Hacktastico!

Pinecone Research:

How to: Make Money on the Internet is a short series on utilizing various resources on the Internet to supplement your income. Be forewarned: it’s neither fast, nor very time-efficient. If you have some free time, though, you can earn a little extra income on the side.

Others in the series: Intro

There are many survey sites on the Internet, the most reliable  I’ve encountered has been consumer testing through Pinecone Research. The pay is only $3 per survey, but there are often perks if you’re in a wanted demographic which is just perfect college students.So far, I’ve gotten cans of yet to be released Red Bull and boxes of Macaroni and Cheese in addition to the regular $3 per survey. Registration is very similar to Demonoid.com, you’ve got to sign up during special “open registration” events which happen every once in a while. Sites like Free Stuff Times often post links when Pinecone is looking for new members. You can try this link, but I’m not sure if you’ll get in because it may be old. Each survey takes approximately 10-15 minutes which equates to approximately $12 an hour on the low end. Not too shabby for some mindless survey filling. In the two months I’ve been doing surveys with Pinecone, I’ve gotten about $30-40. Not too shabby.

So, you’ve come to the (mostly) uncharted territories of the Internet to make money, have you? Well, let me first tell you that unless you’ve got a completely original idea, awesome web programming skills, mad design skills, and a gift for marketing, you won’t make tons of money. Or even a livable amount quickly.

In my experience, Internet Money comes slowly. That said, if you’re a college student like me with a knack for procrastination, the Internet’s a great place to make enough money to buy food other than ramen every once in a while or save for the holidays.

Thus far, I’ve done everything from survey sites, ebay, craigslist, menial tasks for pennies, product reviews, mystery shopping, search-to-win sites, and just about everything in between. What can I say, I’ve got a lot of free time. What they all boil down to is this:

There is no such thing as free money. Everything has an opportunity cost and the tradeoff is your time.

Hopefully, this post will help save you some time in your search for some additional income. I’ll be highlighting the following websites:

• Pinecone Research(Must join at certain times but pays well. $3 per survey, one to two times a week)
• Amazon mturk (Menial tasks. Need strategies to effectively earn money. Payout as soon as you earn anything)
• SurveyHead (Survey site. Sometimes hard to qualify for surveys. Payout at $25)
• Swagbucks (Search-to-win site. Very slow, leave this to relatives)
• Campus studies (College student staple. Not really on the internet, but I’ll cover that later)