Making Money Online - A Discourse on Several Sites that Pay.

Lately, I have referred several people to some "make money online" opportunities. Today, someone else referred me to another one. I think it is likely to be useful if I write out the low-down on a few crowdsourcing and telecommuting sites.
The main downside to working online is that it takes a while to build up a good income. I started on Mechanical Turk, found at www.mturk.com. I transcribed business cards with a ten minute time limit and was paid a whopping $0.02 a piece. Then I started taking surveys and got as much as $2.00. but usually less than $1.00. There are transcription jobs on there that pay $50 or more, and have 12 hour time limits, and some have time limits lasting several days. You have to become "qualified" for those jobs, though.
Mechanical Turk jobs are called HITs, for Human Intelligence Tasks. There are many ways the employers, which are called requesters, determine your qualification for different HITs: taking tests, having certain number of similar jobs under your belt with a minimum rate of success, completing a minimum number of tasks on the site successfully and with a certain ratio of successful vs. unsuccessful task, and others.

Above, you will see that some of these jobs pay quite well, for a job on a crowdsourcing site. I am not considered qualified, though. For some qualifications, all you have to do is ask to be qualified, so it is still worth it to check out jobs you are not yet qualified for. Click "request qualification" or "take qualification test," and then see what happens.

If you check the box, "For which you are qualified" you will only see jobs the site knows you are qualified for - this does not guarantee you can do the job, and I will explain that later. You can limit how low the pay can be too, in the "that pay at least..." box. Here, I typed in $1.00. You can view details like who the requester is and what they want you to do by clicking the title. "View a HIT in this group,"over on the right, is where you go if you want to give it a shot.

More details are given here, usually. BE CAREFUL TO READ EVERYTHING. If there is anything key in making money online, it is that very statement. That is true for any site you go on. Sometimes you will get in here, and find the survey is only for a certain age group and you aren't in it, or other things that you need to know. You only need four rejected HITs out of 100 to be bared from a lot of opportunities.
Having at least 96% accepted work is important, and higher than that is better. With a lot of diligence and a 97% rating, and you can pay a small bill every month, or buy cat litter or do laundry something. Since your wages get deposited in amazon payments, you could buy some music or whatever you want. With a 98% rating, your prospects get much better. You can probably get most of one person's groceries "turking" with that rating, if you shop wisely. Most requesters do not want to work with you until you have completed 100 HITS, and having 1000 or more HITs completed successfully opens up much more. The more you do and the better you do it, the more opportunities open up, and more desirable ones too.
Another good thing is, returning HITs, or sending it back to let someone else do it instead, doesn't hurt your record. Your completion rate is recorded, but it does not seem to make much difference. I try to keep my completion rate high anyway.
You must have at least $1.00 to withdraw your earnings from Amazon payments to your bank, and it takes up to seven business days. There is no fee for withdrawing your money They will not release any funds to you at all until you have ten days with at least three HITs completed each day.
I humbly recommend avoiding the requester p9r. They have many easy HITs, but they do not always set them up well, and sometimes are inconsistent with what they consider good enough and what they do not consider good enough. You have to transcribe handwriting, which is surrounded by a pink box. The pink box is sometimes way out of alignment and the writing is sometimes illegible. You might think some squiggles surely mean some certain letter, the person who checks your work might disagree. I did 65 HITs for them one day, and 5 were rejected. My overall rating suffered severely, as it only takes one bad HIT out of 100 to drop you down by 1%, and that can make a serious difference.

Cloudcrowd.com posts a lot of jobs on mechanical turk, but have their own sites as well. I do not recommend accepting anything by Cloudcrowd on mechanical turk, because they habitually say they have work until you accept the job, then they tell you they have no work at all and you have to return it. They do supposedly have work on their actual website www.cloudcrowd.com, but at this time I have not accessed it. I took the exam and passed it, every time I visit the site I have to set up a new account. Therefore, the fact that I have proved my skills never shows when I want to find work there. If that ever gets sorted out, I will update this post, so stay tuned if you are interested. Crowdsurf is not to be confused with Cloudcrowd. They also do a lot through mechanical turk, and my experience with them there has been very positive.

