Legitimate Online Jobs

After all this time, I've finally found a couple places that offer legitimate online jobs. In addition to GoFreelance, which I wrote about in this post, today I've discovered one that I like even better!

Elance is a very professional website offering legitimate online jobs in every category that you can think of.

If you're a writer, like me, or you have other web and internet skills, this is the place to go for legitimate online jobs. You get a basic profile and a certain number of connects for free. After that, you can upgrade your account by paying for additional connects, or additional categories to search. If you're serious about working at home, Elance has the legitimate online jobs, and they are worth paying for. You'll totally get it once you click on Elance and start taking a look around. I don't pay for much when it comes to the internet, put I absolutely signed up. I'm waiting on a couple of proposals for writing jobs right now.

It's so difficult to find legitimate online jobs so I'm very happy to be able to offer you two GREAT websites just filled with people looking for people like you. Click the banner below to start taking a look around Elance's website. You'll see so many legitimate online jobs you'll probably get super excited at the opportunities and possibilities that await you. You really can work from home, if that's what you're looking to do. All these legitimate online jobs await.



Go to LegitimateOnlineJobs4u.com for a complete list of legitimate online jobs.

Take Advantage of Social Networking Communities to Make Money Online

Life is always about give and take. You just can't take forever without being expected to give something back. And if you give and give, you can expect to get back automatically. Making money online works a bit like this as well. Since most of us have by now determined that the get rich quick schemes never actually work, we know that making money online takes some work and some time. However, you don't have to go it alone like you might have had to several years ago. There are whole communities of people online trying to make money using their skills. Get into one of these communities, help out a friend and almost always you'll get the favor returned.

One of the best places for returning the favor is Tagfoot. Tagfoot is a great social bookmarking community. Not only does Tagfoot share revenue from advertising sales, but you also join a group of people who love sharing and helping each other out. Many Squidoo lensmasters belong to Tagfoot, so lots of lenses are shared, rated, viewed and commented on. Whether you create great lenses, write superb articles, want to share blog posts, or some great news you discovered on the internet, friends are there to help you out, and as always with an online community, it's great when you return the favor.



Gather is another fun place to post articles, thoughts, questions, observations and stories. Gather also offers a money making opportunity by giving you points for all your contributions to the site. Points can be redeemed for Paypal cash or other great gifts. There are groups especially created on Gather for commenting and rating other people's posts, images, videos and more. You get out what you put into this social networking group.



Squidoo offers you the opportunity to make money creating webpages, called lenses. Any topic which you find interesting, or for which you have knowledge, you are encouraged to (easily) create a page with images, information, links, videos and more. You can earn money with ad revenue share, plus direct affiliate links with Amazon, eBay, Cafe Press, etc. There are many options to dress up your pages and Squidoo is just a fun place to be. Join groups or browse other lensmaster profiles to make friends. People on Squidoo are wonderful about supporting each other's work. You'll find many of the same people on Squidoo, Tagfoot, Twitter and in other social networking communities.



No matter what social bookmarking or networking group, or groups, that you choose to join - or for that matter, whatever other communities you decide to join - writing on eHow, answering questions on Yahoo Answers, whatever - it is sort of an unwritten rule in the world of the internet to return the favor. If someone leaves you a comment, go and check out their work as well. This kind of behavior establishes long-term internet friendships and you never know who you might meet. There are lots of people with lots of knowledge to share. Take advantage of the knowledge and return the favor to see your own page views, hits, and sales increase.

To add your profile names for a plethora of social bookmarking and social networking groups like Twitter, Tagfoot, Gather, MySpace, etc, visit this page. You will need to be signed into Squidoo to add your link. I look forward to meeting you and swapping stories!

Gather - a Social Networking Grown-up

I LOVE Gather. I hesitated for a little while after joining because I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with too many things going on. As you know, I write a lot of articles for many different sites, as well as Zany Zodiacs horoscopes once a week, so my free time is limited.

Gather boasts the 'best conversation online.' Here is a blurb straight from their website: "Gather's different from other social networks. Instead of talking about "who's hot," members here discuss the day's hottest topics. You can have smart conversations about the world around you, and keep up with friends and family, too."

Gather advertises to the over-30 crowd. It's a great and laid back social networking community with a twist. For every contribution you make to the site, you get points. Points can be cashed in for gift cards to popular websites and stores, or my favorite thing ever...Paypal cash!

Post poems, blogs, thoughts, articles, suggestions, helpful hints, stories, dreams or whatever the heck you want! Despite the fact that I am very new, Gather has a great community of people and someone generally always comes along to leave a nice comment on something that I've written.

