Searching for Cash - Search Engines That Pay You

Jul 10th, 2007 by David Murphy-Colonna | Scroll down for comments

The Internet is full of “paid-to” websites just waiting to award the average (or not so average) consumer for using their services. Blingo.com and Zotspot.com not only offer prizes and cash for using their search engines, but also offer compensation for referring your friends as well (meaning you can get cash with out doing all the work :-)).

Both of them work in different ways, here is a quick review of both, and how you can enjoy and benefit from each of these two sites.

Blingo.com

If you are a Google addict like myself and many other web surfers, then this is the search engine for you. Blingo.com, which is powered by Google (meaning when you search a word, it produces the same result as if searching on Google.com), offers its’ users 25 chances to win prizes daily. Not meaning there are 25 prizes given away daily, but you can use their site to 25 times a day to search, and each time have a chance to win a prize.

Also if you refer your friends to Blingo and they win, you win their exact same prize! Although nothing is guaranteed and this is a poor way to go about making income, it does throw an enjoyable spin on surfing the net always hoping that your next search could be a winner.

Here are some of the FAQ’s from Blingo.com

“Do I really have any chance of winning?

Yes. We give away lots of prizes every day. 47,298 to date!

How can Blingo afford to give away prizes?

Just like all popular search engines, we earn money from the sponsored links you see when you do a search. (These links are always clearly identified and separated from search results.) We use a portion of the money we earn from sponsored results to buy prizes. The more users we get, the more prizes we’ll give away, so spread the word.

How does Blingo choose the winners?

Each day Blingo’s prize program chooses a bunch of winning times (usually several per hour). The first person to search after a winning time wins the prize.

Can anyone win?

In order to win, you must be at least 13 years old, you must live in the United States, and you must have Internet access. Why the United States?

Even though Blingo by no means produce a steady cash flow, it can pay off randomly if you get lucky and just makes searching the web a more enjoyable experience!

ZotSpot.com

On the other hand Zotspot.com, whose service is still under a year old, actually pays you cold hard cash to use there search engine.

All you have to do is Log In once each month and use their search engine just like any other search engine, and you will get paid. I have not personally gotten paid yet because I just joined, but I have read in a few sources, and although it wasn’t much, people have gotten paid through their PayPal accounts.

Through their multi-tier referral system the chances of making some decent money is increased though, so if your going to use Zotspot tell everyone about it.! Zotspot has a few visuals on their site so you can see how it works. Lets take a look:

“How do I earn money? You earn money by:

• Using Zotspot as your primary Internet search engine, and
• Referring people (or organizations) to the Zotspot service.

How much do I make for referring people? You will earn money for up to three “generations” of referrals. The people who you refer directly are your first generation. The people who they refer are your second generation. And, the people who your second generation refers are your third generation.

Your earnings from a referral will depend on how much that referral uses the site. The more they earn for themselves, the more they will also earn for you. Generation 1, 2 and 3 referrals will all have equal earning power. For example, if a generation 1 member and a generation 3 member use the site in the same way each will generate the same amount of money for you.

To give you a sense of the earning potential, we estimate that each referral who uses zotspot as their primary search engine will generate between $0.10 and $0.50 for you per year (we can’t guarantee those estimates, but we hope to continue to increase member earnings and even pass those numbers in the future!). That may not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. Here is an example of how much money you can earn:

If you refer 10 people, they each refer 10 people and so on, you could earn over $250 per year. Here are some more scenarios.

The bottom line is that if you refer a lot of people, you can earn a lot of money.

Can I earn money forever? Yes you can. As long as you and your referrals use the site, you will continue to earn money.

Is this a pyramid scheme? No. In a pyramid scheme people earn money from the sign-up fees paid by the people that they refer. zotspot is entirely free to use - there are no signup fees. In the zotspot model referrals generate money for themselves and the people that referred them through a proven business model that is used by all of the popular search engines - Internet search advertising.

Will clicking on advertisements increase my earnings? No. Clicking on advertisements will not directly impact your earning potential. Just use zotspot as you would normally use other search services.”

How can I refer people? You can refer people in the following easy ways:

• Zotspot emails: Your member account page will have a pre-formatted message that is ready to use. Simply enter the email addresses and we’ll send the emails for you.
• Personal emails: Your account page will provide you with a customized link which you can paste into emails that you create from your personal account.
• Web banners: You can add a web banner to your blog or webpage by copying the customized html code provided on your account page into the html of your website. When people click on the banner and sign up, they will become your referral.
• Word of mouth: Spread the word! Simply tell people the email address on your account, and if they enter it when they sign up, you’ll get the credit.”

Overall Zotspot definitely looks like it could be worth while especially if you get into their multi-tier program. A great thing about this site is that they offer banner ads for referrals for all bloggers and web publishers. Although the search engine is a bit plain and doesn’t give you a whole lot of background info on each of its results, it is a pretty good search engine, so why not make some money off of it?

You can get paid to search for stuff you already were going to search for anyway. Maybe even $2,775,00.00 like the chart says. This is not likely but definitely a good tool to make some extra cash especially if you can get some referrals using your own blog or website.

You also can donate some of your earnings to charity straight from this site, which gives them a thumbs up in my book. So if you try it out or have tried it out let us know, and keep making that money.

David Murphy-Colonna posted this article under Paid-To Websites on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 10:21 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site. View Technorati Linkbacks.