Recommended Site: Hauling Cash
Check out the bottom of this page for a review.
Getting Paid to Read Your E-Mail
07 June 2005
There are many sites out there that offer to pay you money for receiving e-mail. Basically, these sites send you mail with text ads -- when you click on a link and view a page for a given number of seconds, you are given money or points. The amount you get depends on how much the advertiser paid.
Unfortunately, it's hard to tell which sites will really make you money and which ones won't. Some sites only send out ads that will make you points -- these points can usually be used to pay for advertising in their e-mails. Most sites that offer points do have a way for you to sell them or convert them to cash, but points tend to be worth a lot less than regular cash ads. If you're looking to make money without a whole lot of effort, you don't want to join a site that sends more point links than cash links.
If you want to put a lot of effort into things, however, points can be useful. Every one of these sites gives you a referral link -- if you can get people to click on your link and join the site, you will earn a small percentage of whatever they earn. Some referral links are also "pay to promote" links, meaning that you will also make a small amount of money for just getting someone to click on the link. So if you earn a lot of points and use them to advertise one of these "pay to promote" links, you could earn even more money. I don't bother with this, but if you join one of these sites, you'll notice that many of the links you click on will send you to sites where other people earn money for your visit.
There are a few things that are helpful to know before getting started. For one, the majority of these sites all use the same kind of system -- there are actual packages that people can buy to set up one of these sites, so the forms and general layout of the sites tend to be very similar. This means that the links that make you money all look pretty much the same. A typical link that will give you points or money will look like this:
http://www.somewhere.com/scripts/runner.php?EA=200506081530000269
These links are often mixed in with other, regular links. The regular links will not make you any money, so unless they sound interesting to you, you don't need to bother clicking on them.
Don't expect to be earning a ton of money from clicking on these links -- you will rarely make more than 1 cent for each link. Links that are .25 cents and .5 cents are pretty common, decent rates. I'm currently making about 80 cents a day without any referrals, which comes out to about $24 a month.
Also, be careful which links you click on. Many sites have "cheat links" in their e-mails -- they look just like the example above, but report to the webmasters that you may be cheating. The e-mail text will warn you that the link is a cheat link, so just make sure that you read things before you click. If you click on a cheat link too many times, your account will be deleted.
Hints
The biggest tip I can give you is to create a separate e-mail account for these sites before you sign up with them. The sites that make you the most money are going to send you a lot of e-mail -- you don't want all of that flooding the inbox of your regular e-mail account. This is also helpful if you don't always have time to click every day -- the e-mails will all collect in one place so that you don't have to worry about them.
If you don't have a PayPal account, get one now. Very few sites will offer to send you a check, and if they do, they'll charge you a lot of extra money to send it to you. Every site I've seen so far offers payments through PayPal. You can get your money faster that way, too. Some sites also offer payment through EGold, but I don't know a whole lot about their services.
When you're trying to decide what site to sign up with, your best bet is to find a site with a low payout. This means that they are willing to pay you after you've reached a fairly small amount. I like sites that will pay you when you reach somewhere between $1 and $5. This way, you're not having to wait for a long time before seeing any real money. Another good thing to look for are sites that say they have "all cash links" -- this means that you will always earn money for clicking on links, not points.
Hauling Cash
Although I have a whole list of sites that pay you to read your e-mail and click on links (there's a link to the list on the right), if you're looking to start out with one reliable site, I highly recommend Hauling Cash. I make the majority of my money from this site (between 40 and 50 cents a day, just for clicking on the links in the e-mails -- other sites give me no more than 10 cents a day). This site has been around for 2 years now and pays consistently, though I have heard that they are a little slow in getting you the money. You can request payment at $5.
If you join Hauling Cash, expect a lot of e-mail. I commonly get 50-60 e-mails a day just from them alone. Each e-mail has 2 paid (cash) links in it. Nearly every link they have pays either .25 or .5 cents.