Saved Pennies How to save your money one step at a time

Making money online can be fun and rewarding, but it can also be very hard work! You’ve likely seen many sites promising to make you rich quick by taking surveys or writing articles, but there is much more to the story. This article is going to be about making money with Adsense versus making money with Associated Content.

Using Adsense to make money

Adsense is Google’s advertising program. You can place Adsense banners and advertisements on your website. When people view the advertisements you can get a very small fraction of a penny. When people click on an advertisement, you get anywhere form a couple cents to perhaps a dollar. Yes, there are advertisements that pay even more, but they are very uncommon.

Pros of Adsense

• Can be very profitable if you get a lot of traffic to your website
• Dynamically adapts to the content of your web pages, which increases advertising relevance
• Owned by a major company that is not going to go bankrupt any time soon

Disadvantages of Adsense

• You must own your own website. Typically, these can cost money to operate
• Payout starts at $100

If you’re trying to make money online, Adsense only makes sense if you’re planning on having a website which gets at least 10 unique hits a day. If you can’t get this many hits a day, not only will you probably lose money just by operating the web server, but it could take you a very long time to accumulate a hundred dollars, which is the minimum payout. So you should really only use Adsense if you’re prepared to spend some serious time to build a quality website.

Using Associated Content to make money

Associated Content is an interesting website where you can make money simply by writing articles. Not only do they pay you up to a couple dollars for each article you write upfront, but they also pay you $1.50 for every thousand views you get. There is no risk in using Associated Content, and there are no fees or expenses.

Pros of Associated Content

• You are paid for each article you write, generally in about two weeks after submission.
• The payout for Associated Content is only a $1.50, which means you’ll get paid much sooner than Adsense
• There is no risk. There are no operating fees.

Cons of Associated Content

• Associated Content only pays $1.50 for every thousand views. This is much lower than what you can make with Adsense or other advertising programs

Using Associated Content (AC) to make money certainly makes sense if you only plan to write a small number of articles that probably won’t get too many hits. For example, I wrote an article for AC and received $3.77 upfront. Unfortunately, the article has been online for several months and has had less than 20 views! So if you don’t expect your articles to receive a lot of traffic, then it certainly makes sense to use AC to make money.

The Verdict

If you don’t expect your articles to receive a lot of traffic, or if you don’t want to spend an enormous time building and managing your website, then it’s best to use Associated Content. Otherwise, Adsense is a much more effective way for you to earn money. However, you must be prepared to work in order to generate traffic to your website; otherwise you may never hit the minimum payout with Adsense. If you have a website, but you plan on writing some articles which may not receive many hits, it might be wise just to place those articles on Associated Content. I use both my website and Associated Content in order to make the maximum amount of money on the internet.

Posted under Making Money, Technology

You’ve likely seen Jeff Paul’s infomercial about how you can make internet millions with his money making system. You’ve seen the testimonials and the two incredibly hot girls in bikinis hosting his infomercial. But what if you want to try Jeff Paul’s money making system for free, without paying any money at all? Well, you’re in luck, because I’m going to save you more time and money than you can imagine. First, I’m sorry to say that it’s not possible to download Jeff Paul’s money making websites on Rapidshare, Megaupload, or any other file sharing service. The reason for this is that Jeff Paul’s money making websites don’t exist. That’s right, you heard me. Jeff Paul’s shortcuts to internet millions is a scam, plain and simple. But wait, in the infomercial, Jeff Paul says for a little money you can get 10 free websites, right? Well, wrong. Like I said before, Jeff Paul’s shortcuts is a complete scam, and the commercial is full of flat out lies. I’m going to save you some serious time and money by telling you to just walk away, it isn’t worth it. For $50 or so, you get a package with some vague information about how to make money on the internet, but you don’t get any websites as promised. Then, for thousands of dollars, they try to upsell you their internet website packages. These websites need to run on their servers, and they charge you absurd amounts of money for it. Remember in the infomercial when Jeff Paul said you’ll get new money making websites every month for free? Well, that simply isn’t true. You’ll be charged hundreds of dollars. Once Jeff Paul has your credit card number, he will never, ever stop charging you every month. It is not possible to cancel Jeff Paul’s program. The only way to have the payments stop is to cancel your credit card. Sure there are plenty of people who make money on the internet, but not with kits like Jeff Paul. Keep searching, and eventually you’ll find a genuine opportunity.

Posted under Avoiding Fees, Avoiding Scams, Hidden Fees, Making Money, Saving Money, Technology

StumbleUpon is one of the most widely used social networking tools on the internet today, and for good reason. StumbleUpon gives people the ability to rate and discover websites, including your website! If used correctly, StumbleUpon can be a great way to generate high quality traffic to your website. This article will explain techniques which can be successfully used to generate high quality repeat traffic.

