How would I make money fairly quickly and transfer directly to Paypal?

So, I encounter Minecraft a couple different ways via this site, some friends, an online review... I play the survival mode a bit, look up some reviews on You Tube... now I want an account.

Thing is, we're low on funds in this household, so I can't pay for it via credit card unless I wait for maybe two weeks. I'm hoping to find a way to get it before then.

It's like $14 bucks. I swear, there should be some way to make $14 in a couple days online.

I went on MTurk, where I actually do have the funds now. But when I got around to signing up my bank account (which I really didn't want to do in the first place), it says it'll take like one week to verify that it's mine and another week or more to actually get the accounts transferred. And having to deposit to my bank en route to Paypal is not only annoying but will probably involve one or more fees along the way (just from past experience with moving money around).

The other site I've signed up for in the past doesn't pay in cash, just gift cards and such. That doesn't help me at all. I just signed up for another one today, but it's got a high threshold ($25) and most of the offers are "give us your info so we can spam you" or "sign up for this trial offer so we can charge your credit card when you forget to cancel in time."

I don't want any of that. Now, I've been doing stuff on Kongregate and IMVU for game credits, and between that and MTurk I have a pretty good idea of the types of offers I'm willing to do for money. More on those in a sec. My question is, has anyone here had good experiences with an online money-making site that would likely fulfill my needs?

Here's the stuff I'm interested in doing:

• Fill out study surveys from a professional-looking hub for university studies.
  • MTurk gives a bunch of study surveys for Qualtrics, which I've come to trust. They don't look like spammers or commercial entities; they look like university-level information gathering.
• Play game trials, possibly involving downloading and installing one.
  • However, I won't install the ones that clearly look like "games for the sake of advertising" or "games for the sake of spyware" or "games for the sake of monitoring your internet usage" in any way. I avoid browser bars for this reason.
  • Some things I've been happy to try in the past: Fiesta, Runes of Magic, IMVU (still haven't got paid for that), Wee Me. So basically online accounts for free games are pretty cool. If I didn't already have accounts with Puzzle Pirates, Kingdom Of Loathing, and Travians, I'd love to be paid for their trials.
• Giving opinions of products or services, if it doesn't involve signing up for things other than the site I'm getting the surveys from, doesn't involve downloading or installing anything, and doesn't require any personal information beyond the expected age, gender, and zip code.
• Watching ads. I love this one on IMVU! Wish they had more ads available. A lot of the ads are very interesting and hey, I just got paid 85 credits for sitting through a two-minute commercial.

Things to watch out for:

• I want to be paid in cash, not gift cards, certificates, or offers.
• I don't want to give up my bank info; I want to be able to send my winnings directly to Paypal. Or at least have the option of doing so.
• I don't want a site that claims to have tons of stuff to do, but ends up having only a couple offers worth filling out, the rest of them being spammers, scammers, or attempts to get my credit card information.

If you have any info on this topic, thanks so much!

You're better off just waiting, most of those are a huge waste of time.

Shit, M Turk doesn't pay in a balanced manner at all. What the fuck do you mean, 3.50 with a .50 cent tip for writing a fucking five page essay on the Colt 1911?

I don't mind the work I get at MTurk, or the pay scale, really. I realize it's not anywhere near the pay you'd get at a full-time job, but on the flip side, the employer doesn't have any assurance of quality (since they didn't personally hire the worker and don't have a history with them), and has to physically review each and every job to make sure it's worth paying for.

Plus, it gets rid of minimum wage, which I'm in favor of. As far as I'm concerned, minimum wage is government-enforced unemployment: people whose work is worth less than X dollars an hour are not capable of finding work legally. I expect I'm making under $4 an hour, but it's work I find interesting and enjoyable, and I don't have to do very much at a stretch. My productivity does go down a little from scam offers (I have to learn to recognize the scam offers and avoid them, and they're not always evident from the offer itself), but that's to be expected on a site like that.

One of my favorite benefits from MTurk is that I get to review each possible job and decide whether or not to do it, something you'd probably never find in any regular line of work ("Nah, boss, that just doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy doing").

Anyway... yeah, I most likely will end up waiting. But I still want to find out possible alternatives, because I've seen many possible sites advertised and lauded on various blogs and whatnot, and I'd like to find the personal experiences of people I'm pretty sure aren't just working for the companies they're advertising for. (One of the major scams on MTurk, and a personal pet peeve, is that some people offer to pay workers to run over to sites and submit phony reviews of things ("Best thing evar!"), sometimes en masse with fraudulent emails. I just, today, notified a company that a man on MTurk was paying people to submit phony negative reviews of their business, and I hope that company manages to do something to stop him.)