A site that pays better than Mechanical Turk to begin with, but has much less opportunity for advancement and - in my opinion - less desirable jobs on the whole, is Microworkers.com.

There are some search and click jobs on there that, when the sites are not having trouble, are available in large quantities and pay $0.18 for less that three minutes (really, I think it is about 1 minute) of very easy "work." Dailysearches and MWsearch, are two of those requesters. Those requsters have a lot of technical problems, but when they work, they are easy money.
There are also many tasks on microworkers where you are paid to sign up for something, paid to visit and comment on a blog - or worst of all - paid to download something. I suggest using this site while you are starting out with Mechanical Turk and others, since it will make you more money, but then quit once the others take off and exceed its potential. If your rating collapses somehow, then come back to it until you recover. If your rating on microworkers drops below 75%, you get fired and barred from the site.75% is pretty bad, especially compared to Mechanical Turk, where most requesters want 97% positive ratings or better. It would be hard to mess these jobs up too, unless you wanted to or did not read the instructions.The only trick is READ EVERYTHING CAREFULLY so you will know what to do.

Microworkers.com will not let you withdraw the money you make with them until you have made around $10. There is a fee for withdrawal, based on percentage, and it varies by with payment method you choose. Paypal is the most expensive, it costs over 7%.

Someone just suggested this site to me today: http://weeklypocketmoney.com/?id=erdavis82 Naturally, I created an account. I do not understand how they are able to pay as highly as they seem to want to do, so I am a little suspicious. The reason may be the extremely high amount you must make in order to actually be paid. You must make $300 there before you can withdraw your earnings. It may be hard for many people to do that, and perhaps the money they save by not paying most people helps them to pay the people who do eventually make $300.00 or more on their site. I have no idea yet, time will tell. My malware fighters have not been triggered, the site is free, and they do not ask for bank information or much information ofany kind at all, so I can suggest giving it a shot. Time will tell if it pays what it promises; I had $20 on my account there in the first five minutes, but it does no good until it is fifteen times that much.
NOTE: a few weeks after this blog was posted, I found that my login information seemed not to work, though the link with my name in it did work. Without logging in, there is no way it can pay me. There is no button for a forgotten password, either. This site is just trying to get hits so they can advertise, it is not a legitimate prospect. I will leave this section here as a warning.

The highest paying sites I have seen for legitimately working online are freelancer.com, which I use but have a few problems with, and elancer.com. Freelancer has many highly technical jobs for freelance programmers and graphic artists, as well as virtual assistant, advertising, and writing jobs galore.

  Some of the employers there are looking for slave labor, and you may have to settle for one of those on a short term basis to get your foot in the door - I did. But as you build a reputation, this will change and you will be able to get better jobs.

 Your reputation will show up on your profile as the average of your previous employers' ratings and reviews of you, your completion rate, and more.

Freelancer.com is free to sign up on, but it costs to take qualification tests. If you have any doubts about passing, I suggest trying a free test like you can find on www.brainbench.com and see how you do. They may not be the exact same tests, but if I bombed a free test, I would not take a similar test that I had to pay for every time I took it. If I aced a free one, I would think I stood a good chance with similar, paid tests. 
Rather than just taking jobs that are given to whoever will do them, making just pennies, freelancer.com workers bid on jobs and submit proposals. Upon being chosen, employers send "milestone payments" to freelancer.com for your work, which are released to you upon successful completion of the assignment. Freelancer also charges $5 or 11% of your pay (whichever is greater). They add the $5 or the percentage to your bid in addition to the amount you actually ask for (see image below). They will take their share out of your account as soon as you accept the job, even if you do not have that much in there. They will pay you back when the task is finished and they release all the funds, the entire bid amount, to you and so pay you back. 

