Five things you can do

Money d70focus

1. Solicit Tips

Add a button from microfinance site Tipjoy.com to your Facebook page, blog or Web site to let your fans tip you for entertaining them. Or encourage your Twitter followers to text-message you some coin: Tipjoy tracks payment "tweets" (usually a dollar or so) and transfers the money via PayPal.

2. Answer Questions

Become an agent for the KGB—the Knowledge Generation Bureau — at
 kgb.com. Inquiring minds text questions (say, "What are hot dogs made of?") to 542542 (kgbkgb), which are relayed to agents online. You do some digging, send back a quick, accurate response, and pocket a cool dime each time.

3. Adopt a Blog

Instead of trying to gain a following for a brand-new blog, go to Orble.com to take over one, like Extreme Critic or Veggieorgasm, that’s been abandoned by its writer. That way you can start with a good Google ranking and maybe even a dedicated readership. Orble takes a cut of your AdSense haul for the trouble.

4. Master a Domain

Put your dot-com cleverness to use at Pickydomains.com, where clients who are launching a Web site for a new company pay $50 to garner suggestions for a domain name. If they register your idea, you get half the fee.

5. Be a Critic

Rate and review songs on U.K. site Slicethepie.com, and your opinions will earn you up to 20 cents from the site’s managers for each write-up. Or contribute software reviews to Softwarejudge.com, which shells out at least a buck apiece. Reviews the site deems “damn good” can bring in $50.

Want to read more articles like this, plus tips and tricks, home hacks, DIY projects, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science and enter to win $5,000!

6 Comments

I read up a little on pickydomains and it seems like people are being scammed. Anyone had success with this?

tipjoy was a failure. As you can see on its main page, very few people use to it send money.

Is anybody really going to solicit tips from tipjoy? Have you actually tried using pickydomains.com or did you just post the first thing google search brought up in a feeble attempt to create an article? From what I've read, nobody has actually gotten paid and it seems like that site has been scamming people for a while now.

This useless article with information I could gather in three seconds with a google search got me thinking. I thought this site was supposed to bring me news about science and technology and lately much of it has been political crap, "news" that I've read three or four times already, and other articles that seem to be there just to fill up space.

I thought maybe I was confused about what Popular Science was supposed to be so I went to the 'About Us' section on the site and found this:

"Popular Science has been a leading source of science and technology news since its inception way back in 1872."

I corrected it. Maybe they forgot to change it:

"Popular Science used to be a leading source of science and technology news upon its inception way back in 1872."

I don't see soliciting tips via tipjoy.com making people any real money. Unless you are extremely interesting or provide some sort of unique service. I might give Softwarejudge.com a try just because it sounds fun.
One way to make a little extra money, if you actually work at it, is to sign up for multiple affiliate programs and promote the hell out of them. With a little knowledge of the web, some grass roots marketing and the occasional shameless plug you might earn a little extra pocket cash.

You forgot a multi-billion dollar industry--"farming" in-game currency for popular MMORPGs.

It's entrepreneurial genius at its best--there are no regulations or limits on how much you can make--just don't get caught by the "government," in this case, Blizzard. Initial startup costs are cheap--about $80 for the software then $12 a month after that.

If you have money for a "farm," you can set up several computers and pay people a fraction of their earnings to farm gold for you.
www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-introduction-article

Highly controversial, but the demand is there, which is why such businesses flourish, especially overseas.

You can earn some can using affiliate programs. Check this site: http://quickmoney101.blogspot.com. Not bad.

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