Whether or not MySpace or Facebook floats your boat, you'll probably love Gather. I really, really do. This is one of those places that I would enjoy participating, even if there were no points involved. I can post links to my articles, or say a quick goodnight. I can post poetry, random thoughts, ask questions or just chit chat. I can't stress enough how much fun it has been already.

SocialSpark Blog Marketing Sponsored Posts

After venting about the Smorty vs. Google scandal that I discovered recently, I had posted my findings on Gather, a super fun social networking community that I recently joined. I basically mentioned everything that I mentioned here on this blog; the fact that sponsored or paid blog posts = Google PageRank decrease, and that no matter how you slice it, it's bad for the blogger. I received a response from one Carri Bright, an employee of IZEA, the parent company of SocialSpark, another 'pay to blog' website in the mix. Here is a copy of what she wrote:

"I enjoyed your post and think that the decision to participate in sponsored posting is an important one for every blogger and I am glad to see some honest questions and conversation surrounding this decision.

As I work for IZEA, the parent company of SocialSpark, my view on this is a bit different. Obviously, we are firmly on the pro side of the Sponsored Posting argument. We believe that Sponsored posts do have a place in Social Media and that place is rapidly expanding.

If it is done correctly, Sponsored content should ALWAYS be disclosed, should only appear infrequently (a good sponsored to non-sponsored ratio is 1:10) and should fit nicely with the theme of your blog.

I also wanted to let you know that SocialSpark opportunities are all no-follow which makes them search engine (re: Google) friendly and will NOT cause your PR to disappear. In addition, SocialSpark has run campaigns for Sears, Ford, KMart, Dockers, Windows and Coke in the past few months, so big name companies are beginning to see the efficacy of this type of Marketing and we expect lots more in the new year."

I appreciate her response to this matter, however, I signed up for SocialSpark at the same time I signed up for the others. I honestly wasn't thoroughly impressed with what I saw, and therefore never made a post. I've read reviews on other 'at home money' blogs from people who really like this service, and have made quite a bit of money.

Personally, I am going to stay away from blogging for pay. The only thing I can think at this point, having lost PageRank on my other blog, is that if links have to be made 'no-follow' so Google doesn't know what's going on, it's still a scandal. (And I use the word scandal in order to refrain from calling this an outright scam!) It still seems scandalous to me, but I've included the post from Carri so that you may feel free to make your own decisions.

I will continue to gather more information on this topic and forward it along.

The Truth about Get Paid to Blog, Sponsored Posts Sites

Well, well, well... did I learn a thing or two yesterday! When I started this blog, I had signed up for, and had been offering links to sponsored blog post and pay to blog websites that were 'legitimate' and not scams. Well, that little word 'scam' just has a large array of meanings here on the internet, doesn't it?

Though not scams, and likely still a great and satisfying way for some to earn money online with their blogs, sites like Smorty, PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews really irritate Google. I hadn't been using any of them myself except Smorty. Smorty expressly has a blurb on their website that ensures that Google PageRank will not be affected as they do not require you to admit that you are writing a sponsored post on your blog. Well, I suppose right there should have been my first clue. If you are hiding something, that's a lie, and lying has consequences.

Well, I discovered the consequences of using my other personal blog for Smorty sponsored posts, as well as their fun little feature of post exchange. Post exchanges allow you to write posts for other blogs, and in turn, another blogger writes a post for you. This creates a one-way link into your blog so that 'supposedly' your Google PageRank will increase. To me, at first glance, this didn't seem like anything that could possibly be against any rules. And maybe it's not, but more about that in a moment. Once your Google PageRank increases, you get more sponsored opportunities from Smorty.

Well, I own 3 other websites and the two blogs. I've been obsessing over Google PageRank since I began this journey back in September of 2008. I finally got a PageRank increase to 1 last night on every site, including this blog, EXCEPT the blog that I used for Smorty...which is now back to N/A PageRank. That's even worse than Zero, I think. So, it immediately occurred to me that Smorty was the culprit. Upon a bit of research from other great bloggers, I realized that what I had been doing, and selling to the world as legitimate, is actually a great, big, fat GOOGLE TOS NO-NO!

So, I have officially suspended links to any and all 'get paid to blog' links. I checked out Social Spark and I just wasn't impressed with how they operate either. I refuse to tell you that you can make money posting on your blog for any of these sites because the entire point, besides getting paid, is to raise your Google PageRank. If you start at 0, you can't get any rank when Google catches you, and if you start higher and get lots of paid posting opportunities, you'll lose your Google PageRank when Google catches you. It's a no win situation!

