List My 5

List My 5 is a site where users create top 5 lists and earn residual income from the ad revenue generated on their lists. It's still a fairly new and small site, but I've really been enjoying writing on it. The community there is really nice, and I've actually learned quite a bit reading other people's lists.

Here are a couple of mine (relevant to your interests, I hope):
The Top 5 Things to Eat When You're Broke
The Top 5 Tips for Cutting Your Grocery Bills With Amazon
The Top 5 Items at Trader Joe's For Under Two Dollars

Good things about List My 5:

• Payout is only $10, and they pay with Paypal.
  
• You can write lists quickly and easily, and about literally anything (well, anything non-vulgar or offensive, I suppose.)
  
• The user base there has a lot of great tips for earning money online (there are many lists about other paid-to-write sites that I'd have never known about.)
  
• You can post 5 links of your choosing per list: great for posting your referral or affiliate links!
  
• You get profile awards for reaching various goals (10 day listing streak, etc) which, while useless, are kinda fun to aim for.
  
• You retain all ownership of your content. (yay!)
  
• It's easy to post your list on Twitter or Facebook.
  

Not-so-good things about List My 5:

• It's still new and small, and while the small user base means that your articles get noticed by other users, it also means that they won't generate much attention outside of the site itself (unless you personally promote it.)
  
• It doesn't seem like any of the users have made much money yet. (I've personally made 30 cents, but it's only been 3 weeks for me.)
  
• You are limited in your ability to design the list (no images are allowed, you can't use bold or italic, and you can't use symbols in the title.) Of course, this also means that you don't have to be subjected to really terrible-looking lists. :)
  
• Annoying captchas must be inputted whenever submitting OR editing a list.
  

Overall impression:
Even though I've only made 30 cents, I'm going to stick with it. Top 5 lists are really fun to write, and like I said, I've learned a bunch of cool stuff from reading other people's lists. Some of my friends have told me they learned something from my lists, which made me feel pretty good. :) I like helping people. Besides, if the site gets really popular, I'll already have content up that will start earning revenue.

I'm pretty new to paid-to-write sites, but this seems like a good start. You can just sign up and start writing, and there doesn't seem to be any risk of your lists being randomly deleted (unless you're writing inappropriate content or spam, obviously.)

HITs with reckless abandon

a.k.a Amazon Mechanical Turk: The good, the blah.

You may have heard of "crowdsourcing" or "human intelligence tasks". The idea is basically various companies (known as "Requesters") assigning short, repetitive tasks to an anonymous group of people, for whatever reason that may be. It sounds nice in theory: you can "work from home", do interesting work, start and stop whenever you feel like it, earn extra money, blah blah. In practise, it's more like virtual slave labor: tasks pay VERY little, and can take much longer than anticipated. And if you mess up, the requester can reject your submission and you won't get paid for that task. HOWEVER, you can definitely make *real* money in a short amount of time, without changing out of your bathrobe. Just don't expect too much, and follow these guidelines to see if it's something you want to pursue.

How to use it:

Make your account, and link your bank info so you can get paid. Then go check out the tasks. If you're new, there may not be many available to you (some tasks have requirements of, say, 1,000 successfully completed tasks.) You might start by checking out ones that ask for twitter followers or Facebook likes (see Other advice/warnings, paragraph 2). If there isn't anything good, just leave and come back later. New tasks are added all the time.

The good:

• Anyone can do it, as long as you stay in good standing by not having too much of your work rejected (I've had only .7% of my work rejected)
  
• Some of the "tasks" are actually fun. One of the first ones I did was to read product reviews on amazon.com and mark if they were "sarcastic" in tone. The reviews were all hilariously snarky, and I still chuckle when I remember them.
  
• Occasionally you come across very easy tasks that manage to pay decently.
  
• Passes time when you're really, really bored.
  
• Pennies eventually add up!
  
• You can turn your earnings into an amazon.com gift card (cash out: $1) or transfer to your bank account (cash out: $10)
  

The bad;

• Many of the higher-paying "tasks" are actually scams. Well, maybe not outright scams, but they are attempts to get you to sign up for their website which turns out to be a for-pay site. Avoid anything that says "Test this website!" or "Check functionality of our new sign-up process", and for the love of god, don't ever give out personal information or your credit card number.
  
• Basically impossible to make more than $2 an hour.
  
• Most tasks are pretty fucking mind-numbing. Of course, you have no obligation to keep doing them.
  
• Some occasionally crash or have broken links. Always RETURN these, and report them as broken.
  
• Sometimes successfully completed tasks take awhile to pay. Most take less than 24 hours, however.
  

Other advice/warnings:

Find a group of tasks that has a lot available. (You can sort by "HITs available: Most first") Find one that seems reasonable and take a look at it. If it looks doable, click "Accept". If you then find it isn't something you think is worth it, feel free to click "Return". There's no penalty for returning a task. If it is good, you can click "automatically accept the next HIT in this group" and keep working on those tasks and watch the money add up!

