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BitWine is a website that allows you earn money online by sharing knowledge with others. How does it work? If you have personal or professional knowledge and experience in a specific topic or field, you can sign up to be a BitWine Advisor and make money by charging a per minute rate for clients (other Bitwine members) who require help on specific topics.

For example, if you were very familiar with Apple computers, you could probably get paid to answer questions or offer tips based on your personal experience or knowledge.

Interaction between you and client will usually take place through Skype, a free internet phone network. BitWine automatically records the length of the session and the client will make payment to you via Paypal after the session has concluded.

What happens after? The client will leave a feedback for your service, which will be a form of reference for other potential/future BitWine members.

Here’s are screenshots of how your profile will be featured on BitWine’s website:

The gist of it is simple. You’re selling your time and knowledge to others who lack the specific skillset or information you have. What is very cool about this service is that you ultimately determine how much you should charge per minute.

How much should you charge? I took a quick look around BitWine’s website: Most of the advisors specializing in fields such as PC troubleshooting, translation or web design charged around a dollar a minute.

This should be a rate to eventually adopt, although you might want to lower it when you first start out without any references.

Signing up as an Advisor is free, however you’ll need to install Skype, the BitWine Taskbar and set up a Premier or Business Paypal account. The taskbar records the length of the session as well rates and earnings. Clients can also use it to easily search for advisors without entering the BitWine website.

Here’s what the BitWine toolbar looks like on your desktop:

Another interesting way for you make money is to display a ‘Call Connector’ window on your website. This is simply a graphic button or link that directs users to a specific Advisor’s profile. Should the directed user arrange for an appointment with said Advisor, you’ll get a commission on all fees earned.

What’s Cool.

• BitWine is currently in beta testing- no commission is charged for each session.
• Open to members from all Paypal-supported countries
• Services will be listed on BitWine indefinitely untill cancelled
• Ability to set up a button on blogs/websites to advertise services

What’s Not

• Payment limited to Paypal
• Limited membership base - no guarantee of clients

Verdict

I think BitWine is promising because it allows a regulated exchange of information between clients and advisors. Is this a great way to make some extra cash? Definitely. Because you really don’t need to spend money to make money.

What’s required is just your personal time, a Paypal account and an internet connection. I imagine that talking with other clients about what you love or know is a rather fun process.

Do try it if you’re interested and please leave a comment if you ever get an assignment. I’ll be really interested to hear how it went.

Digital Journal.com is a user-news community that offers a revenue-sharing program for bloggers, internet users and citizen journalists.

Setting aside a portion of advertising revenues in a cash pool, the community allows members to make money based on their level of activity on the website.

How much you’ll earn very much depends on the number of news and video posts you submit. Commenting and ranking other user-submitted stories is also counted as a way to determine how much money you’ll take from the cash pool: The more you interact, the more you’ll earn.

How much money can you earn from Digital Journal?

Launched in November 2006, Digital Journal already has a healthy number of users who actively submit news-worthy material on the website daily.

Let’s take a look at the top five earners in January 2007.

Let’s further examine the top user for January 2007, a member by the username of cgull. A screen shot of his profile:

After doing some simple math, you’ll noticed that he posted around 350 articles and 280 images in a month’s time, while making around 1450 comments each month. Break it down further and you’ll get this daily upload ratio.

• 9 images
• 12 news articles
• 48 comments and rankings of other articles.

If you can manage this output (or more) consistently, you’ll probably earn US $150+ a month for your efforts. There’s no guarantee that you’ll hit this amount but judging by the top user’s output, this figure is definitely in reach if you take on an equally high workload.

Depending on your familiarity with the internet and Digital Journal, the above tasks might take you one to three hours everyday. Say it takes you two hours a day, this means that you’ll be “working” online for 60 hours a month in order to get get paid $2.50 an hour for your efforts. (150/60 = $2.5). You could probably make 10 times that amount per hour by completing offers at websites like CASH CRATE or writing sponsored posts for blog-based advertising networks.

What’s Cool

• Get Paid to share opinions on news articles
• Website can be a useful source of information
• A good way to promote specific posts or articles from your blog or press releases from your company or website

What’s Not

• Earning potential is very low - Not a reliable source of income
• Payment is only via Paypal
• Earnings Ratio not disclosed and transparent.
• No referral program or benefits for members.

Verdict

In the end, I feel that sites like Digital Journal cannot be an effective second source of income. There’s just too much work to do and the lack of transparency regarding the earnings algorithm just means that what you earn is unpredictable and therefore unstable.

If you work or study in the day, it might be too much of a hassle to put up news articles and speed-comment through other user submitted items.

I would suggest using Digital Journal like a casual user because investing time and effort on making money from it is a huge waste of energy and personal resources.

