ways to make money

Get Paid to Look at Porn – Strange Ways to Make Money

September 1, 2010 By Maggie Ellis 29 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted to be paid for the time you spend surfing the Internet for porn, I’ve got good news for you. It is possible to get paid to look at porn on the Internet. We all know that the Internet is a big place and that it is difficult to police. User generated content sites that don’t want any pornography on them such as YouTube, Facebook, PhotoBucket, and others have a hard time keeping offensive content off their sties. Other problems crop up when content that is deemed illegal in certain jurisdictions is posted on the Internet.

Computer filters can only catch so much and sometimes they filter legitimate content. There is no substitute for the human eye when it comes to determining what is acceptable or legal content. As a result, there are companies and organizations that will pay people to surf for porn. If you want to get paid to look for porn, here are some places that might hire you.

Law enforcement: Local, state and federal law enforcement organizations are always on the lookout for pornography and other offensive content. Despite freedom of speech rights, there are still some things that are illegal, particularly if it involves children or coerced behavior. You could get paid to search for questionable content and hunt down criminals.

Work for a software security firm: Someone has to make up those lists of banned sites that filtering programs use. While many sites are already in the databases, new sites crop up every day. These companies hire people to look for sites that need to be added to the list.

Work at a user-generated content site like YouTube or MySpace: Individual sites hire people to review uploaded content and check for acceptability. You’ll not only look for porn, but any other content that the site does not want posted such as drug use, gang activity, or hate speech.

Work at a firm that is used by the big sites on an outsource basis: Not all sites hire their own content reviewers. Some outsource the work to content review companies. Crowd Flower and Cloud Crowd are examples of companies that handle this outsourced work. If you work for one of these companies, you may be called upon to review content on several different sites. They also handle other outsourced work, so you might not surf for porn all the time.

Find postings on sites like Craigslist, Mechanical Turk, Live Work, etc: Sometimes the big content review companies even outsource their work to individuals. You can find postings on various Internet contract employment sites. Some smaller websites also use these contract work sites to find people to help police their content.

You won’t make much money looking for porn. Most content reviewers make between $8 – $12 per hour. Individual tasks may pay much less. There is also another downside to this type of work. No matter how much you might want to look at porn, chances are you will eventually run across something that you find horribly offensive or disturbing. Even the most jaded people eventually run across something that disturbs them greatly. Many of the content review companies keep therapists on staff or on call to help people deal with things they may see. Just like working in an ice cream parlor makes you hate ice cream, surfing for porn for a living can take all the fun out of looking at porn. However, if you’ve always dreamed of getting paid to look at porn, this type of work might be for you.

Win Competitions and Sweepstakes: Ways to Make Money

August 25, 2010 By Jennifer Derrick 2 Comments

Contests and sweepstakes can be fun to enter and the prizes can be great. You can win everything from a few bucks in cash all the way up to new cars or houses. Contests are easily found. You can find them on product packaging, advertised on TV or in magazines, and through associations to which you belong. They’re also all over the Internet. Some people are quite successful and win many of the contests that they enter. Do they have some super-secret method for winning? No, but they do enter a lot of contests (increasing their odds of winning something, somewhere) and they do use some of the tricks listed below to increase their odds.

Find competitions that require you to do something: Maybe you have to write an essay about your favorite vacation destination. Maybe it’s a talent or skill based competition like a photography contest. Contests that require you to put forth some effort are a better bet than random draw contests. Why? First, these contests usually have fewer entrants (either people don’t have the required skill or they aren’t willing to put forth the effort), increasing your odds of winning. Second, you have some control over the outcome. Unlike a random draw, you have some control over the quality of your entry. If you write the best essay or take the best picture, you will win.

Enter local contests and sweepstakes: Contests sponsored by local merchants (or limited to certain geographical regions) have a much smaller entry pool than national or worldwide contests sponsored by huge corporations. Your odds of winning at the local level are greater.

Follow the rules exactly: Make sure you do everything exactly as the rules state. You don’t want your entry disqualified because you didn’t use the right sized postcard, or you entered multiple times when only one was allowed.

Look for contests that offer multiple prizes: Contests that only offer one prize aren’t a great bet because every entrant is competing for that one prize. Contests that offer multiple placings give you a better chance at winning something.

Don’t pay to enter a contest: The exception to this rule is if it is a talent based/judged competition. Sometimes legitimate contests in fields like photography, writing, and agriculture charge an entry fee. This is to keep out those who are not serious about the craft or talent being judged and the money usually goes into covering the overhead for the organization running the contest. If it’s a reputable contest sponsored by a reputable organization and you are skilled in the craft, go ahead and pay the fee. For most run of the mill contests and sweepstakes, however, don’t pay fees to enter. Similarly, don’t enter contests that require you to buy something to enter or to listen to a presentation, unless you are really interested in that thing to begin with. Some contests are simply marketing ploys to get you to cough up money or buy the product. Beware.

Use a disposable email address: You’ll probably generate a lot of spam from your contest efforts. Set up a disposable, free email address to keep your primary email clean. If you’re really into contests, you might want to think about a disposable cell phone, too, since you might end up getting a lot of telemarketing calls from contests that require your phone number.