So, I'm back to simply writing articles for the sites that I know to be legitimate. These include Helium, Bukisa, Associated Content, eHow and others. Links can also be found to the right of this blog.

Also, I'm having a rather good time at Gather. Gather is a social networking community that boasts 'The Best Conversation Online.' Not only can you make great friends and find interesting topics on which to comment, but you also earn points for your contributions that can be cashed in for gift cards or Paypal cash. More on this shortly.

I am Now Publishing on AddsYou.com

http://www.addsyou.com
username=MjAwOC0xMi0xNiAyMTo1ODowNA==

Make Money Blogging for Smorty

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!! 12/31/2008
******Unbeknownst to me, involving your blog with Smorty or any other Paid to Post or Sponsored Reviews website really upsets Google. I have just proven this with my own experience as Google PageRank was updated and the only one of my sites that is back to N/A is the blog I use for Smorty. I'm officially cancelling my account and removing all links to any Pay Per Post, 'make money with your blog' sites until further notice...(which may be never!)



Smorty is a website that offers paid writing jobs for your blog. Based upon some criteria involving page ranks and blog popularity, you will be offered paid assignments and you can start making money for your blog. Your job is to simply write your opinions about people’s products and services, and publish these opinions to your blog. You will be paid shortly after your blog entry has been approved.

Sign up for Smorty. To get blog approval, here are part of Smorty’s guidelines: "Blogs that are not indexed, have little or no content, are banned from search engines or contain hate related and crude content may be rejected or put on Probation until corrected. Your blog must be older than 30 days and have at least 10 posts to apply." Other than that, the only rules are the obvious ones.

One thing that I really like about Smorty is their post exchange program. They pair you with other similarly ranked blogs, and you write a review for that blog. In turn, another blogger will write a review for your blog. Instead of a 'link exchange' this process is creating an inbound-only link from another blog, therefore increasing your Google PageRank. When Google PageRank increases, not only does your blog popularity increase, but your opportunities for making blogging money will increase as you are offered more paid reviews. I find this little program to be quite awesome!

Smorty is currently offering a beta version of their Digxa Widgets. I haven't yet tried this feature, but I have read that it connects to products by Amazon. If you aren't yet an Amazon affiliate, and don't have plans to become one, this is a super easy way to begin earning commission from product sales. Yet another great way to make money for blogging with Smorty.

Lastly, Smorty offers a friend referral program. You will earn 5% commission on all payments made to any referred bloggers who sign up under your referral link. If you have a blog, it is my opinion that you can’t lose with Smorty.

Make Money at Home Writing for Bukisa

Bukisa is one of my favorite sites to write and post articles and get paid. Bukisa is a portal for user-submitted articles, how tos, and other educational content in the form of videos, presentations, podcasts, powerpoint slides, image slideshows and audio recordings. Bukisa pays for content submitted, and it can be treated like a social networking site as you are given the opportunity to make friends, rate and comment on others' articles, and network for personal or business purposes. Make money for writing articles, creating videos and more! The process is very simple. Sign up here and once you've filled out your biography and profile information, click Submit Content and start publishing.

Everyone has a talent, and everyone has knowledge. Why not share that knowledge with the world via writing, audio, video, or podcast? With Bukisa, you can upload these kinds of documents, and more, and earn residual income from home. Bukisa is a great site for beginners, or to maximize earnings for writing and video projects that you've already created.

Tip #1 - Their website is still a tiny bit clunky, but for the most part it's smooth sailing. Your articles, videos, podcasts, how to documents, and images should be published immediately, although occasionally I get a message saying an article has to be approved. This approval process seems to take less than a few hours, so no worries there.

Tip #2 - If you click Publish and nothing happens, scroll up to check that you've only got between 10 and 30 words in your Short Summary. Also make sure you've got at least 250 words inside your article. The screen doesn't refresh when this is a problem, so you may wonder what's going on.

At Bukisa you can publish text articles, video, audio, slides or images. Pay is based on their current index and revenue sharing model, meaning you can earn the dollar amount reflected by the current index for every 1,000 views your content receives. The other great thing thing about Bukisa is they pay 3 levels down for affiliates and invited friends. So sign up, invite your stay at home mom and dad friends, and have a writing party! You'll earn for your own reads, views and listens, and earn a little something for your friends' content, too!

Stay at home moms or dads have yet another exciting and easy way to get paid for working and writing from home. Bukisa does not require exclusive rights, so you may submit previously written articles, as long as you are the writer. (You may wish to make slight changes to content and title to avoid search engine duplication, a matter in debate by SEO experts.) Articles are usually published immediately, though occasionally you may notice an article pending for review. Bukisa seems to be very good about getting articles reviewed quickly.