I think that financial benefits for websites like Digital Journal are largely geared towards the prospective site owners. By dangling a revenue sharing scheme as a carrot, they’ll easily able to make the website chock full of indexable free content while users get literally a few dollars an hour for their hard work.

This is of course, from a purely monetary perspective. If you enjoy interacting with others and browsing through interesting news items, you might find Digital Journal very useful and helpful indeed.

I’ve been writing about Get Paid to Websites ever since I’ve started Dosh Dosh, although I’ve stopped tracking the industry for some time, because I’ve developed a greater interest in internet marketing and the building of websites for profit.

New Get Paid To websites are frequently set up by entrepreneurs interested in making some money. While the barrier of entry is low, the GPT industry is already saturated and heavy on competition.

However, some of the early pioneers in the get paid to industry like Cashcrate and CashonTap are still around and their member base has grown considerably. Other less fortunate sites were not sustainable and shut down soon after their birth.

I thought it’ll be helpful if I revisit the topic of Get Paid to Websites, which is actually a proven method of making money online and one that is particularly useful for those who are unfamiliar with the process of building websites or selling online.

Introduction to Get Paid to Websites

Get-Paid-To websites can be considered the middlemen between advertisers and you, the end-user or consumer. Advertisers pay these companies to generate leads and attract potential customers onto their services.

These sites will pass a portion of what they earn to you when you patronize or visit the advertisers. This mostly entails performing specific actions such as:

• Visiting a website to complete a survey
• Reading Email advertisements
• Referring a friend to purchase a product
• Opening up a free user account on the website
• Purchasing a refundable trial product or subscription
• Giving an email address for a newsletter

After doing these offers, you’ll get paid for each of them that is approved. For example, an offer might state that you will earn $21 if you sign up for a 7 day free trial with an online dating website.

Be sure to cancel your 7 day free trial after the offer is approved by the Get Paid To website and you’ll essentially be getting $21 for free. When it comes to Get Paid to websites, you’ll stand to make a lot more money when you own a credit card.

Free offers are also available for those who prefer not to use any credit cards or sign up for any trial-based offers. These are low priced and usually involve $0.50 to $2 offers. They are less readily available, although this depends on the website.

Who Can Use Get Paid To Websites?

Get Paid To Websites have geographic restrictions that are based on their business locations. Most of them are only available for U.S residents, although there are some who cater for international users.

There aren’t many international offers in these websites and I can only conclude that users based in the U.S are the ones who will make the most money from Get Paid To websites.

However, one way to bypass this limitation is to concentrate your efforts on referring active U.S-based users and earning commissions from their completed offers.

Why Should I Use Get Paid to Websites?

Here’s the main benefit of using Get Paid to (GPT) Websites: You can make money even if you don’t have your own website or know any specific skills. You can do this online from home and what you really need is just willingness to spend time completing offers.

A credit card and a personal webpage for referrals would be ideal if you’re interested in making more money but they are not entirely necessary. A simple paper or online organizer/spreadsheet to record down offers down or payments due would be very helpful when you are actively using GPT sites.

Income generated from these get-paid-to websites can be substantial. According to the forum threads and blogs I’ve read over the past few months, you can make a minimum of $100 to $2,000+ a month. From what I know about get paid to websites, this amount of monthly income is possible and can be achieved with effort.

Are they Internet Scams?

There are always scams when it comes to making money online. Cheaters and unscrupulous thieves exist in the Get Paid to industry as well. Nonetheless, there are many Get Paid To websites which are legitimate and highly credible.

They are staffed by responsible business men and women, who will listen to your feedback and pay you on time. I would advise you to go with the more established GPT sites, primary because they have a history of paying their users. Like everything else, be wary of new websites and learn how to work within the GPT rules.

I would also highly recommend getting a throwaway email address and a free private phone number online to avoid sales calls or junk mail from over aggressive advertisers. Clearing your cookies often before and after you use these websites is also important as well.

Making Money with Get Paid to Websites

I would recommend sticking with a few get paid to websites instead of actively using all of them. The main reason is that use of many websites will inevitably lead to the completion of duplicate/similar offers, which may result in you not getting paid for the legitimate offers that you’ve completed so far.

Not to mention that tracking multiple websites and payments on a daily basis can be rather tiring or difficult, even though you may have all the time to do so. I do however recommend signing up for the websites and using their affiliate programs.

Get Paid to websites have lucrative affiliate programs which will give you truly recurring and passive income, once you have amassed a large number of active users who in turn recruit other users.

I receive a steady amount of monthly commissions from doing absolutely no work at all; without even logging into or using the Get Paid to websites. This is something anyone else can achieve as well.

Dosh Dosh’s List of 23 Get Paid to Websites

I recently spent some time doing research on the GPT industry and have made a list of some of the current and active websites, with some of them coming from this forum thread. These are sites which pay, according to the testimonials I’ve read.

