You probably noticed that last week, I had zero postings here on sitecash. Don’t worry, I haven’t abandoned you and this blog. I was doing something that I know will ultimately lead to making more money–I took a vacation.

The 3-R’s

You see, taking a vacation is a great way to capitalize on your efforts by allowing you time to rest, reflect, and reengage yourself in your project. By taking a vacation I was able to rest from the daily grind of writing a blog while still holding down a 9 to 5. It also afforded me the opportunity to reflect on my progress during the last couple of months–for example I thought about things that have worked well (writing frequently and posting on sites like Digg and Mixx) as well as things that haven’t worked so well (i.e. having a text heavy blog); Don’t worry I’m thinking about moving to something with some quick loading images and color as i’m sure it’ll improve your blog reading experience. By taking my week long trip I also feel reengaged as I spent some time (mostly during the flights to and from) thinking about new topics I could find myself getting excited about writing about.

Most important…

The most important thing though has been a break to avoid burn-out. Routines can cause burnout because they have a tendency to bore us and thus render us ineffective in pursuit of our goal. By taking one week to break out of my routine and change my surroundings i’m ready to write blog posts for the next 6 to 9 months.

After putting up sitecash.info statistics from Compete, I thought I should do the same for Alexa despite the overwhelming feeling in the blogsphere that Alexa’s statistical geniuses haven’t put together a product which gives an accurate traffic/ranking picture. Either way, here is a sampling of the Alexa stats for the blog as of January 6th, 2008 (click the image below to see full screen).

Again, keep in mind that although Alexa statistics are sometimes viewed by bloggers as inaccurate (because of the dependence they have on the Alexa Toolbar) it does have some impact on the money that advertisers are willing to pay us for advertising.

The trend in making money online is to give you, the entrepreneur, choice. You can now choose your advertisers, your platforms, duration of the advertisements you run and more. That trend of providing choice is no different when it comes to getting paid for your opinion because companies all over the world are vying to learn your likes and dislikes and attain your attention. This is evident in the world of completing online surveys, and providing information about you and your buying habits.

As a case study, I have been looking at the cashcrate network (although there are others).
At cashcrate they list offers that you can complete for cash. Most of the offers require you to provide some basic information about yourself and/or to participate in a survey of some kind. Each survey and each time you release information you get paid a predetermined rate. Some rates are reasonable while others are a joke.

Here’s what I found

As an example, upon logging into their website, I found a list of ‘opportunities’ to volunteer my personal information (i.e. an email address) and complete surveys. On that first page, I saw that they would pay me $8.00 to open an eBay account (not bad because an eBay account is something that we could all use at one time or another). On page 3, I saw that there was a Netflix offer of $13.50 when you registered for a 14-day free trial (again not bad). However, on the flip side there were offers for a mere $0.40 (yeah that’s not a typo– forty cents) to complete a bed bath & beyond survey.

Some basic tips

My suggestion is to set up an email account that is made specifically for this purpose. You don’t want to give out your primary email account as I am guessing you will be plagued by frequent advertisements and offers which would get annoying if you are simply trying to send Aunt Jennifer a thank you email for this years holiday gift. My second suggestion is to only complete offers which are worth your while. Why would you complete a survey that takes you 20 minutes for only $1.00–I think you are worth more than $3.00/hr. Lastly, trust your instinct. If you feel uncomfortable giving out certain information then don’t–even if the offer is juicy. Comfort counts for a lot in all things online and if this is compromised then it probably isn’t worth it no matter the pay.

If you try cashcrate.com i’d be interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences as would the other subscribers i’m sure.