Qassia, a way to make money with Adsense, and advertise your blog, website, or pages FREE!

Qassia is a site that allows you to add your own website, blogs, Squidoo links, or other personal pages to share linking opportunites, and Google Adsense ad revenue.

Sign up for Qassia. You will be taken to your user page which reveals how many Qassia dollars you've accumulated, which website links you've added, and any Intel you've added (information you've uploaded to the site). You will receive Qassia dollars for adding Intel to the Qassia site, screening (rating) Intel added by others, and referring friends to Qassia.

Use your accumulated Qassia dollars to disperse them amongst the website or blog links you've added, and rank higher within the Qassia site. Each time you create Intel, you'll be asked to 'backlink' to one of your websites. This will create an incoming (not reciprocal) link to your site. If you're at all familiar with SEO, you'll know that one-way links are more beneficial in search engine ranking. Qassia has plans to add additional ways to use your accumulated Qassia dollars in the future.

Enter your existing Google Adsense publisher ID (simply sign up for a Google Adsense account if you do not already have one) into your account profile. Qassia offers you 100% of your click-thru's for Google Ads displayed on your Intel page or user page. Most other ad revenue sharing websites split ad revenue. Qassia uses other advertising technology to make a profit, so 100% of the Google clicks are yours.

Only content that you have written, or that to which you own full publishing rights is allowed to be submitted. You earn more Qassia dollars for submitting original content, but you may also submit content that you have published elsewhere. Get signed up now and start earning revenue through Google Adsense, and get lots of traffic to your blog, website, Squidoo pages, personal website, or other favorite links. I can't see how there's any way to lose with this one!

Sign up for Qassia Now.

I Squidoo, Do you?

Since I found Squidoo, I can't get enough! It's like being able to create a new website for every idea you've ever had! Not only do you get paid with a share of ad revenue, and a share of affiliate sales, but you can advertise your own business, website, service, affiliate program, blog, etc. and you're already one (or 14) up since you're starting from a popular domain! I LOVE Squidoo!!

Squidoo is a great place where anyone can easily set up a web page on any topic, including personal interests, business ventures, affiliate marketing, or anything else! Squidoo makes it easy to upload pictures, display videos, connect to eBay auctions, Café Press shops, and everything on Amazon. Not only do you earn part of the revenue from affiliating, Squidoo also shares part of it’s ad revenue with you.

Check out my Squidoo pages here

A Squidoo page is called a ‘lens,’ and creators of lenses are called ‘lensmasters.’ Squidoo starts you right out with a page to create your lens, with the opportunity to add a couple keywords, give it a title, and choose a category. If this seems intimidating, which I’ll admit it was for me, you can start off by checking out other people’s lenses, to get an idea of what’s available to you. Either way, whatever you create can be modified once you’re inside your Dashboard, so don’t worry too much about what you enter on the first couple of pages. You’ll have the opportunity to add SO much more to it.

Once you’ve gone through the first couple of screens, click ‘publish my page now.’ This will take you to the next page where you’ll name the actual link for the page. This is the only thing you’ll never be able to change. Squidoo handily fills in a suggestion for you, and it’s likely the best option to simply accept it. Once you’ve clicked all the way through, and published your page, you’ll want to go to the Dashboard. From there you can add more text modules, fun sticky notes for important statements, modules for selling products from Amazon and eBay, voting modules for links and videos, links to Twitter, and so much more. You can always make changes, so play with it as much as you like.



Inside the Dashboard, the My Lenses tab gives you a list of all your lenses with options to edit, label, and even delete. You can also check stats, approve comments, update your profile and look at your favorited lenses from the Dashboard. Create many new lenses, admire those in the Top 100, scope out the Lens of the Day, and learn more about the great opportunities of being a lensmaster at SquidU.

Squidoo takes a bit to get the hang of, and it takes a bit for your pages to catch on. Use all your connections, including the buttons on your actual Lens, to promote your page to places like Twitter, Delicious, Facebook and Myspace. Enjoy increasing revenue from your own advertising and affiliate sales, or shared revenue from Squidoo’s advertising and affiliate programs.

The best advice I can give is to check out other lenses before you decide to get started. This way, you’ll get a picture of just how many options you have to display those things about which you are so passionate. Whether it’s Krispy Kreme donuts, Metallica, your aunt’s hand-knitted mittens, or your Clixsense affiliation, make a lens. It’s cool, it’s fun, it’s easy, and you’ll make a little money for your efforts.

If you're ready to start building your very own Squidoo page, just click here!