Look for contests that allow multiple entries: Or not. Many online contests allow you to enter once per day. If you’re diligent about entering, you can increase your odds. However, contests that restrict you to only one entry can also increase your odds because you’re not competing against such a large field. It’s probably a crap shoot, but if the rules say you can enter more than once, do it.

Keep to a schedule: Contest entering can become a time consuming hobby if you’re not careful. While it’s fun to win, you have to be realistic that it will not replace a full time income. Allot yourself fifteen to thirty minutes every day as your “contest time.” Use only this time for your contest hobby and then forget about it.

Organize: Keep a list of currently active contests so you remember to enter every day if it’s allowed. Track due dates for submissions and make sure that any talent based entries are submitted on time. If you’re doing a lot of contests it’s easy to lose track, so devise a system to stay organized.

Use a form filling program: This can greatly increase the number of online contests that you can enter in a short period of time. These programs enter repetitive information like name, address, email, and phone number for you, saving you tons of time. There are several paid software programs available, but there are free alternatives available from Google and Mozilla.

You may never win a new car or a house entering contests. And even if you did, the taxes due on those prizes might mean you couldn’t keep them anyway. (No winner has ever kept the HGTV Dream House, for example, because the tax burden is too great.) However, you can win some cash, concert tickets, vacations, movie tickets, gift certificates, or other items just by entering your name. You might not always win “money” but there’s a lot of fun stuff out there to be had and anything you win is something you won’t have to buy.

Become a Book Reviewer: Ways to Save and Make Money

August 18, 2010 By Jennifer Derrick 4 Comments

This week’s suggestion is both a way to make money and save money. When you review books for magazines, websites, or newspapers, you are often given free copies of the books. Even if you aren’t paid monetarily, reviewing books can be a great way to fund your reading habit. However, if you are lucky enough to get paid for your reviews you’ll get both free books and some money. You’ll be saving and making money at the same time.

There’s an idea out there that becoming a book reviewer is almost impossible. It’s not. It takes a lot of work and you have to be willing to market yourself, but it’s not impossible. It’s not that different from breaking into any other kind of writing.

If you’re going to be successful as a book reviewer, you have to have a few qualifications. You must be a good writer. You don’t have to be great, but you do have to have an engaging voice, be able to convey your thoughts coherently, and be able to construct grammatically correct sentences. You also have to love to read and read fast. You will likely have deadlines to meet and that means you may have to read books quickly. You also need to be willing to do a lot of unpaid work in the beginning to get your name known and build up your inventory of sample reviews. You need to be willing to learn. Every publication has their own style of review and you need to make your work fit their mold. You need to learn what makes a good review and write accordingly (there are style guides available online to help with this). Persistence is key, as well, because you’re trying to sell your work and open doors that may slam in your face.

So how do you get started if you want to review books? Here are some ideas.

Sign up at publisher’s sites: This won’t pay you any money, but some publishers give out books to “Joe Public” in exchange for a review on the publisher’s site. Books are usually given out on some sort of lottery system, so you might not get a book every time you sign up. Check out publishers’ websites to see if they’re looking for reviewers. While you won’t be paid in cash for these reviews, if you do them well you can use them as samples to get into higher paying gigs.

Start your own review site/blog: If you want to go your own way, you can start your own book review site or blog. You’ll have to aggressively market your site so that you get the attention of publishers. You’ll need a big audience to make publishers notice you and want to give you free books. You’ll also have to be a very good reviewer and have a unique voice or angle for your reviews. You’ll likely have to provide your own books for a while until you generate enough buzz to merit freebies.

Work for a small local paper or other local publications: Many small local papers don’t have book reviewers. Call yours and see if they’d be willing to take you on. You might have better success if you agree to review only local authors or books of local interest. You might not get to review something every week, but even if you only appear in print once a month it’s a chance to build up clips that you can show to other reviewing jobs. The paper might or might not pay you. If they don’t pay, you can ask if they’ll compensate you for the books you buy.

Work for a book review site: There are many book review websites out there already. Many are always looking for freelancers. They may assign you a book to read or you may get to choose your own. Some sites pay and others only give you free books. Again, this can be a good way to build up samples. A Google search will turn up many possible sites you can work for. Just try to check up on them first to make sure they will pay (if they promise that) and that you will be given proper credit for your work.

Freelance for magazines and newspapers: This is where the money is made. Once you’ve built up a reputation and you have some good samples to show off, you can freelance for big magazines and newspapers. Most magazines use freelancers for their book reviews, including mainstream magazines and “review” magazines like Publishers’ Weekly. They may not pay a lot individually, but if you get work with several magazines you can piece together a nice income. Big magazines and papers almost always supply the books, or have the publishers send them to you.

When you’re just starting out you’ll probably have to request the books from the publishers yourself, and you might not get every book that you ask for. However, the better known you become (or if you get hired by a large newspaper or magazine) books will come to you without you even asking. Publishers will send them to you in the hopes that you will review them. When you reach this point of being able to choose which books to review out of the stack on your desk, you have become a very successful book reviewer.