're wrong. Nobody likes you.

The reason why is simple...They're asking your opinion on soup in the effort to design a better selling soup. Now, the catch-22 is that they're paying you to give your opinion...this attracts a certain kind of penniless, jobless, loser who lives with his family for like 50 bucks a month even though they watch SYTYCD at roughly 500 decibels every weeknight for about 16 hours.

Well, I was thinking mostly about how they sound alike...but the resemblance is pretty uncanny, no?

Anyway, that person (who is totally not me) isn't susceptible to awesome marketing ploys. That person just buys whatever-damn-soup-is-cheap (if they buy soup at all). It doesn't matter how 'warm' they feel toward it. It doesn't matter how healthy they think it is. It doesn't matter how personally relevant I--er...the person we're talking about--find the soup....is it cheap? Yes/No? How can a Soup be relevant? What does 'relevant' even mean in that context? Hip? Informed? Meaningful?

I find Chicken Noodle the most trendy, but Corn Chowder has way more sex appeal.

Tangent over. Lesson? People hate the poor. So don't be poor. Answer that you're employed full time and that you make somewhere in the middle of the scale per year. Again, you can tell the truth...but while you're freezing to death with your integrity, I'll be living the good life with babes and mimosas and six dollars.

You have chosen...poorly. Soup hates the poor.

Still with us? Good! You've given in to the quick and easy path, and should now be golden. Should you answer the previous questions truthfully (wrongly), you'll get kicked back to the DS failpage and have the chance to start again. There doesn't seem to be a limit on trying again though, so feel free to keep trying until you swallow your sense of right and wrong and/or give up in frustration.

Now the fun part begins. You get to answer somewhere between 20 and 1,000 really ridiculous questions about whatever the survey is about. And I mean truly wacky stuff here. Not simple things like "Uh, what soup do you like best?"; which, while prosaic, seems to be useful information. No, instead you get questions like "Would you recommend this soup to a friend?" and "Which soup exhibits a sense of wonder and childlike simplicity?"...oh, and this gem: "Which soup do you associate with the phrase "M'm! M'm! Good! At Work!". No, really. Don't believe me?

Well, the first thing that sprung to mind was 'Healthy Choice! Cream of! Wild Mush!roo'm!

It sounds kind of asinine, but in reality I have a blast every time I get into one like this. In this particular instance, I got to answer questions about ad spots I may have seen on the TV. I took the liberty of screencapping them, with the captions replaced to protect (and make legally distinct) the innocent:

This is one of those things that I found because of the blog-for-money thing...but am sticking with because it's kind of fun for me. Is it going to make you some kind of netillionaire? Well, no. But six dollars is six dollars.

P.S. - We at LE have nothing but love and respect for both the DoubleDown and Bees. Just wanted that clear.

Play Games! Get paid! Kill Squeletons and Zoumies!

I'm going to take it as a fact that we all agree on one thing: Making free pennies is like, more fun than anything else in the world. I mean, there is just something so satisfying about looking at the ol' Paypal account and seeing money in there that you did nothing to earn. Given all that, most of the actual minutes are pretty dull. There's a whole lot of waiting involved, for one. And so much clicking! What do you do with all that time? As I see it, there are several solutions:

1) Utilize the miracle of tabbed browsing to do them all at once. This is a good idea, but you still end up with the same problem...waiting on 15 tabs to give you pennies is pretty much the same as waiting on one.

2) Actually look at the ads you're clicking on. If you're going to do this, I don't know that there is much I can do to help you. You obviously are against all the things that I support and support all the things I am against. Get off my interblog. I SAID GOOD DAY!

3) Open all the pages, and then while you are waiting close your eyes. Then you can imagine yourself as an internet tycoon...perhaps wearing a fancy suit with tails and a top hat...going to the most exclusive internet restaurants without an e-reservation...being welcomed by a stuffy virtual host who respectfully greets you by your handle...enjoying an iMeal of the choices bits and rarest bytes. Mmmm.

There is one problem with all three of these choices though (even #3, which is sooo nice) is that none of them make you money! You know what's better than having downtime while you make free pennies? Making free pennies while you make free pennies. That's where Dungeons and Treasures comes in.

Come on down the fun hallway with these monsters and me.

This was another one of those things that seemed too good to be true. But to my surprise, the tag line is pretty much it: It's an adventure game that pays you to play it. And it's not one of those 'play a dinky flash game while 10,000 ads try to boil your brains from the margins'. There is actually almost zero advertising on the site.

Basically, it works like this. You play the game for free. The goal is to make as much gold as possible. At the end of the month, your character gets reset, and all the gold you have made 'converted' to DT$. Once you reach DT$10.00, you can cash out to Paypal instantly. Where does the money come from? Well, there are loads of opportunities for you to spend a little green on the site, which in turn gives you options to make more gold. Keep in mind that this is my distilled wisdom....the actual site is translated poorly from french. It also uses about a dozen different systems (star points, fidelity points, bonus points, rank points, DT codes, and on and on and on). Aren't you glad I'm here to help you?

Dungeons

Sweet FX there

The Dungeons are the simplest way to make money and the only way to level your character. You get one free dungeon a day by going to the Tavern and searching for it. The dungeons are all randomly chosen and designed. Each dungeon contains Monsters (kill to get XP or capture to sell in the Shop), Chests of Gold, Gold and Items to be picked up off the ground, and keys (both for the Chest-Room and for locked doors inside the dungeon. The dungeon you get when you search is set at the level of your character. The higher level character you have, the higher level dungeons you get, which contain tougher monsters and more gold.

