Well, I'm going to have to narrow things down because having too many GPT sites, at least at first, is just chaotic! I know I'm going to keep using Inbox Dollars because it seems to be the easiest, it's definitely the most fun and the one I've earned the most money for. Here's the link if you want to try it yourself. As to the others, I'm going to concentrate on one at a time and see which ones work best for me.

Writing

I spent the last two days writing an article for <a href="http://www.squidoo.com>Squidoo</a>. What a great place that is! The people in the forums, called <a href="http://www.squidu.com/forum/>Squidu</a>, is such a great place and people are so willing to help you. Anyway, I wrote my first "lens" (pretty much an article but one usually on a niche topic) about <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/craft-supplies-to-have-on-hand-for-when-your-grandchildren-visit">a variety of pens, pencils and markers that are good to put in your grandchildren's art kit</a>.

I joined the Yahoo Contributor Network and actually had a poem published. It's an homage to my chickens: <a href="http://voices.yahoo.com/article/9538142/the-wisdom-hens-11342522.html?cat=42">The Wisdom of Hens</a>. It hasn't earned me any money yet but it's satisfying to see it published.

After trying different things for a few days...

I've decided to concentrate only on GPT sites and avoid survey sites altogether. GPT I've learned stands for "Get paid to" as in get paid to try. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to subscribe to book club trials, a free month of movies (though those certainly are available), in some cases it merely means you click on a link, watch an add, sign up for coupons and other things that only cost the time you're willing to put into it. For me, I believe, the survey sites are a waste of time.

I think most surveys are probably geared towards particular demographics like  families with children at home. I found I spent a great deal of time answering questions to see if I qualify only to be told I wasn't what they were looking for. That seems a waste of time since in the same amount of time I could have clicked on several links on GPT sites. And survey sites only pay if you qualify. I certainly think it's worth a try for someone looking to make money on the Internet as it can probably be more profitable for others than it was for me.

Well okay I got a little off track...

I decided I simply couldn't live with any of the blogger templates so spent my blogging time yesterday cruising for new templates. If I'm going to look at this everyday I want to love it. I'm an artsy, frou frou kind of girl so I found one more reflective of my personality. I know they say if you're going to have a serious, business type blog (though I'm not sure this qualifies) but I'm not one for convention anyway. So now I'm going to focus!

I've signed up for Inbox Dollars. Clicking on the daily email advertisement takes no time at all, though it doesn't earn a whole lot, but it's painless and you don't have to do anything but click on the link that takes you to the ad page & click a confirmation button. Now surveys, that's a different story. Supposedly they only take 20 minutes but the one I took was at least 10 minutes longer. In between the basic household questions you'd expect on a survey were these obnoxious "do you want this product", "do you want an agent for X,Y,Z to contact you", etc. Checking "no" on those (and being extremely careful NOT to click yes) took longer than answering the real survey question. Time will tell whether my speed improves. If not, the surveys definitely aren't worth it.

I've decided, initially, to sign up for a few survey sites and some sites where people write articles and earn money from ad revenue, dependent upon people reading the article and clicking one of the linked advertisement. Today was mostly a day for setting things up, confirming logon information and reading how the different sites work. Both kinds of money making endeavors have a learning curve so I'm guessing it will take some time to hit my stride and learn ways to work more quickly.

For the survey sites I've decided to keep a log of how long I spend on each site each day so I can judge whether it's worth the investment of my time. For someone who enjoys taking surveys time probably isn't an issue but I've found I don't like clicking through the pages of "offers" hitting the "NO" button for things I have no interest in. The ironic thing is, I've found they aren't targeted towards the interests I listed and many that I already said no to on one page turn up on another page. It's a bit frustrating and I'm not quite sure what they hope to accomplish. If I didn't want it on page two I'm not likely to change by page four.

As for the writing sites, articles take more time and there's usually research involved, though I expect some will be more time consuming than others. Still, I love to write so I'll probably enjoy this endeavor more.

Dedicated Email

The first thing I did before I started this adventure was to get an email address just for this, tallulahjewel@zoho.com. I did this so I'd have all correspondence related to my money making experiment in one place and I figured signing up for this or that would also bring me a lot of spam. I didn't want junky stuff clogging up my regular email. Anyway, here we go!