PAID ONLINE SURVEYS

I’m now moving into the next phase of my ongoing project to make money online, route out the charlatans and identify some of the hazards. I’ve decided to check out one of the agencies that were advised by LegitimateBusinessReviews.com. The most tempting of the three is makemoneywithsurveys.org which has been given a hugely impressive 9.9 rating, so lets see if it is worth the rating or if its just affiliate hype to get me to part with my cash.

I click the link and am presented with another infomercial, this time with the added benefit of a syrupy voice belonging to ‘Lauren Mitchell’ who tells me via an attached audio file that I can make some, or a lot of extra cash. She then goes on to deliver the hard sell tempting me with the possibility to earn $1000’s for just a few hours work each week just by the click of a mouse.

The landing page is a standard mix of sales pitch and testimonials, all of which I take with a pinch of salt. The normal price of $79.90 has been reduced (for a limited time only, naturally) by half to just $39.95. (I take note of that old favourite selling technique, by adding a time limit on any offer you increase the urgency factor.) Now for a bit of my own shenanigans, by now I’m perfectly aware that this is another affiliate site and they will get paid regardless, as long as I sign up to one or all of the market research companies they are promoting. This first payment is just a bonus for them, I presume they’ll probably forgo some or all of that fee if I am reluctant to pay it. To test my theory I attempt to click away from the site, low and behold a pop up dialogue box appears urging me to ‘wait, how about another discount, pay just $17’ not bad but lets try and see what else I can do. I click away from the site entirely and then return, I do this several times until I find what I was looking for, A new landing page offering me a special friends and family discounted rate of just $7. I’m feeling less confidence in this site by the second but I resolve to pay the $7 fee, after all I’m going to earn thousands, right?

But wait, here comes another offer, this time for added VIP benefits, it will cost me another payment of course. I decline the offer but once again the fee seems to be on an ever decreasing cycle, each time I decline the offer it reduces in step with my reluctance to accept. Eventually I managed to make my payment without paying for any VIP extras, which I discover are given to me free of charge regardless.

The payment process is simple enough, they use ‘ClickBank’ to process my payment and I’m $7 lighter in no time at all.

I enter my newly purchased service and read through some of the things they advise that I do first. They recommend that I set up a new yahoo or hotmail email account to handle my surveys, I could view this optimistically as a necessity to handle all the opportunities that will be coming my way, or I could be the pessimist and expect a load of junk mail filling my in box. Only time will tell if the glass proves to be half empty, half full or just plain smashed!

The next nugget of advice my seven bucks has bought me is a suggestion that I download ‘Roboform’ a piece of software that “allows you to automate the entire registration process. It reduces the time it takes to fill out the forms, register with companies, and take the surveys. It will even remember ALL your user names and passwords that you create!”. The basic version is free to download but those ‘lovely’ people at makemoneywithsurveys.org inform me that “Personally I use the pro version and it stores about 400 website logins for me” no doubt another nice little affiliation is at work here.

So now I have my new email address and I have installed Roboform ,I’m ready to start some surveys. Well almost, first I get some blindingly obvious guidance recommending that I should register with as many market research companies as possible in order to maximize my profit potential.


I am then advised to ensure that my computer is running smoothly, a handy link to a free of charge virus scan is offered, I decide to give it a miss, I’m pretty sure that it will only lead to the offer of a paid upgrade requiring me to part with more money.


Now at this stage it dawns on me that all I am going to get for my hard earned $7 is a some pretty obvious advice and a load of links to affiliate partner sites, but what else was I expecting. The online money making market is a jungle and at the moment I’m at the wrong end of the food chain.


It seems that everywhere I turn, I’m inundated with affiliated opportunities for products and services. I’m starting to grasp the realisation that by playing the affiliates game and developing my own mini-sites I could move up the food chain, who knows, I might increase the odds of making more profit. I make a mental note regarding a future phase of this project, examine how to become an affiliate partner and see how much money can be made through affiliations.

For now I’m going to focus on the job in hand, it’s crucial to see how much money can really be made from the market research companies by completing online surveys. As it stands today, I’m $7 down. It’s time to start enrolling with the market research companies my and see what fortune brings.

I’m feeling unsure about what I have achieved so far, I’ve identified a list of market research companies that pay you for completing surveys but I’ve paid $7 for the privilege. However I have dodged a couple of bullets and not paid out as much as I might have, but I also know that I could of probably discovered these companies myself for free with a bit of search engine leg work.

Next time, I’ll start signing up with some of the market research companies and find out if my $7 has been invested wisely. Then we will really see what the online survey business has to offer, but for now, The Interweb Assassin keeps his powder dry for another day. No need to trouble The Grim Reaper just yet.

Spider
The Interweb Assassin

THE INTERWEB ASSASSINS FIRST MISSION

If you do a quick search on the web you will find hundreds of work from home offers available, the aim of this blog is to sort the legitimate offers from the get rich quick schemes, or as I prefer the alright from the all shite. I’ll give you weekly updates on my progress and give you some real feedback regarding the truthfulness of their claims and let you know how much I really earn. Any obvious charlatans that I uncover will be put to a public vote to determine if the web would be a better place without them, should their guilt be upheld by the public then the Interweb Assassin will be pleased to deliver cold vengeance.