You must have a minimum of $30 in your freelancer.com account in order to make a withdrawal. There are no charges for depositing money from your account into your paypal account,but they will sit on your pay for an additional 15 dyas, minimum, the first time you attempt to withdraw it.They say your withdrawal is under review, and they are only going to do that once. Having your account verified in every way before hand does not prevent this additional verification period. They say it is for user's security, and that is as far as they will go in explaining it. You must meet certain qualifications to deposit directly into you bank, but if you qualify it costs nothing.
Freelancer will ask you to "promote" your bid for around $1.50 every time, but this is optional, as is "highlighting" your bid for $1. They will not let you bid less than $10 for a flat rate job, or less than $2/hr for an hourly job, in which case they split the earnings with you 50/50. You will get $5 of the ten, or $1 of the two. There is a limit to how many bids you can place in a month, and you get only ten with a free account. For a monthly charge, you can increase the bids, the refresh rate on you bids (how fast the bids sort-of "grow back" after you spend them"), the number of skills you can list, and the size of the portfolio you are allowed (portfolios consist of files uploaded by you, but you only get so much space). These can also be increased through earning points by being active on the site.
The main problem I have with freelancer.com is they tolerate indecent solicitations. This is not only under their unfortunate xxx "skill," which one can say that one has if one is willing to degrade oneself that way, but also under clerical work. A data entry position that kept coming up and being reposted for a while wanted an "entertainment girl, and office work" Data entry and virtual assistant, with some "entertainment in between to fill in the time." I could have killed whoever posted that, I was so angry. I am pretty sure that is not legal, but do not know who enforces it, since freelancer.com is based in Australia. I have reported these things more than once, freelancer tells me that "besides the positions you mentioned, we have many others..." They are unwilling to do anything, and no longer respond to my complaints about that at all. Sadly, posted jobs come up in the corner like IM messages and you cannot click them off. They stay until freelancer's system takes them down. So you have to sit and look at that rudeness when it is posted and the only way to get rid of it is to log off of freelancer, which is what I do when that happens. Sometimes that means I am not on the site very much for a little while. For this reason, I recommend using other similar sites if you have a lot of technical skill, and if you must use freelancer to build up a portfolio, do so, but get out of it as soon as you can and tell them why you are leaving (if the indecency is indeed why you are leaving). That is actually what I plan to do.

Elancer.com has a much longer process to get on. It requires an interview via skype and (I think, if I remember right) a background check, in addition to whatever interviews and so forth the actual employers want to give you. This site does not seem to have as many fees as Freelancer.com, and I do not think they tolerate indecent "employers" who are there to exploit people either. I have had some trouble with skype that I have not resolved, and that is why I am still using freelancer instead. I could not do the interview. From what I have seen, I think I can recommend it though.

On all these sites, you will have a multiple day process of setting your bank up with it, and verifying your accounts. Most of them like to use Paypal or similar methods of payment. Microworkers gives you different options for how to receive payment. Freelancer and Elancer want a scanned copy of your ID, but the crowdsourcing sites do not. Requesters or employers are not supposed to get in contact with workers outside of the sites, unless the job demands it. Crowdsourcing sites generally do not give even your name to the employers, but an alphanumeric code number instead so you cannot be found by the strangers you work for. Freelancer will delete an employer's or a worker's account if they post contact information publicly. I believe Elancer has similar rules, but like I said, I had trouble that kept me out of that so far.

I hope this little overview has been helpful. It is a long, slow process to begin making money online. However, what you are doing is building a business, and that always takes time but is well worth doing. It is also nice to have options for at least a little money that can add up, especially when you are out of work or need a bit extra for the moment.
God bless all!