The goal is to get repeat, targeted traffic

If you create a free account with StumbleUpon, then immediately give a thumb up to your own site, you can expect to get a few hits initially, and then you will never get any hits again! The reasons for this are technical, and have to do with how StumbleUpon’s algorithm was developed. This brings us to the first rule.

Rule #1: The longer you have been with StumbleUpon, the more hits you will get.

The people who developed StumbleUpon are smart. They realize it’s all too easy for someone to create a new account, give a thumb up to their own website, then create another account, and so on. For this reason, each user has a different ‘weight’. This is a term which is often used in many computer algorithms. Basically, people with more weight attached to their account have a greater influence on the algorithm.

How to improve your weight

There are a couple ways to improve your weight. The first and easiest way is to simply use StumbleUpon. Actively use StumbleUpon to visit and rate all sorts of websites. Discover new websites, and write reviews. The more websites you rate, the greater your weight. The more reviews you rate, the greater your weight. The more websites you discover, the greater your weight. The more friends you have on StumbleUpon, the greater your weight. The longer you have been using StumbleUpon, the greater your weight. Basically, this prevents people from opening 100 ghost accounts and give 100 thumbs up to their website. Instead, it is better to simply relax, use one account, and over time the weight attached to your account will be greater.

Rule #2: Build up your weight before rating your website

If you’re new to StumbleUpon, it’s best to wait for a while before rating your site. Use StumbleUpon for at least a couple days before giving yourself a rating. When a user rates a website, the weight of the rating is equal to the user’s weight at the time of the rating. This means you should build up your weight before giving yourself a review if you want more traffic.

Rule #3: Give thumbs up to websites which are similar to yours

StumbleUpon uses a fairly standard clustering algorithm. Basically, when someone clicks on the stumble button, the algorithm looks at all the websites that user has rated, compares that user to a database with all user ratings, and uses that information to determine which sites the user is going to like. Sure, people can set up which topics they are interested in, but the clustering algorithm is what really determines which websites they will StumbleUpon next. In short, if you rate websites which are similar to yours, you are much more likely to receive relevant traffic.

Rule #4: Get other people to give a thumb up to your website.

This rule is pretty simple. The more people who give your website a thumb up, the more traffic you will receive. Even if you have an account with a high weight, that doesn’t compare to the sum of a hundred other people who could potentially give your website a thumb up. Put a stumble button on your website, ask people to click it, do whatever it takes! Another excellent way to get ratings from other people is to simply make an excellent website!

Rule #5: Get your tags right!

When the time finally comes when you want to give your own website a thumb up, you will need to write a review on your website. Be sure to choose your tags and keywords carefully to closely match whatever type of website you have.

That’s basically it! If you actively use your Stumble account, actively rate other similar websites, and encourage other people to rate your website positively, you are well on your way to generating high quality, repeat traffic!

Posted under Making Money

Believe it or not, there are legitimate companies on the internet which pay you small amounts of money to take surveys. The idea is that companies which do market research for their products pay online survey companies, which in turn, pay you. Unfortunately, some of these ‘survey for pay’ sites are not legitimate. The list of online survey sites is practically endless, so I’ll lie down some ground rules and signs you should look out for.

Ground rule #1: Do not participate in survey sites which use some sort of reward point system. An example company that does this is Harris Polls. These survey sites are little more than a scam, and no matter what you do, your chances of ever being paid are slim to none. These sites often have a list of potential rewards which you can purchase with your reward points. Unfortunately, these rewards are useless junk. So the best thing you could possibly do is not participate in any site which operates solely on reward points. Don’t fill out even one survey, and don’t bother to look at the rewards, it’ll just be a waste of your time. Harris Polls offers some decent rewards for an insane amount of points, but unfortunately, by the time you could ever possibly get that many points, your reward points will have expired. There is no way to win!

Ground rule #2: Do not, under any circumstance, pay any money to participate in any surveys. Yes, it’s true. Some websites force you to pay money for the privilege of taking surveys! Needless to say, these are scams. Some websites offer to sell you lists of survey sites, so you don’t have to go around looking. This may seem like a convenience, but in reality, you can expect most of the links to be broken. Honestly, there are enough free websites that list potential pay survey sites.

Ground rule #3: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Some survey sites promise that you can earn tens of thousands of dollars a year, or 50 dollars or more an hour. These websites are usually scams in which it is impossible to ever actually get your money. If you see unrealistic claims, walk away. In my experience, earning 10 dollars an hour can be difficult.

Ground rule #4: If you find a legitimate site, you should be monitor how long it takes you to complete surveys, and hoe much you’re actually being paid. If you’re looking to make walking around money, you need to make sure you’re actually being paid a decent amount. If you’re earning less than 5 dollars an hour, then you should evaluate whether or not it’s really worth the time and effort. If you’re just looking to make a couple quick bucks every now and then, I’d suggest taking a survey during television commercials, or some other time in your daily life when you aren’t doing anything useful.

Posted under Making Money