Search "twitter" or "facebook" in the search box. There are usually plenty that offer 1-15 cents just to follow them on twitter or like their page on Facebook. Get yourself some "secondary" accounts if you like, just make sure to check their requirements (some will not pay unless your twitter account has 100 followers, for example.) This is a great way to take advantage of people who heard on the news that "social networking" was all the rage, and totally the way to succeed in business.

Make sure to check the time allotted. Some that ask you to follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook only give you 60 seconds. If your internet stalls, you're screwed, and the HIT is considered abandoned. If you find one like that, go to their site and follow them BEFORE clicking "Accept". Then accept the HIT and enter the info they want.

Avoid anything that takes you to a 3rd party site (even having to visit a search engine is iffy.) This includes ones that ask you to post ads on craigslist or other similar sites. Most likely the "submit" button will be broken, and/or it will ask for some non-existent "confirmation code" to prevent you from getting paid. Feel free to report these (there's a link at the bottom of the page to report anything broken or in violation of terms.)

Overall:

Like I said, it's something to do when you're bored. I wouldn't think for a second that anyone could actually make any kind of living doing it (unless you literally did tasks 24 hours a day), but a little extra money certainly can't hurt, right? I've made over $45 from it, which is $45 I didn't have previously. I also really like that you can directly apply your earnings to purchases at amazon.com by converting them to gift cards. That way I can add it to my pile of Swagbucks and MyPoints gift cards and use it to get food. :D

ICS: New & Improved?

I've written positively about Instant Cash Sweepstakes before (I still wish they would change their name though. -_-) You answer a few user-created (and some sponsored) 3-question surveys and you win "tickets", "coins", and/or a few cents in actual cash. You can play every 3 hours, and once a day they hold a $50 prize drawing which you are automatically entered in with all the tickets you've won that day. You can cash out at just $2, and they send your money with Paypal. Very cool, no?

Since then, they've added a new feature to the site! Previously, the purpose of "coins'' was that you could save them up as long as you wanted and exchange them for more tickets in the daily $50 drawing. Now they've added a $2 drawing every 4 hours, and you use your coins to place entries in that drawing. You do this manually, and you can enter some or all of your coins (which you can still save up for as long as you want!)

I think this is a huge improvement to the site; you can have a much higher chance of winning the $2 drawing because it must be entered manually, so you can wait until very few people have entered, then dump all your coins. There's even a meter that tells you if a lot of coins have been entered (so if you wait until the meter is close to green, you will have a higher chance of winning!)

I haven't won any of the drawings yet, but I was able to cash out $10 just from the survey prizes, and I am still earning. You can even write your own surveys and other users will answer them!

MyPoints: a slightly lamer rewards site

While it's not as good as Swagbucks (which I have now gotten $185 worth of amazon.com gift cards from :D), MyPoints is another potential way to earn rewards. I've gotten $50 worth of gift cards from them (2x$25) in the past 9 months, so I'd say that's at least worth checking out.

It works like this: they send you a few sponsored emails a day. You get 5 points for clicking on them. That's all you have to do. You usually get more points (depending on the offer, sometimes 10-25, sometimes thousands) if you "take advantage of the offer" (ie buy something, but sometimes it's a free thing like sign up for a website or take a survey.)

That's about it. There are more ways to earn (if you install their toolbar you can get 75 points/month for doing at least 30 searches), but that's the meat of it. Their offer wall is lacking, and the only other way to earn points is by shopping. If you happen to already do a lot of online shopping, you are likely to rack up points much faster, but of course that somewhat defeats the purpose of "free" (still better than no rewards though!)

Other good points:

• Sometimes the ad emails they send actually have really good offers in them. I've mentioned before that I love drugstore.com. That site already has a lot of good deals, but thanks to MyPoints I've gotten additional deals *plus* extra rewards on MyPoints for buying stuff I would have paid more for at any local shop.
  
• You can actually get points for shopping on eBay! You can access eBay search and even bookmark items directly on MyPoints. Then, if you win an item that you clicked through, you get points from the purchase. Just make sure not to clear your cookies between the time you clicked and the end of the auction (if you do, just go back and click again.)
  

Kinda lame points:

• They actually insist on mailing you your gift card claim code. No clue why. The good news is, the letter shows up pretty quickly (less than a week in my experience.)
  
• There used to be a "Spin and Win" feature on the site which gave you the daily opportunity to get free points. It seems to be gone now.
  
• There doesn't seem to be a referral link or banners to use; you have to email people to get referrals, which I don't really like doing (makes me think all my friends and family will just start ignoring my emails because they may see stuff like that as spam. I much prefer to direct people to my blog!)
  

Bottom line: It's pretty worth it, but especially if you shop online frequently. They have a lot of available retailers, and seem to be pretty good at tracking cookies. (I have had to email Swagbucks customer support several times to get them to cough up my Shop & Earn points!)

