I made $10 in 10 days.

I’ve been bombarded with a ridiculous number of “work at home” scams over the last few years. Every once in a while, one will have a really good hook. Most people today are wise to the “make a million overnight” websites. You read along their well written testimonials until you get to the part about  “Buy my e-book for $29.99.” That is where I usually click away to something else. I’m too cheap to pay to earn money.

Then there are the sites that make less ridiculous claims. My favorite are the ones that promise hundreds a month taking surveys online. Many of them are real, but if you spend 20 minutes taking a survey that pays $.75 that adds up to $2.25 per hour. You have to pay attention because they throw in a trick question once in a while to make sure you didn’t chain your monkey to the keyboard just to make money.

Vindale Research
Of all the survey sites, though, Vindale Research seems to be legitimate. I made about $6 for about an hour’s worth of work. If you have lots of free time and want to take surveys, this one has the most potential. There are a few catches to taking surveys online.

You will  have to enter your personal information and who knows what they do with that.
They only pay twice a month and only when your account reaches $50
They continually ask you to join their partner sites.
I still haven’t been paid yet so I’ll keep you posted.

Swagbucks
So how did I make $10 in 10 days? It’s a site called Swagbucks. The basic premise is that you earn swagbucks (points) to redeem for gift cards. All you have to do is watch videos or take quick surveys and the like. It’s actually kind of entertaining. Swagbucks are worth $.01. While one cent doesn’t seem like much, it can add up quickly. You can redeem points for Amazon or Starbucks or other good stuff with as little as 300 points (or $3). If you find you don’t like it, you can get your $3 and get out.

Here’s how to make more money faster:

Do more than one thing at a time. You can have several videos playing (earning points) in different windows on your computer. I leave the longer ones running in the background on mute while I work on real work.
You can earn points for shopping. Recently, I had to order some supplies for the store. I used the Swagbucks link to go to Staples then placed an order for the things I needed and got over 200 points for that. The downside is they only apply those points in 30 days so that didn’t count towards my $10
You can earn points for searching. *Big Warning* – use the search bar on their page but DO NOT make it your default search engine. It is almost malware and takes some hacker knowledge to get rid of it if you change your mind. With that said, searching is fairly decent. You can earn from 6 to 50 points every once in a while. They use the Yahoo search engine so you get more ads on the first page but just head to the second page and you’ll be fine.
Force feed referrals to your friends and family. Use the referral emails to annoy your friends into joining too. You will get some of their points if they join and use the site.
All in an Amazon card, it is not a bad way to make a little extra money. Most of the $10 I accumulated while watching TV with the laptop on my lap and a nice glass of tea by my side. I traded my 1000 points for an Amazon card. It took 24 hours to be available but then it was easy enough to add to my Amazon account.