Earn a Penny: Testing New Things (June 21, 2008)

Lately, I've been putting some effort into trying new things -- either because they promise some modest gains, or because I see some direct value in associating with them. At the moment, here are a few things I'm trying out:

Half.com: I mentioned this earlier, so this is more or less an update. For those who don't know, Half.com is basically a site that allows you to sell used media. It's backed by Ebay, and pays by direct deposit in your bank account twice per month. I just received a notification that the money for my first sale ($6.04) is soon to be deposited in my bank account. I know, that's not a lot of money -- but it's more than I spent on the deal, so I'm still ahead. I'm also taking the advice of a few people and looking into ways to reduce shipping for future ventures. Here's what my Half.com store currently looks like; I'll probably try adding more to it after I sell a few things and better organize my 'things I've listed for sale' objects.

Goozex: I've actually had a chance to see how it works both from the perspective of buyer and seller this week; my first game trade went through without a hitch (I traded in Grandia, earning 200 points - roughly ten dollars, and received positive feedback from the person I traded it to), and I received my (free, with the points provided on signup) game, Xenosaga I recently as well (and am currently playing it.) Unfortunately, it's a bit cutscene-happy, and Laura has a low tolerance for Japanese voices and anime-like characters, but so it goes. Anyhow, I also received a bonus of 100 points (and one extra trade credit) because I signed up through someone else's referral link, and received my first positive feedback. It's not going to make me any money -- but it does give me an opportunity to trade off my less-than-played games without having to worry about competitive pricing and other nonsense, in exchange for actually getting a game I want every now and then. Since I'm already doing business with the Post Office due to Half.com (or hoping to, anyhow), a little bit of extra shipping work isn't so bad. You can check it out for yourself here; I'd recommend it if you have a lot of good games lying around that are still playable, but you don't have the time to deal with trying to sell them and you know you won't get more than $5 apiece for them.

MySearchBonus: You've seen these before, I'm almost certain of it -- a website where you perform searches in order to earn points towards gift cards or stuff. Yep, this is one of those. I'm testing it to see if it's actually valid, because I actually do a lot of Google searching, particularly when I'm researching for an article. You earn one point for every search (with a minimum time required between searches that I haven't figured out yet), and if you get 1,000 points, you can trade them in for a $10 gift card. (You can also trade for gas cards and electronics; personally, I'm probably going to either get an Amazon.com gift card or a gas card if I actually make the 1,000 points necessary.) As you can guess, this means that one point is worth one cent. I'm going to try using this for my Google searches for a while to see how valuable it actually is -- if you want to test it out for yourself, you can do so here.

BigCrumbs: You've also probably seen this sort of thing before -- MyPoints being one example. You use their links to go to a store you already want to buy something at, they make money, and they reward you. This is like that, except that instead of giving you 'points', they give you direct cash for the experience. One reason I'm actually considering dealing with them is that they provide cash back on any winning bids or Buy It Now orders placed through Ebay.com; since I might be using Ebay to get my shipping materials in the future, I figured it might be worth trying to see if I could recoup some of my investment and thus save a little more. There's slightly over 250 online retailers working with BigCrumbs at the moment, including Best Buy, Circuit City, Dell, Toys R Us, Tracfone, and Wal-Mart, so if you do a lot of online shopping, this might be worthwhile. Payments are made whenever you have a balance, are paid through PayPal, and are paid monthly, one full month after you earn them (if you earn $20 in January and $10 in February, you will receive $20 in March and $10 in April.) This sounds great (especially if you like things like MyPoints but don't like point-based systems, but until I actually get cash back from these guys, I can't confirm whether or not it's worth the extra effort to go through these guys. Still, if you'd like to take a chance, you can find out more about their program here. I'll let you know in a few months how well this works out in practice.