Mission:
Online Paid Surveys

Objectives:
Can you earn from them?
How much work is involved?
What are the pitfalls and how to avoid them?


Phase One

My first action is to Google ‘PAID ONLINE SURVEYS‘

The first result is a sponsored link: Online Surveys Are Scams? By LegitimateBusinessReviews.com

The Interweb Assassin feels the need to investigate further, and decides to click through.

Immediately LegitimateBusinessReviews.com looks cheap and nasty, it feels like an a web version of one of those TV infomercials, it says all the right things but something isn’t right. The first thing that sets alarm bells ringing is as a sponsored link within Google they are paying for every click they receive, but they don’t seem to be selling anything. Why does an independent information site that does not appear to be a merchant need to pay to promote itself? As I scroll down through this web enigma it gives three excellent reviews for three different survey agencies, they all charge a one off sign up fee for their services and offer me the chance to potentially earn as much as $100 an hour by taking surveys online for market research companies, each of these three agencies offer the opportunity for third party affiliates. OK, mystery solved! No doubt LegitimateBusinessReviews.com are signed up affiliates of all three sites and make a nice little cut of the cash whenever someone signs up. Nothing unusual there, standard practice on the web, LegitimateBusinessReviews.com are what is known in the affiliates game as a mini-site, a webpage built with the sole aim of promoting another site or sites by giving a wonderful review and enticing potential users of the service to click through and sign up.

I’m not casting aspersions regarding the legality of any of these sites, nor am I sure that the webscape would be any better or worse for their assassination, but I do feel you do need to be aware that these affiliate sites are only there to push your buttons and get you to part with you cash.

There are literally millions of these mini-sites on the web, used to promote every kind of product or service you care to imagine, from birthing pools to coffin manufacturers. If and when you come across one of these sites you need to remember that their opinion will be biased towards whatever or whoever they are affiliated to. To ensure you get a balanced view always search for an independent review site that is not affiliated, One way to tell if this is the case is if there is no click through link between the sites then its safe to assume they are not affiliated.

So the question regarding these affiliate mini-sites remains, are they a legitimate method of web promotion, or are they a deceitful practice deserving of this assassins ‘great vengeance and furious anger’? Feel free to give your own guidance by taking part in the Public Vote, you'll find it at the top right of this page.

Next phase of my project will see me sign up to one of these Survey agencies and see what they have to offer for my money.


Spider
The Interweb Assassin

THE BIRTH OF THE INTERWEB ASSASSIN

Today I have made an epic decision of microscopic proportions, I'm going to be a Blogger.

My name is Spider, I am The Interweb Assassin, and this is my Blog.

First things first, I have decided to compose a mission statement, not what you would normally find in a blog but so what, I'm The Interweb Assassin, rebel against the conventional.

"This Blog will only relay actual events that have happened to myself or have been passed onto me first hand. I will endeavor to be truthful and honest about my thoughts and feelings and change only the names to protect the innocent. The guilty however will be spared no shame and will find themselves sleeping with the fishes, metaphorically speaking."

Before we go any further you must appreciate that I know very little about a lot and a lot about very little, so please bear with me. I am also prone to terrible grammar and punctuation, so to all my former teachers, tutors and professors, I sincerely apologize, this in no way reflects upon the standard of your varying efforts (even you Mr.Simpole you crazy old sod, don't think we didn't know you were stoned, with your bloodshot eyes and weirdly inappropriate ghost stories.)

As a fan of 'a certain mentalist German philosopher' I feel it's important to have targets and goals, after all 'a man without a plan is not a man', I have therefore decided to promise a few undertakings:

1. I will update this blog every week
2. I will not ramble unnecessarily
3. I'd like my blog to be entertaining and educational, but I'd settle for it to be relevant to me tomorrow when I come to review what I've written today

As this is my first blog I should give you an idea of my plans. The UK has just declared it is in the grips of a recession, the pound has hit a 23 year low against the Dollar and in the UK there are now 1.92 million people out of work. It would be easy to say we're all screwed, abandon hope ye who enter. But thats not my style, I prefer the view that in times of recession there are actually more millionaires made than in the boom times. For those fortunate enough to possess a little capital to invest, now is the time to pick up a bargain, with stocks, shares and real estate all at rock bottom prices get out there and stock up on cheap assets, sit back and wait for the prices to correct to sensible levels and reap the profits. The old adages 'buy low, sell high' and 'buy when there is blood in the streets' never ring truer than in times of recession.

For those of us without the capital to invest, how can we get it? I plan to trawl the internet and test a few of the many work from home offers that are available, my aim is to sort the legitimate offers from the get rich quick schemes, or as I prefer the alright from the all shite. I will give you weekly updates on my progress and give you some real feedback regarding the truthfulness of their claims and let you know how much I really earn. With promises of huge profits it will be interesting to compare the claims made to lure you in, with the actual returns available. I hope during the progress of this project I can earn a few quid, but even the optimist in me is not too expectant.

First up for a Spider style Interweb Assassination are......

Online Paid Surveys

Can you earn from them? How much work is involved? What are the pitfalls and how to avoid them?

Next week I'll give you an update on my progress and let you know if I've unearthed any candidates requiring the professional attention of This Interweb Assassins services. Genuine amenities can rest easy but charlatans, scamsters and swindlers beware, This is Dealey Plaza and you are in my cross hairs.

Spider
The Interweb Assassin