Fri 05/08/2009 1:59 PM

online earnings are picking up

My online earnings for the month of April totaled a whopping $182.70. With the exception of November, when I received payment for my first web design project, this is the highest total since I started my money making mission back in July of last year. Of course, it's nothing I could live on, but I think it's at least a good sign regarding the economy, that I was able to make more this past month than any month before. Advertisers are finally putting out higher offers for sponsored blog posts, and adding a Google ad unit to the top of the sidebar seems to have made a fairly big difference in click-through rates.

The majority of April's money came from free gift card offers, which I'm going to explain in a minute. But even taking those out of the equation, there was still an increase in earnings in every category from the previous month, and the total excluding the gift cards was still my highest, excepting November.

Now, about those gift card offers. This is something I was hesitant to do at first, but I decided to take some precautions and give it a try, and I'm so glad I did. There were five offers, all the same basic concept. You sign up for a 30-day trial membership on a web site, usually for $1 (but one of them was free). As a thank you gift for signing up, they send you a gift card to a popular merchant, usually worth $10-$30. You cancel the trial before the thirty days is up, and you're $9-$30 richer. Of course, if you do find one of the memberships useful and worth the monthly membership fee, you could always keep it. Like I said, I did five of these offers, one of them free, and for $4 out of pocket I received $100 in gift cards. I'm going to give you the links to the five offers I completed, but first there are a few things you should know.

All of these offers require a credit card number. If you don't trust the companies with your real credit card number, or if you want some extra insurance against being charged if your cancellation doesn't go through, I recommend using a virtual credit card number. Many credit card companies offer virtual card numbers as a benefit of your account, but you can also generate them through PayPal - you only need to install PayPal's browser plugin. PayPal's virtual cards are, by default, "single use cards", but that term is a bit misleading. A single use card can be charged up to four times by the same merchant within a two month period. So, after you've paid your $1 trial fee, to make sure you don't get charged any more money you'll want to go to your PayPal account and close those virtual cards. Once you have closed them they cannot be charged again.

Some companies' idea of thirty days is a little bit fishy. They may consider day one to start at midnight the day you sign up, and charge your first monthly fee at midnight on day thirty. So don't wait a whole thirty days to cancel. You can cancel as soon as you receive your gift card (which took about two weeks for me), but I waited until the three week mark.

All of these require a phone call to their toll free number to cancel your trial. I had a big problem with this at first. I figured, if a company can start taking my money without speaking directly to me, then they'd better stop taking it without a phone call as well. But someone helped me see it a different way. You're getting a $20 gift card out of the deal (on average), so consider the five minute phone call to be how you earn that $20. $20 for five minutes on the phone isn't a bad wage. Now, these companies know that a lot of people are going to sign up just to get the gift card with no intention to keep the membership, so of course they're going to try really hard to change your mind. They will be pushy, but they really weren't as bad as I expected. They basically make two attempts to get you to stay, first pointing out all of the benefits of membership, then offering further incentive to keep your account active. These incentives are not as good as they sound, believe me. After the two attempts, if you continue to say "no, thank you," they will cancel without giving you any more trouble.

The offers are:

Complete Home - $1 trial, $20 Lowe's gift card
Buyer's Advantage - $1 trial, $10 Target gift card
Privacy Guard - FREE trial, $30 Staples gift card
Clever Clubhouse - $1 trial, $20 Blockbuster gift card
Great Fun - $1 trial, $20 Mobil gift card (it said $10 but I got $20)

Some of these offers may have changed or ended since I completed them, so do make sure you know what you're getting.

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2 comments/trackbacks

comment: from Randy

I was unaware that many credit card companies offer virtual card numbers. I wish I had known this recently, as about a month ago I placed an order for some goods online through an American web site (who I have done business with many times in the past) that evidently does billing through a service in the UK, which I did not know when placing this particular order. Long story short, billing company in UK evidently has/had an employee who decided to use my credit card number to gain access to 3 porno sites, for a total of about $125 in fraudlent charges, which, of course, I didn't have to pay, but, as a precaution, seeing that the security of my card had been breeched, (and based on my past account activity) the card was deactivated and subsequently, a new card with new account number had to be issued. The company I do business with is a good company that I'd like to continue to do business with, but if possible, I'd like to submit payment for future orders through a virtual card number. How do you arrange for such a number?

Sat 05/09/2009 8:09 AM

comment: from HelloKit

@Randy: I imagine it varies by company, but would assume in most cases it can be done through the company's web site. I always use PayPal for my virtual cards, so don't have any experience doing it directly through the banks.

Mon 05/11/2009 3:57 PM

online earnings are picking up

2 comments/trackbacks

comment: from Randy

comment: from HelloKit

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