You see the ads for all kinds of money making schemes online. Data entry services, surveys sites, and emailing schemes all tempt you through your email and ads on other sites, but do they really work? I am about to find out.

There are things I want to do, but to be honest, a regular 9 to 5 job was just going to get in the way. What I need is a job that I can do from home, build up and eventually make money without interfering with other things I want to do, like write. So, you can see one of these money schemes is very tempting.

I started looking into the data entry game. It is a simple idea, companies supply you with links and you get paid when the link you provide generates a lead or a sale. The question of course is how to create that many links and follow the sales, and of course get paid. And to do all that, you have to know the secret. And FYI, I will not be revealing the secret at this time.

The companies involved in the chain of events that have to be worked through are all honest and popular companies. I checked out the businesses with the BBB and there are no complaints. The trick (not the secret) is how each work with each other to generate your pay (the secret). And as I worked it through and drew out the flow chart and got past all the varied fees and setup accounts, I began to see that this may actually work and not be “the scam” that so many people think it is.

What people think of as “the scam” are the sites that you have to visit that tell you “the secret”. Usually these sites charge between $50 and $100 for a set of instructions on how it all works. It seems like a scam because it is a conglomeration of seemingly non-related companies working in ways that you would not expect. Then you start getting into the additional fees and you think it is just a scam to generate “user fees” that will not go anywhere. But there is an end, and at the end is a workable moneymaking business.

To break it down, emailing schemes are good for high risk cash. I say high risk because becoming a spammer can cause you a lot of trouble if you do not know what you are doing. Also, you really need to have a technical knowledge of networks and mail protocols so you reduce your chance of getting caught. For me email is too high a risk for the reward knowing what I know and having worked as a spammer for two year. Yes the money was good, but the work was real work and not easy. But then again I was mailing and tracking 500 million emails a day. (You think that is easy? Try it once and watch how fast your accounts get shut down. Then figure out a way of doing it without getting caught.)

The “surveys” are not a great way of making cash, but they can generate a lot of barter merchandize. This can be very useful to reduce you cost of living. If you think about it, spending 10 minutes to fill out a survey and getting back coupons for 100 cases of Coke at no charge is a pretty good deal. You will be saving a few hundred dollars over the long run for practically no work. Also, there are tons of free meals at just about any restaurant so you could be eating out a lot of the time for just the cost of the tip. Bet you can’t serve an Olive Garden style dinner at home for $6.00. So once again, you are saving money by not spending it..

In the survey category is also the “secret shopper” and live survey options. Some of these actually do pay cash, some reimburse you for what you spend. Again, it is like getting something for nothing and pocketing your hard earned greenbacks.

Then there is the data entry area of online moneymaking. You enter ads for companies and as they sell, you get paid. When you first start out it is slow going because the even though you may enter 10 or 20, each with 15 keywords, you slowly realize that you need hundreds or even thousands of entries going to really start making money. So as you work it is a slow start. And here again, the slow start is going to make you think it is all a scam. You have to be persistent.

If you did 10 entries a day, after a month you would have 300 and a decent chance of making some cash. If you did 50 a day, by the end of a month you could be doing very well indeed at $5 to $50 (or more) per successful click. Do the arithmetic; it will begin paying very well even with the fees that must be paid. Netting some good cash is possible. Then think about this; bust your hump and do 50 entries a day for 3 months. By the time you are finished you will have over 4000 ads running with 10 to 20 keywords each, for a possibility of up to 80,000 chances your ads will be seen. This is now significant and I can see there being some serious cash made. Think this through and you will see why I want to work this angle over the other ones. By summer I could be very happy.

So the arithmetic works like this… Your ad is displayed X% of the time per keyword. This is the crucial factor, the higher X is the better. If 1 in 100 of the displays are actually clicked on and then 1 in 10 of those is actually a sale (yeah, for those simplifying that is 1 in a 1000 displays results in a sale) you can see how this is completely a numbers game. So your paid about 1 in 1000 (to 10,000) times your ad is displayed generating between $5.00 and $50.00 or more. Your cost is the cost per click (the 10 times in a thousand) costing you a maximum of $.30. So, you make money.

Now, that is all theory and not been proven to me yet. I am after all just now starting to work this for real and only time and persistence will tell the tale.

Here’s to persistence and money, may the Greenback Devil stay off my back.