THURSDAY AFTER NO COMICS

It truly is a let-down feeling.

You've unwittingly trained yourself (or been trained by the industry) to look forward to Wednesday. It's something you look forward to almost instinctively. You get that e-mail with the weekly pulls, or check your favorite website for new releases and the anticipation starts.

And then there's two issues. No Spider-Man, no awesome indie books, no Hickman. So I didn't bother going to pick them up. And boy, does it feel lousy.

Not to say Shadowland, and Hawkeye & Mockingbird aren't great books. I enjoy them both a lot so far. But they're both relatively new, and so I succumbed to the notion of giving it a rest for a week.

So here I sit. Waiting patiently for Cup'O'Joe (when ever that might be posted), not satisfied by The Buy Pile (since I didn't buy anything myself), anxiously waiting for the new pull list e-mail, to see if next week will be better.

Re-Org

So you've already noticed my first writing nussance, the "...". I'll try to be sparce with it, so call me on it if it gets annoying.

Bear with the reorg, as I like to call it. This is going to be a comics blog, but I ain't throwing away all the old stuff.

Lame update.

So I haven't posted in a while. Why, you say?

Because things are sloooooow!
Sure, Readbud is a cool new site, and I've been trying to get some signups for peoplestring, but the real exciting stuff is the surveys. Earning $4 in 20 minutes is exhilerating, but I haven't been able to do many of those lately and therefore a lackluster mood has fallen on me. Maybe they slow down for summer.

On the flip side though, I have been actually getting alot of cash lately. I've got $55 spendable dollars at the moment and many bids ongoing at eBay, lol.

The only exception is Webperspectives, where I've been waiting for a month for a 300 point survey to clear. And what do I find this morning? A 200 point survey, that I finished a full week after the previous one, has cleared, still leaving me 100 points short of cashing out! **grummble**

My well earned money is slipping through the cracks…

So here’s how it works. As I’ve said, I report my earnings in USD. Why? Because most of it comes in that way, and I spend most of it that way, too.

Now you’d figure if I were to report something Canadian, I’d to a quick conversion to American when I earn the funds so I can add it to the list. The only problem with that is when I go to spend it. You see, it’s not the exchange rate at the time of earning that matters, but the exchange rate at the time of spending.

I just rewarded myself by buying the Lifetime Membership at comicbookrealm.com (don’t worry, the site is still free, it just gives me a cool little badge). But when the transaction was over, I only had 0.65CAD left (0.62USD), instead of the $2.29 I should have had, according to my spreadsheet of earning and spending. Since most of the funds on paypal were CAD at the time, I got hit had on a terrible exchange rate.

Now don’t get me wrong, the rate has been excellent lately, but I guess I’ve just been getting too used to it. In total, I lost $1.67USD. I split it evenly among my Focusline and Lightspeed earnings since they were the only two CADs I had at the time.

One new thing I've learned on this venture. Still worth it!

MyPoints: Spin & Win

I think the daily spin wheel is gone. Now I rarely ever won anything, but I did thnk I would be able to redeam the points for some money some day. It seams less likely now.

June Totals, a bit late...

Here's the scorecard for June.

$20.00 Focusline
$10.00 OpinionOutpost
$10.00 Clearvoice
$9.79 Ipsos
$5.00 Swagbucks
$3.45 Gagabux
$2.00 Neobux
$0.11 Buxism

Grand total... $60.35. Feels good, but I don't think it'll happen again next month. I'm predicting another solid $35-40. Feels great though!

Webperspectives.ca

So this site looked like a joke at first. The profile surveys were incredibly long. The surveys came ridiculously seldom. And when they did, they were rarely for points, but for sweepstakes entries. Not to mention, you can't actually find they available surveys on the site anywhere, they're all started through e-mail.
Once you do finish a points survey, it doesn't even go to the pending column right away. It might take a few days, which really wigs me out, since I'm not even sure now that it didn't hit a glitch. From there, it sometimes takes up to 3 weeks for the points to become earned.

...So why have I been bothering?

Well, when they do send you a points survey, it's rare that you don't qualify. Also, I haven't come across any $1 surveys yet, they are more in the $1.50 to $4.00 range. So all in all, I'm pretty happy with this little-engine-that-could type site.