The monsters range from bizarre:

Phsaw. You don't scare me, weird lumpy thing

To creepy:

Please close your dead eyes, Vege-Man

To downright terrifying:

Squeleton! Holy crap! Pack your shit and run. Leave the kids!

Extras

There is a double handful of things you can do outside of the dungeon to earn more of that sweet sweet Gold. I won't go into all of them here...you'll have plenty of time to explore while you're waiting for your 12 clicks (but more on that later). The best is probably the Treasure Hunt that you get to do one time for free every day, but can win you DT$ if you happen to get the jackpot.

If you're interested in something a little more interactive that can win you Gold, you can try the Joust. Basically, you bet gold on a flash game. If you win, you get more gold than you bet. The in game description:

During the joust, you must take down your adversary by aiming at him. For a novice, you must aim at the centerof the shield, but if you fight a knight of higher level than you, you must aim at the head or at the chest.Before you fight another player you must be training alot if you can !

Which, despite being in Timlish seems simple enough. The only problem is that it's completely untrue. In reality, you take down your adversary by aiming directly at a cloud in the middle of the screen. Every time. Regardless of who you're fighting. Despite knowing where the sweet spot is, I lose more often than I win. It seems like there is just a bare pixel difference between success and failure there.

Stay on target. Stay on target.

Conquest

The last, and most annoying of the extras is called "The 4 Kingdoms". This 'game' involves a lot of steps and rewards you with almost nothing. Here's an excerpt from the official explanation:

In a big contry to nicknames "the happiness plain " to be a rich and properous Kingdom that the name is Vergon. This Country have been lead by the King Bergun, very well-known for his kindness and his justice for his nation. But a day the King has been assassinate by an unknow criminal and the Kingdom begin to collapse... in fact Bergun haven't refer a sucessor and 4 of this vassals are arguing the crown ! After severals mounth of negotiations, they have divise the Kingdom in 4 !

See? Perfectly clear. The bottom line is that while you're doing other stuff, small flashy pictures will pop up along the sides or top of the page. When you click on them, you get a message saying you either succeeded in killing X enemies (anywhere from 1 to 11, in my experience), or you get a Shame message.

Oh those Zoumies...why do they always are be eat through my fingers?!?

You get 12 of these flashy-clicks a day. Except they show up randomly. Oh, and it takes an hour to get 12. Oh, and they show up about 2 seconds after the page loads. Oh, and they disappear immediately after you click on something else. So getting your 12 clicks becomes the bane of your existence sometimes. But you must get something totally sweet for doing it, right?

Deeply Concerned Man in Burger King Hat Lotto

For every enemy that you manage to kill from your clicks. you get to scratch a ticket. These tickets get you points. The more points you get, the more gold you get at the end of the month. If you manage to get in the top 5, you also get 'star points' which can be used to play bonus games that have the chance of winning huge amounts of gold. So that's nice. In the end, it's still barely enough reward to make it worth waiting around to get the clicks.

What's it all about, really?

The money, of course. I started playing on 8/21. The 'adventure' ended on 8/31. In that amount of time, I amassed 91,345 gold. That amount of gold converted to 27 cents. 27 CENTS! In 10 days!

That smiling man? Me. That pile of gold? My 27 cents.

Ok, so it may not sound like a fortune. But it's actually a pretty respectable sum for something that I did just to kill time while I was doing my daily clicks. On top of it, it's actually fun as hell to see how much gold you can get.

Do this. You won't be sorry. 27 CENTS!!!

Coupla Updates!

Just thought I'd do a wee update on how the earnings thing is going since we last did a relevant post. No, I'm way still upset about the Reading Rainbow Fiasco, but thanks for the concern.

My last post about the two awesome paid to read sites Hits4Pay and Deals'N'Cash was on August 17. Since then, I've made $4.08 from H4P and am within $8 of being able to cash out for the first time.

Deals'n'Cash is a little slower, but I've still added $3.35 to my account and have noticed that I'm getting more and more emails from them every day, not to mention just this morning I had 4 out of 7 ads worth $.05 each. That's some pretty easy cash for basically no work at all. The payout minimum his higher on DNC so it's gonna take me a while to reach that on this one.

My paypal account is now bursting with $3.52 from Dollar Surveys and YouData, which is pretty damned cool. I can't recommend YouData enough. You won't make a lot of money, but you will make some and THEY PAY LIKE CLOCKWORK. If you take the time to sign up and view the ads they send you, come Friday there will be something in your account to show for it.



I have a crapton of other sites I'm closing in on cashing out with.



TuiBux is a nice, quick paid to click site that has a good reputation for paying their members. Free members get around 4-5 ads per day and the cash out minimum is a low $2.





Shitty banner, decent site. With a $5.50 payout it's a little daunting, but they post tons of ads every day...ads with no timers. They work on a credits to cash system with ads being worth 1-3 credits. If you check it multiple times a day, you'll rack up credits like crazy, which means more cash in your pocket.




One of the best, I'm planning on a blog on this one very soon. It's different than most paid to sites because what they pay you to do is rate and review other sites you've used. $20 payout, but if you work at it and post quality reviews, you can make that easily. I probably recommend this one even if you're just wanting to check out some online earnings avenues.

Oh, and just because this shit was boring today, here's a cute picture of a hamster.


HAHA, he can't spell. It's C-O-R-N, stupid hamster.