So... more advice, please :)

ETA: Oh, and I think it's neat to be able to take a job that's small and repetitive and put it up on a site like this for random people to accomplish for you for pennies. It's similar to the wiki process or those Captchas. I just earned like four bucks the other day just transcribing test answers from high school kids whose handwriting at times made me cringe... but the work I did, at 9 cents per four-answer transcription, probably made some teacher's job a whole lot easier.

edited 26th Nov '10 9:12:01 AM by Kilyle

Mturk typically is most rewarding for those who are able to search through massive piles of time-inefficient gigs to find the efficient ones. Even the ten cent jobs can be pretty good if they're the sort you can do at a fast speed. I generally avoid going below ten cents, though. If it's articles, I don't go lower than $1.75ish, and the lower end of that price bracket I reserve for low word count, easy pieces that I can churn out quickly. Sure, it's an e-sweatshop, but it's not quite hopeless yet. The place has definitely degraded over time, though, and that worries me. (This would be a good spot to get into an argument over minimum wage, but that's a whole 'nother thread.)

I would recommend textbroker.com if you're interested in getting money strictly from writing. The interface is a little odd, but the pay rates tend to be better these days. You have to send an IRS form before you can pull your money out, however.

Ooh, IRS stuff. Now, I don't file taxes because my income is so abysmally low (I'm unemployed and earn less than $100 a year). I figure I'll file if I ever get a decent amount of money out of these sites, but I don't want to be forced to file when I'm so far under the point at which the IRS requires its cut. (We discussed this matter with H and R Block at some point, and the basic conclusion was that I don't have to worry about it.) So I don't want a site that requires that, though I'm okay with a site sending out forms to me after the fact.

And yeah, if I were trying to earn money by writing at the moment, I'd revive my account at Associated Content. I wrote up a few articles for them at like five bucks apiece and I still get (minuscule but real) pageview payments from the articles I wrote; I like that system, even if the up-front money isn't great. But I'm open to news of other writing sites. Maybe sticking with AC is a "sunk costs fallacy" thing because I had to fill out an awful lot of paperwork to get in there in the first place.

ETA: Technically, I do get paid for some writing on MT. It's of the sort "rewrite this paragraph in 100 words or more" and I've actually found them a good exercise for my skills in improving rough drafts. It also helps me think out appropriate synonyms and figure out ways to say the same thing in more useful words. So it's almost like getting paid to take a short class in improving your writing.

edited 26th Nov '10 10:10:08 AM by Kilyle

I have no Internet-based suggestions, but why not sell some stuff you do not need anymore instead? For example, it is not difficult to sell back old computer and console games - sure, you are not going to make big bucks in that way, but 14$ should not be impossible.

edited 26th Nov '10 3:18:55 PM by Carciofus

I've considered a little ebay business or even a garage sale. The reason for choosing an internet solution is really a lack of hassle. It's much easier to click a few things and pay my attention than try to transport or mail things, and I have (potentially) a wider audience waiting to pay me for things than I would at a garage sale.

Though I will definitely take that thought into consideration now. It's worth a shot.

Got my Minecraft account now, so the immediacy of this topic is gone. However, I'm leaving it open for a discussion of any sounds methods for making money online (in small amounts, not crazy Urband Legend pyramid schemes or anything).

I did manage to make over $20 from MTurk by now, and have used a little over half that to pay a fee on my checking account, so that's all good :)

Writing contests with no entry fee.

Not reliable, but there.

And if we're thinking like that, there's very few agents or publishers these days who won't take online query letters. If you've got enough time to be playing minecraft, you may as well take a stab at something short just to see if it sells.

Keep in mind that the key to getting published is usually writing like you've gotten a high school diploma, having manuscripts to send, and making sure publishers are so saturated with them that they end up in the right place at the right time, so it's pretty ideal for someone with a little time on their hands.

Just keep in mind that sending actual letters or picking the contests with entry fees will usually add up. Getting published is a lot more about sending different things out again and again, and postage cost adds up for big manuscripts.

That's true, and I've considered some different avenues for my writing back in college; it just seemed like a tactic that required some staying power to get results, so it wasn't great for the Minecraft quick money need. (One could argue that if I'd stuck with it back in college, I'd have the money I needed to begin with, but that's another issue entirely.)

On a similar note, there's the sending of jokes to Reader's Digest. If they accept a joke, they pay between, what, $50 and $300 last I checked? So if you get even one of them accepted, you've made a good deal of money for a little joke. Then again, they have to sift through tons of jokes yearly and aren't likely to print yours, so the money is hardly sure; and it takes them a long time to sort through them, so the money, if it comes, isn't fast. Then again again, I keep looking at their current stock of jokes and going "My jokes are so much better than this one here, and here; and didn't they print another version of this selfsame joke six years ago, why are they printing it again now??" so I wonder about their process of elimination to begin with.

Any more ideas? I'd like to keep this thread open for a kind of suggestion thread for people, especially those a decade or so younger than I, who'd like to make a little side money with their free time in an interesting or unusual fashion. (E.g., if they're homemakers or full-time students or suffering a long-term illness or injury, and therefore can't get a proper job at present.) So let's keep any ideas coming.