Connecting to Blogkeen

Carnality and Subculture People Who Self-identify as Christians

I got out of a certain Facebook group conversation about lust. It was a volatile one anyway, but then some people came on there saying lust was not sin and it was part of gods' design and to look and fantasize is just a little fun in which there is no harm unless you start making plans how you are going to act on it. I was of course called self-righteous and was told I acted like I had the truth and etc. and was called a hypocrite. a hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another. I am not that. I call it lust and sin if I entertain thoughts about stuff that belongs within marriage about someone I am not married to and may not have any inclination to marry for that matter. I don't call it that if it pops in my head and I throw it off, just if I let it roll for however long. I quoted the scripture and said "this is what it says" and they said I had "played the God card" by showing from scripture what he lord asks of us. they said it was unhelpful and offensive and that i was setting my opinions as god's when I did that. I said "Jesus said it is written all the time, and he taught as one who had authority, not as the scribes. If you don't like people doing that, then you wouldn't like his teaching either". I heard professing Christians say, "I think, feel and do this or that, and it is not wrong and God does not mind and I DO NOT CARE WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS" emphasis mine (somehow it was not setting themselves up as god to do that, though. go figure).
How did we get like that in our community?! Why are we so carnal? I have been abused by the church pretty badly myself. the one time i was sexually assaulted was in a church. I also lived in a place for girls off the street that was in the middle of nowhere and came out only knowing my name and my birthday about myself. Due to the so-called deliverance and counseling they did only for me (because I was Goth) that was conditional for getting to stay and i would have to walk fifty miles to town with venomous snakes and such around if i left or was kicked out and they knew i had no where to go, I finished their program unsure what i liked or didn't like and even doubting some of my own memories. they only did that to subcultures people, and i was the first. normally they really helped people get their lives together. It took me 6 years to really start recovering. THAT experience does not give me a right to dismiss things I hear in church that I don't like if I actually find it in God's word. Even if the way it is said is an emotional "trigger" it does not change God's will for my life or make God's word just another opinion I can take or leave and still call myself Christian. It's unlikely most Goths have had any worse crap from Christians in the name of God than I did, but somehow their experiences make it ok to make God up as they go and if someone stands with God then THAT person is a hypocrite whether or not the person practices what they preach. What is the issue? How does one become so carnal?

I need to review Ezekiel 3, which is what God gave me when he called me and he said "I will not make you a reprover among them, for they are most rebellious... but when i open your mouth...say exactly what i give you to say.be not dismayed before their faces for they are a rebellious house... he who hears, let him hear,and he who forebears let him forbear, for they are most rebellious" I always though the was just talking about the non-Christains, I thought most christian goths would pretty devoted and strong, because they would have be to hold on when the mainline church and the world both came against them. I guess I was mistaken, a lot of people in the subculture are just as carnal as any you'll find in the mainline, and perhaps a little more openly and unashamedly so... *sign* I pray that i will have discernment when God is opening my mouth and when I am. Then and only then can I be sure I am pleasing him when I stand my ground in an argument, because it is not fun. "Answer not a fool according to his folly lest you be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes" "there is a time to speak and a time to refrain form speaking". I think this time I was not supposed to talk, but I did. Even if I was right, I was unhelpful and accomplished perhaps nothing. Oh well. I'll live.

An Inspiring Story I am Very Motivted to Share with Everybody

PolyshaCares4Haiti  is still under construction in some areas. However, it is still informative and the work that they do can still be seen. The founders of this organization originally came from Haiti as children. This is a small organization, started grass-roots by two brothers in 1992 who grew up in Haiti with a widowed single mother of eight. They attended school because of her hard work and sacrifice, and now are working to give other kids in their homeland the same opportunity. I  love a story like that!
This is a story of perseverance, and of never forgetting where you come from. This is a story of a very strong woman who overcame odds for her children and raised them right, This is a story of the kind of successful people the world needs to see more of. After reading this story, I am inclined to do whatever I can to help them produce more stories like their own.
Who agrees?
That story, by the way, is found on the "about us" tab. I will definitely be checking back to see what it looks like when it is done. I expect I might even write about it again. Please share this link with others.
God bless and have a very nice day.

There is NO food shortage! The planet is NOT overpopulated! Wake up!

I am tired of hearing how abortion and euthanasia and etc are necessary because "we do not have enough to take care of every one in the world". Here is proof that that is not true, and explanations for why people are dying from hunger. People die from hunger due to inequality and greed (i.e. sin), not because God is an idiot who made a planet full of life but failed to stock it with enough resources to sustain it to its ending.
"The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day according to the most recent estimate that we could find (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food. " Kilocalories are the same as calories.

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Other places to find and verify this information are: 

the United Nations World Food Programme

 http://www.wfp.org/hunger/faqs

 and

http://www.foodfirst.org/node/239 

Some will then ask, "If we distribute the food so everyone has enough, wouldn't the population go up (due to less death and disease everywhere) that there really won't be enough food?"