Getting the most from Swagbucks

I've already discussed Swagbucks in this blog (see: legit free stuff part 2), and I strongly recommend using it. If you've signed up, or are thinking of signing up, here are some tips for making it work for you.

be patient
I have been on Swagbucks about 3 months, and I've found it takes me 2-3 weeks to get enough SB for a $5 amazon.com gift card payout (hands down the best reward on the site.) Sometimes you get lucky, though (I actually made $10 worth this past week alone!)

play often
Doing a search on SB every 4 hours or so is the easiest way to get points (once you get some points for a search, wait another few hours before trying again.) Don't spam or keep refreshing the same search; you'll get served with the "rules" screen and eventually booted from the site.

There are a few things you can do daily to earn small amounts of points. They have a toolbar you can download, and at least once a day just opening your browser yields 1 SB. I use Firefox most of the time, so I just installed it (and other such rewards toolbars) on IE. I only open up IE when I feel like paying attention to those particular sites. You should also participate in the daily polls (1 SB per day) and the "no obligation special offer viewing" (1 SB per day. Go to Ways to Earn > Special Offers and click on the red "Go Now" button. Skip everything and get 1 SB.)

special offers
Swagbucks has tons and tons of "offers" you can complete for points. Some of them are sketchy, but some of them are quick, easy, and painless. I avoid anything that involves downloads or credit cards, but there are plenty of email mailing lists (hint: make a hotmail, etc account just for these types of things) and other random sponsored activities you can do with little trouble. They change often, so I check at least once a week. Lots of "install this Facebook app" ones have popped up lately, so I made a "just for games" FB account to install them. Instant easy points.

referrals
Get matching points from people you refer with banners or your referral link (points for their searches only, up to 1000 SB.)

Yes, it involves pestering everyone you know, but if you don't want to do that, just place a link or banner on your blog or website. You never know when someone is going to click it. Try not to spam people. I start by addressing my friends personally, telling them how much I've made from the sites and suggesting they join. If they don't want to, shrug and move on.

shop & earn
Swagbucks gives you 2 SB per dollar spent in certain online shops when you click through to the website via their shop & earn page. The key here is not let this cause impulsive purchases, thus totally defeating the purpose of getting *free* stuff. However, if you shop online often anyway, see if the sites you frequent are listed on the Swagbucks shop & earn area. I get many of my household items (cheaply) from drugstore.com. It's a poorly designed site, but occasionally has epic discounts and free sample pack offers (hint: be on their email mailing list and keep an eye out for sample offers and discounts.) If I start by clicking through Swagbucks, I'll get (essentially—see below) 2% back. It takes a month for them to clear (which is kind of annoying), but hey, nice surprise a month later.

swagcodes
These pop up usually at least once a day (mostly on weekdays) somewhere around the Swagbucks site/blog or on their Twitter/FB. You just copy and paste the code and into the box on the homepage. Each code yields a predetermined number of points and is valid for a limited time (usually a couple hours.)

analysis: what are you really earning?
If you exchange your Swagbucks for $5 amazon.com gift cards (450 SB), that means that each SB is worth $0.011. If you just do those minimal daily tasks, you'll earn $0.033 a day. That sounds like shite, I know, but over the course of a month, you've made $0.99. A rewarding search usually yields between 8-14 sb (you have a greater chance of winning a higher amount on Fridays), and you can get that at least 2-3 times a day. Let's say that without special offers, swagcodes, shopping, or referrals, you can get a minimum of 30 SB per day. That amounts to $9.90 a month. Sounds a little sweeter, right?

To sum up: Play often, get referrals, always check SB shop & earn before making any online purchases, look for swagcodes every few hours, check the special offers once a week or so. Then use your amazon.com gift cards to buy something useful, like boxed macaroni & cheese.

Earn More part 1: ICS

The unfortunately named Instant Cash Sweepstakes is a recent discovery of mine. I normally steer very, very clear of survey-type sites (and anything containing the words "instant" or "sweepstakes"..."cash" I like), but I'm really impressed with this site so far. It's self-contained (no pop-ups or constant redirections), well-designed (unlike every other survey site that hasn't been updated since 1998), quick, easy, and even a little bit fun.

The basic concept of survey sites is you're getting paid a little bit to help with various company's market research. It's usually a mind-numbing clusterfuck trying to fill one out, and then you realise you could have spent the same amount of time rummaging through couch cushions and gotten more money. That's usually when I start breaking stuff.

ICS has only 3 questions per survey, and you can only fill out 5 surveys every three hours. You either get paid in "tickets", "coins" (which you exchange for...tickets), money (starts at 1-3 cents at a time; increases the higher your level), or a combination thereof.

The best thing? You get rewarded for being smart and answering properly. They have "Trust Levels" which increase with every survey you submit that appears honest (they periodically have surveys which ask you about your profile info to make sure you aren't mindlessly clicking.) If you come across the same survey twice, fill out the same answers each time. You can write surveys, too, which I like. It flexes the writing muscles. :D

I really just wish they had picked a better name. It's like they picked the 3 top words associated with spammy, fake, spyware-laden, pop-up redirection sites. CLICK THE PONY AND GET $100

You know what I'm talking about. Anyway, it's worth a look.