Downlinerefs, the down side.

I had to drop my first direct ref through the site. The problem is, when someone signs up under you, there's no way to garuntee they'll keep clicking, except that they want your credits. Well now I've canceled the contract, lost the commision credits to downlinerefs, lost 4 days worth of credits on the contract, and gained maybe $0.12 in referal clicks. That definitley sours your take view of a system.

On the up side, I did over $10 worth of surveys yesterday!

Dude, what's the deal (conversion rates) ?

So I wanted this site to be a Canadian PTC/Survey guide. And yet, I do all my reporting in USD, what's the deal. Well... it's just easier! That's what most sites work in. Instead of using the currency that only a few sites pay out in as my base, I go with the masses. That way, on the few occasions (like IPSOS yesterday) when I get a payout in CAD, that's the only time I have to see what it's worth in another currency. In this case, the $10.00 CAD was $9.79 USD. It's only 21 cents difference, I could have just pretended and lumped it in, but I wanted to be accurate at the time of Cashout.

Not to mention, most of my online buys will be in USD anyways.

A Gaga bux sign-up from Downlinerefs.

So someone finally took my offer on Downlinerefs.com. 150 credits for 11 days of activity. I thought that was an amazing deal, but it took forever for someone to grab it. I guess since most people are already on gagabux anyways.

So I stipulated in the contract that they should click at least 15 ads per day. I thought that was pretty easy. And yet, the dude is holding steady at 14. I know I'm nit picking, but dang. Oh well, what's most important is if he sticks with it after the 11 days.

My first PTC payout, you wouldn't guess...

Buxism. I joined because it looked well put together. Turns out the site wasn't even live yet. So I forgot for a bit. They send me an e-mail to get us to start the clicking.
So I have what they call Pioneer membership. I was alowed to do my first cashout at $0.10, so at least I know it's legit. I got the first $0.11 in my paypal account instantly. Next cashout at $1.00.
The only real problem is that you don't get $0.01 per click. Some are less, some are way less. But if you sometimes wish you had more things to click when you're bored, then try it out. I'd love to know what non-pioneer standard membership stats are like.

Pending Payments

So JimFred was right. Gagabux won't let me have two pending payments at the same time. I just went over $2.00 for the second time and tried. I guess it's a way of letting people's balances grow and tempting them to reinvest.

I can wait. The next one is going to be huge.

First Aquisition

So you say, “Hey Erik, I thought you were going to tell us about what you do with the money you make. What gives? Have you just been hoarding it? 95 bucks and nothing?”

Well yes, but there’s more to it than that.

The first thing to realize is that my total is just money I’ve “cashed out”. Sometimes it takes a while to get to me. I’ve cashed out $45.71 from Focusline, but the first payment is still up to 2 weeks away from my Paypal account. Also, cheques that come through the mail have to be processed, printed, and then sent alllllll the way to Canada.

Second, I have actually spent some of the money on things related to this venture. For instance my Clixsense upgrade. Also, I bought a You-Cubez cube.

Once you factor both in, I only had $28.08 of hard “in my pocket” cash.

…

Well I just spent $28.00 today! A new member of ComicBookRealm.com was selling his collection and I found some inexpensive comics that I needed. I picked up Amazing Spider-Man 156, 158-9, 245, 410 and Spectacular Spider-Man 80. They are mostly in the 5.0-6.0 rage in quality (except for SSM 80, which is a 2.0), so it’s nothing to write home about, but they do help fill in some gaps.

I just feel bad that I’m delaying my ComicBookRealm Lifetime Membership by about a month. Sorry, DoughBoy!

SwagBucks Surveys & FocusLine

In case you were wondering, they are the same. I pulled up the Swag ones, then the Focusline ones, and both surveys listed were identical. I completed the Focusline Alcohole one, and low and behold, the Swag Alcohol one told me I had already filled out that survey. Also, Swagbucks was going to offer me 125 SBs, Focusline was offering $2.50. Since I get $5 Paypal cards with my SBs (which are 700), then each SB is worth $0.007. So the SwagBucks survey was worth $0.89. What a rip! Even if I get Amazon Giftcards with my Swagbucks (450 SBs), that would be $0.011 per SB. That survey would be worth $1.39.