Not likely. As stupidly and wastefully as we do things now, and asmuch cropland and possible food sources that are wasted in so many ways now, we STILL are increasing food production faster than population growth. If we use permaculture, stop tearing up the earths surface to extract non-renewable resources from deep inside, and stop blowing up or burning cropland because we hate each other we could do so much better than we are now. Therefore I would say I really seriously doubt that will ever be a problem... and get better at practicing monogamy. I read an article a while back about a 27year old who had over 40 children. If everybody lived like that, I suppose the day might come where the earths ability to support us would be truly strained, but as it stands I think we will be all right...

I agree but yet I do not: What is wrong with this wonderful video

This guy repeatedly says more food means more people. That's not true ("The Essence of Anthropology" 2nd Ed, pg. 106). He says that more food = more people, and says this is bad for the planet. THEN he advocates much more productive ways of growing food that require less effort (methods that I indeed support, and much of his info here is great. It's his anti-baby bias I resist here) His data on oil production matching population growth, which he thinks shows that more food means more people and etc, is bogus. A lot of fertilizer goes on lawns (earthobservatory.nasa.gov /Features/Lawn/lawn2.php - last paragraph says there are 3X as much lawn area in the US as there is irrigated corn!), some oil gets used to make plastics (www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm ?id=34&t=6), and oil extraction devastates local food supplies (web search "ogoni food supply" or better yet "workshop_IPPE_pyagbara. doc" for starters...) We're making the earth produce LESS, not more. The way we go about feeding everybody is ridiculous, and the way we distribute food is unjust (another story on another post, and pertinent to same "pro-choice" argument). Abortion is NOT the solution, since babies are not the problem. Corruption and ignorance in resource management ARE the problem. HOW does reducing birth-rate solve that problem?. I'll start on how there is enough food for everyone today, and why people starve anyway another time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo&list=HL1384142490&feature=mh_lolz

Rise

I wrote this for a college English class, actually my very first one. It was, I believe, my first English paper and the second paper I ever wrote. The assignment was to write about a specific event that changed your life or changed you as a person.
I have changed a lot since I wrote this, yet it is still a really good way to get to know me. If you are new around here at Cross Castle, this would be a great way to start out. I am still very proud of this paper. I hope you all enjoy it.

Rise

I have learned that going into a new phase of life and using your old survival skills is like walking around in a house on a rainy day with your umbrella still open. Moving from inclement weather into dry shelter requires certain adjustments. I have come through many changes in a rather short time. I invite you to come with me and we will see what we may learn together.

I am looking out the window at the neighborhood kids playing in the street. They have two jump-ropes and are taking turns in the middle, singing in unison all the while. I wish I could join them, but I cannot. In the first place, I am not allowed to leave the house, and I am never allowed to leave the yard. In the second place, I am white and they are all black, so they most likely would not accept me even if I could go out and play.

Now, I am laying in bed, trying to sleep, listening to the gunfire outside. It happens almost every night. It is why I cannot leave the yard. It is why I cannot go to school. My parents do not believe I can handle school in this neighborhood. They believe it is too unsafe. So, they teach me at home. I never have to write papers or anything else like kids on television do at their schools, but I can read very well. I can read novels written for grown-ups. I like to read them, too. It is like actually going somewhere and doing something important for a change, in the books I am powerful and I always win – even though it is really the imaginary characters in the stories doing everything, I feel as if I am with them. I am always sad when I am not reading. People always ask why I am sad and I cannot answer them because I do not know.

I am eighteen and I am angry. I wish the world would end. I hate my life and I know now why I was always so sad: no one should have to be holed up like that under any circumstances! The kids in the neighborhood that went to school have better prospects for their life than I do, and they are not alone like this. I must face entering the world with absolutely no idea what I am doing. I hate my parents and blame them for everything. My parents could not teach me any better than they did, so they refuse to admit my education was inadequate – except for reading, that is. My reading is great, but that will not get me a job. I do not know how to do anything that anyone will pay me for. I know I will certainly have to face the streets and hear again the sounds that came from the old neighborhood when I was small. But this time I will be out there, too. I am terrified. But I know where I'm going if I die as long as I don't commit suicide -- I strongly doubt that will be necessary. This thought will have to keep me calm for now.

