Adf.ly Strategy

One of the sites that is currently generating passive income is AdFly.  AdFly is a link shortening sites, where you can chose to add adverts before you links (or not) and also offers 20% of referral income.  It is truly one the easiest passive earners on the web, but one I've under-utilised... until now.

I have built an AdFly strategy and placed this in the tabbed banner above.  It explains one of many ways you can use this site to earn money and is worth checking out.

Paid Link Shortening Websites

Link shortening websites are sites where you take a URL shorten it through their system and share with others.  The difference between a link shortening website like Tiny URL and Ad Fly is that whilst Tiny URL takes you directly to a website like Ad Fly re-directs you to a banner, advert or survey first.

The banner option puts a advert at the top of the page that you can remove if you want - click here to see what one looks like.  The advert option gives a countdown (usually 5 seconds) that you have to watch before you can skip it - click here to see what one looks like.  The survey option means that there has to be a survey completed before you can get to the link.  Typically you earn a lot more for sites re-directed through surveys, though less people are willing to participate.

I'm currently trailing a couple of paid link shortening websites and there are some stark differences between them.  Let's start with the good one (good - so far),.

AdFly

Positives:

• Easy to use
• Good reputation
• Established
• Does not use surveys
• Choice of banner or advert for each link
• You can create plain re-directs
• Pays 20% on referrals
• Large community with useful forum
• Low cash out amount ($5)

Negatives:

• Pays very little per click-through
• Statistics breakdown isn't very detailed

We are still trialling AdFly and will report back on whether they pay or not.  Check out the certified sites page and blog for future updates.  But for every good site there are many bad ones.

Bee4 (www.bee4.biz)

Positives

• Active admin
• High payouts
• Active forum

Negatives

• Small community
• Rude admin who removes posts he doesn't agree with on the forum
• Was unable to generate a penny of money after having a number of surveys completed
• Uses surveys ONLY

In short avoid Bee4.biz, they are the first site to make it on to our "uncertified list".  If you want to make passive income this way, use AdFly or an equally reputable company.

Paid To Click (PTC) Sites (part 1 of 3)

Paid To Click (PTC) sites are a very popular way of earning money on the internet.  Basically you either login to a site to view advertisements or have them emailed to you.  You click on the advert, hang around for anything from 2 seconds to a minute and get paid.

They work on the basic premise that the more you see an advert the more likely you are to visit that site and see what all the fuss is about.  Indeed, many people use paid to click sites as a useful tool for finding other sites.

PTC sites make the majority of their money from "renting referrals", advertising or providing "premium" services at a cost/subscription.

There are some pros and cons from this type of site and I'll outline a number of these below, before explaining how to make much more money from them, in the third part of this write-up.

Pros:

• There are typically no start-up costs to you - this supports my belief that you should never pay to earn!
• The process is pretty quick and its possible to click on 50-100 adverts in 30 minutes, earning anything from a few cents to a few dollars.
• Most of these sites have "games" or "prize boards" where you can win extra cash from playing them.
• The popular ones are legit and have proven track records of paying, either via PayPal or AlertPay.
• Most of them have referral/affiliate programs, which is where the big money is (but more on this in the next post).
• Used correctly you can make mega-money on these sites.  I'm not talking a nice little earner, I'm talking above average annual pay - off one site.  Have 2 or more of these sites ramped up to the same level and you can be working 10 hours a week and earning close to 6 figures.

Cons:

• These sites can be slow to get going - you have to be willing to put the effort in early when money is trickling in.  The gold is buried deep, so you have to dig for a while before you can see the rewards.  If you don't want to put the time in, these sites aren't for you.
• You can be in fierce competition for referrals, so you need to have a game plan.
• Often their aren't many adverts per day (maybe only $0.10-$0.25, so you need referrals to really make it).

In the next part I'm going to explain how the following sites operate:

• NeoBux - Probably the market leader when it comes to PTC sites.
• ClixSense - One of the other biggest PTC sites, but quite different from NeoBux.

These sites have been chosen because they are all different from each other and they will be the basis for Paid To Web Surf's PTC Experiment.

View part 2 here.

Snap Dollars - A Scam?

Update: I've read some posts recently saying Snap Dollars isn't paying.  This site as, with all will be tested and reviewed.  Checkout the "certified sites" page to see what sites Paid To Web Surf trusts and which ones we don't!  

Snap Dollars was one of the first sites I began using and I still use it today. So what is it?

Well Snap Dollars is a multi-purpose site that offers users the opportunity to complete surveys, enter offers or join sites to earn cash.  But the best thing they do is the Pay to Click (PTC) emails.  These are good for a number of reasons:

1. They can pay nice sums of money - though there are some emails that only pay 3 cents per click, there are others that have paid me over 20 cents for 2 seconds work!
2. You can set these emails to come directly to your personal inbox, so you don't have to log in to their site to see what PTC emails are available.
3. The payout begins at $30, which is quite low considering the amount of stuff on their site.
4. New products and surveys are added all the time.
5. They have a generous referral system, making them a good affiliate.
6. They give you $5 just for signing up!

But no site is perfect and there are also some downsides to this site:

1. There are that many PTC emails (2-3 per week on average), so this isn't going to be the site which makes you the most money.  What it will be is one of many constant streams of money which will all add up to make a nice income stream.
2. They pay via cheque/check rather than PayPal.

I'd definitely recommend you go to www.snapdollars.com, sign up and give this site a trial for a few weeks.  It's really easy to opt out of emails (there's an opt out link on ever email they send) if it's not to your liking.

AdSense

Well in creating this blog one of the first things I did was "monetise" the page.  Monetise the word Google uses for placing ads on the screen, in the hope that people click on the ads - and in fact they are simple urls which take you to a website, so google ads can often be great ways of navigating around the web on a set topic.

So, what do you get paid... well with Google AdSense this can vary quite widely from a few pence for a click to over a pound.  It is the company being linked through the ad who sets this price, but they can't be too stingy with their cash because AdSense users can block ad providers if they don't pay enough.

The trick with monetising is to make the ads fit your site, so that they don't become an inconvenience.  I have a number of sites and blogs, earning vastly different amounts.  For example, one site I have is called Instant Scores, which allows users to see live scores and league tables.  The larger AdSense ad is on the right-hand side, and the smaller ones placed to break up the text.

The type of blog or website you have is very important when looking to monetise a site.  Informative blogs and places of obtaining updated information often make the most money, so look to produce content that fits this remit.  Build your blog with advertising in mind, rather than an after thought and play with the layout to optimise the number of clicks you get.

AdSense used to have a referral programme but doesn't anymore - meaning you only earn for clicks on ads you get on your blog or website, but beware.  You can't encourage people to click your ads and you can't do it yourself.  If this happens you can lose all the money you've earned.

When you get to £10, you can have AdSense send you a cheque or transfer the money into your account.  AdSense can be used as the only advertiser on your site or as one of many.

I'm sure I'll come back to AdSense (and the alternatives) in the future, so I'll leave this for now and report how my AdSense earning mount up for this page.