After all that rambling, stay away from the Swagbucks surveys until they start making up their own surveys or use a different provider... maybe one that we Canadians wouldn't normaly have access to.

PS I'm pretty sure you can do your profile over again for SBs, I'll keep you posted.

PPS I did one of the profile questionaires over again, it let me, and I completed it, but I haven't received any SBs yet.

Chainbux.com, am I really surprised?

And the answer is no. I've seen ads for "bux site building" services out there. Obviously, these guys had that done. Thought they could make some easy cash. But then the advertisers don't come flocking, but the regulars keep clicking, and before you know it people are asking to cashout. I was barely halfway there (I think I had $2.48), but it is a kick in the a$s. I knew it didn't feel right, but I figured I'd keep going until my first cashout and count myself lucky. Didn't even make it that far... bummer.

Gagabux: Wow, that was fast.

Today is day eleven and I've hit 200 clicks. (I was at 199 last night. It drove me crazy that I didn't get one more.) That's $2.00 from my own clicks and I can now cash out. Not to bad for an "imitator" site. Hell, I like it better than Neobux, which I never really got the hang of... or maybe you really do need to upgrade there to make it worth it. Anyways, with JimFred's contributions, I cashed out at $3.45. I wanted to just get $2, but I guess it's all or nothing.

DownLineRefs.com, and why I haven’t posted about it yet.

It’s a tricky site. The more into the whole making-money-online thing you are, the harder it is to enjoy this site. So how do I explain it without turning people off right away?

If you want someone to become your referral, but they aren’t your best friend, you need to offer them something. Well how about credits… credits that they can then in turn offer to someone else to become their referral. Solid plan, right?

So how do I get these credits?

Well the first one I think you’ve already guessed. Signup as someone else’s referral. But obviously you can’t already be a member of that site. So you need to look for an offer for a site that you’re not already a member of, that’s the biggest problem. I got lucky. I had been seeing way to many ads for Gagabux to ignore at this point. I knew I was going to sign up for it someday anyways. (I have no idea which one I’ll sign up for next!) So I looked at all the “contract offers” for Gagabux. (and btw, there must be 100 PTC sites that people have offers for). One person was going to offer me 12 credits per day for 16 days. That was the best per day rate I found. I also didn’t want to sign up for a contract that was longer than I could handle. So I click the link in the contract, sign up, provide my username for gagabux to the contract provider, and start clicking. Eventually, the contract provider sees I’ve become a referral, verifies me in Downlinerefs, and each day there after, an equal portion of the points start trickling into my account. If I stop clicking, and the contract provider notices, they cancel the contract.

You can also buy referral credits. Since I don’t plan on doing that, I don’t have the rates here.

Also, there are ads to click for credits. I usually click all the ones that offer 0.60 to 0.30. Anything less than that, and it’s totally not worth it.

Lastly, you can refer others to Downlinerefs to get credits.

I have currently posted my first contract offer. It’s 13 credits per day for 4 days. I figure Gagabux is such a great site, it only takes 4 days to get hooked anyways.
I’ll add more notes as I learn more about the site.

a minor PeopleString adjustment

PeoplePoints are now only good for the month... I think. And they will be converted every month... I think. We'll see at the end of the month. It'll be nice for the guessing to be gone from the site.

One rarely gets a second chance...

So I was doing the FocusLine daily $1 survey, and got screened out because I said I wouldn't eat at KFC. We rarely know why we get screened out, but I do this time. How, you ask? Because I clicked on "Try to Qualify for another survey" and it ran me through all the same questions again. I was socked, to say the least. I did not say I would not eat at KFC this time, and I was in.

I do not recommend answering surveys how you think they want you to answer them. If companies stop seeing the value in offering these surveys, then this money pool will dry up. In this case, I don't feel like a hypocrite because I actually would eat there... as like, a reward for not eating there in 3-4 years.

It's just such good food, and so bad for you, lol.

I just keep posting today...

I read this article about LibertyDollarReserve today.

The first and last points don't really mean the site is a scam to me, but the other two are troubling.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100527193611AAVel5P