I am nineteen and am driving to Springfield, MO. That is where Kim and Michele live. I met them at a big Women’s Convention last year. I spent my life savings to attend, hoping that preacher woman with an abusive past had answers that would work for me. Kim, Michelle and I have stayed in contact on the phone and through e-mail. It may be a place to start, I cannot be sure. I have only eighty-one dollars to my name. I have no idea where I will work, but there are more jobs there than in Northern Indiana. I know they cannot put me up, so I will have to sleep in the car. I have passed St. Louis and am entering the beautiful Ozark Mountains. Sometimes it feels like I am riding a roller-coaster, the front bumper of my little car pointing almost straight down. It makes me tremble or it may be my emotions causing that. I cannot believe all this is happening; I cannot believe I am doing this. Sink or swim, I am going in – because I have no choice.

I am twenty-one, and deeply disappointed. I am half-running down Commercial Street. There is an unscrupulous-looking character behind me. My heart is pounding and my mouth tastes terrible. I am on my way to take the GED at a building called The Kind Place. It is a thirty-minute walk one-way. It stinks in there, but the people who operate it are indeed kind. I am not certain the bedraggled man behind me is chasing me; he may simply be going in the same direction. He seems harmless and is letting me gain distance on him. However, since he was headed the opposite way until he saw me then nonchalantly changed directions, then crossed the street a few blocks back and is now on the same side of the road as me, I believe I will keep up my pace. You never know about people. It is far better not to take chances. I will arrive early for GED as usual. There is almost always a reason to run in this area.

I am sitting inside at a desk. Sometimes I still hate my life. I believe I belong here, on the streets. My GED teacher keeps talking about college. I do not believe I fits well with who I am. If I studied anything, it would be welding. I may pursue that at some point, but I need any job I can get and my own roof first. I am a roughneck, an under dog, and a survivor. I was born and raised that way. I study in the school of real life. It is a school of hard knocks sometimes, but sometimes it is a school of miracles and mercy. College is for people with silver spoons in their mouth who want to sit around all day in an office and make massive paychecks. I am not made that way. Even if I was, I am so infinitely behind in every subject except English that there is no school in the world that will accept me. They cannot be expected to understand. If I am to bloom, I will have to do it where I am planted. I will stay on this side of the tracks, stay out of trouble and see if I can contribute anything where I am. Sometimes that thought makes me want to puke. It hurts, it is not fair, but that is the way life is and my feelings do not matter anyway, period.

I am now twenty-six and presently making a second attempt at going to college. I changed my major last semester from Occupational Certificate in Welding to a B.A. in music with a minor in theatre. I have lived all over the Mid-West and have been homeless three times in the last seven years. I have an apartment and a car, again. This time, I have friends who share a lot of my interests. With them, I help run a little off-the-wall, hole-in-the-wall place called Wake the Dead. We attract kids who don't fit in (or believe they do not fit in) and try to be good examples and a good influence for them. I believe I have ruined the last two or three years of my life trying to be someone I am not but believed I was destined to be. I am not a roughneck. I grew-up in a rough-neck family, but I never felt I belonged with them. I am Gothic and plan to make Gothic music once I play well enough. I don't care that most Christians believe Goth is of the devil. They don't even know what it is.

I am studying to become an ethnomusicologist. An ethnomusicologist is a missionary who embeds temporarily with indigenous peoples, learns their culture, art and musical style, and puts passages of scripture and worship songs into that style, encourages them to start making Christian songs of their own, and expresses the Truths of God's Word in art and drama. God's word kept me off drugs, off the street corners and from killing myself or perhaps even someone else. With the same Word, I can make people's lives better, no matter what their preferred culture or lifestyle.

I cannot believe I am still alive. As imposing as the odds appeared, I didn't even see at the time how bad the odds always were. I hope everyone can learn that growing up around water doesn't make you a duck. One must adjust to the fact that change will be frightening and will hurt and may take a long time but you must do it anyway because it is worth it.