I have not tried all of them personally, but have included links to reviews I’ve written on some of them. There are also no affiliate links on this page because I don’t use affiliate links for websites I have no personal experience with and hence, cannot fully endorse. This link policy may change as I gradually test and use each site.

Consider this a resource list instead. If you’re interested in using these Get Paid to websites to generate income, I recommend doing more research to ascertain each site’s credibility and value. Alternatively, another easy method would be to complete small offers on the sites to to gauge if they really pay on time.

If you are completely new to the Get Paid to industry and want to get started, I would suggest going with established websites like Cashcrate or CashonTap in order to get a feel of how GPT works. I can personally vouch for both of these websites as I have been paid by them many times over.

1. CashCrate

2. CashonTap

3. Gangster Greed

4. Treasure Trooper

5. Instant Profitz

6. Deal Barbie Pays

7. Raid The Bank

8. Rapidloot

9. Cash Lagoon

10. Monster Pays Cash

11. Ezami

12. Fairy Tale Treasures

13. FreebiesonTap

14. My Cash Safari

15. Dollar Pays

16. A Whole Lot of Green

17. Squishy Cash

18. Spare Stash

19. Suite Cash

20. Cash Grab

21. Revolution Offers

22. Swat Cash

23. Ripped Wallet

Get Paid to Websites on this List

Get Paid to Websites are created quite often and it will be difficult to include all of them on this list. The integrity and quality of the sites on this list is important to me; sites mentioned must prove that they have a track record of paying their users.

If you want to suggest legitimate get paid to websites which meet this criteria, please send me email at (awashmaster@gmail.com) instead of leaving it in the comments section. I will need to look at the site before I consider including it on the list here.

Some of these sites will be removed if they go bust or lose credibility so please also send me an email if you have proof that any of these sites are defrauding or not paying their users.

Word is out that there’s a new Pay-to-Search website in town. SlashMySearch is a website which allows you to earn money by using their search engine to surf the net. There’s been a plethora of search engines that offer similar rewards to users. Some of them include the now defunct Kazook, Zotspot, Blingo and Winzy.

I’ve been covering get paid-to-search websites for a few months and I think it’s about time to review pay-to-search websites as a means to make money online.

SlashMySearch pays users based on time-based activity, which means that you’ll make approximately $0.25 cents an hour. They offer 3 levels of commission earnings and have a payout rate of $50. For more information on their program.

I’ll primarily focus my review of Get Paid-to-Search websites on Zotspot and SlashMySearch because they are websites which pay their users to use their search interface. Bling and Winzy offer daily and monthly prizes but unlike the two other websites above, do not guarantee that you’ll earn any money from using their websites.

Why Current Pay-to-Search Websites are Lousy Ways to Make Money Online.

• Consistent active participation is needed. Requires personal effort and time.
• High payout limit and low payment rates. It’ll take a few months to earn a small sum of money.
• Bubbles. Pay-to-Search engines are potentially unstable and tend to implode and go bust. Kazook is a good example.
• Weak search results. Excessive advertising and poor search results plague most pay-to-search programs with the exception of Google-powered Blingo.

Reinventing the Pay-to-Search model

I think the main problem most of money making websites experience is the lack of legitimacy. As a startup, you need to prove that your company is legitimate and the best way to do that is to pay your users.

Herein lies a lesson for most entrepreneurs who are planning to start a website that offers monetary benefits to the public.

In my opinion, setting a high payout rate is ridiculous because you’ll be entering the industry with only promises and very little else. If I were the owner of a pay-to-search, I’ll probably explore the following marketing and monetization strategies.

• Set a low payout limit so that some initial users can get paid. They’ll probably spread the word out of gratitude and you’re basically getting free aggressive word-of-mouth advertising.
• Offer referral bonuses. The basic user will get $1 for every 10 users that they recruit. This does two things: 1) Allows your initial batch of users to get paid. 2) Legitimates your website even during the initial buzz period and rapidly increases your user base.
• Start a well-designed blog or website that is consistently updated. Once a month updates won’t cut it with users (hear that, Zotspot?). For most consumers, silence and inactivity on your company front can easily lead to distrust.
• Leverage more on private advertising and integration with social media. Why not allow users to search del.icio.us, Reddit or Digg? Perhaps include social video websites? Why not integrate your search engine with start pages like Pageflakes or Netvibes?
• Include a blog search option that allows blogs to pay for sponsored listings for specific keywords would be very handy indeed. There are millions of blogs out there and I’m sure quite a few wouldn’t mind paying for some prime advertising if you have a strong user community and traffic ratio.

There’s so many loopholes in current get paid-to-search startups and I would love nothing better than to create a perfect website that integrates all these principles.

My only concern is that I don’t have any statistics to confirm if Pay-to-search websites are actually profitable. Will they make money? Or are they just a waste of time?

It should, however be an interesting venture to explore.