How (Not) to Earn Money Online, Pt. 1

From Fall to Spring, I'm a full-time student and part-time graduate teaching assistant at the University of Cincinnati, where I'm fortunate enough to have a full scholarship and a stipend. Being paid to study what you love and share knowledge with others is a sweet deal. Summer job opportunities, however, are limited and when all of my prospects fell through, I decided to explore what else people might be willing to pay me to do. Due to health issues, I'm not capable of working a regular 9-5 job, so I was interested mainly in work I could do from home at any hour of the day.

Google "work from home" and you'll find no shortage of enticing offers. I learned I could be paid to fill out marketing surveys. All I had to do was sign up with a bunch of survey sites and offers would be emailed to me each day. Most sites claim I can earn up to $75 per survey, just by telling companies what I think. Over the past month, I have indeed earned money filling out surveys. I've also wasted a lot of time. Here are a few things I've learned along the way:

1. A $75 survey may exist, but you will likely never see one. More often than not, a 10-minute survey will earn you 50 cents.

2. Most survey sites don't pay cash. Some of them award points that can be redeemed in cash, but quite a few offer points that you can only use to buy things you don't want or enter sweepstakes that you will never win. Sites also have a minimum pay out, so you might have to earn at least $50 before you see a cent.

3. Not all surveys are just questions to answer. Many ask you to evaluate a web site, which means you have to sign up for whatever that site is offering, whether it's a credit score report, quotes on car insurance, or a book of the month club. You'll usually be asked to sign up for a free trial, but only if you hand over your credit card info so they can start charging you monthly fees when you forget to cancel it. And canceling almost always requires a phone call and a lengthy conversation with someone from Pakistan, so add cell phone minutes and frustration to the equation.

4. You might not qualify for a large percentage of the surveys you are sent. For example, if you happen to be a 29-year-old childless white female who doesn't own a TV, doesn't play computer games, doesn't suffer from acid reflux, and has never been on a cruise, prepare yourself for rejection.

Can you earn money taking surveys? Absolutely. I've earned roughly $180, but it took me a month, not a day, and I've yet to reach the cash out limit on two of the sites. Do those trial offers have some benefits? Sure. I'm now paying less for car insurance and know that my credit score is "good." But the opportunities to sign up for something you actually want are few and far between.

If you're looking for sites that pay cash with minimal red tape, there are two I can recommend:

Send Earnings

InboxDollars

Both these sites send me emails each day and pay me 10 cents or more just to click on them, which only takes seconds out of my day. Occasionally when I get an offer for a survey that is $5.00 or more and worth my time, I do it. They also have a referral program where I get paid if anyone signs up using the links above or the ads to the left, so if you're interested, by all means click away!

How many of you have experience with paid surveys? Are they as profitable as you expected or nothing more than a scam? How much can you realistically earn? What tricks of the trade help you earn more? I'd love to hear from you.

Welcome

My blog takes its name from a line in W.B. Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree":

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,	5
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;	10
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

The poem is "about" many things, but chief among them is the conflict between the speaker's desire to escape society, connect with nature, and live life on his own terms and his recognition that this process is only possible in his imagination. On the one hand, the poem's message is uplifting; even as we are trapped in an urban jungle of gray pavement, our minds are free to go elsewhere. On the other hand, Yeats reminds us that we carry the burdens of society with us even as we try to distance ourselves from it. We seek solace in the bee-loud glade, but quickly turn it into a construction site and confine the bees to an artificial hive.

This blog is my way of exploring these kinds of contradictions. I'm a poet whose work remains largely unpublished, a country girl living in the city, an animal lover who still eats meat from time to time, a teacher who grades student papers yet would prefer to see all grades abolished, a health-conscious individual who nevertheless suffers from chronic illness, and a socialist who, lacking summer employment, has delved into the world of pay per click, marketing surveys, paid reviews, and other trappings of Internet capitalism. I'll explore all of these topics here from time to time.