Get Paid to Search

Let’s keep Friday interesting shall we?

Anyone remember AllAdvantage? I admit I tried it, earning mere cents for the hours that I spent surfing the internet (granted, I still do that without earning anything). The concept was simple enough, getting paid for doing something online: reading email, surfing, visiting specific sites, or signing up for newsletters. Sound questionable? It isn’t really; the paying company would install a small program on your computer through which ads were displayed (and often, behavior tracked). Advertisers’ ads were then shown while you did your thing and since the software usually tracked websites that you visited, the company was able to sell targeting to their advertisers. Sure you may not want your privacy invaded but in the end, the idea was legit as you opted in to earn a share of the advertising to which you were subjected; like cable TV.

AllAdvantage launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members in little over a year with a multi-level marketing system. And therein is where the model fails; users were paid for surfing the internet and got an increment of the time spent surfing by others who they recommended to the scheme, a pyramid scheme.

So why do I bring up a defunct scheme to make money off the internet by doing nothing more than you usually do? Because it is back and this time it will really work, I’m sure of it!! Glumble, using Yahoo search results, will apparently pay you a random amount for searching. Earn $.01-$1000 per search (Hey, this is their story, I have no experience with it). I hear they too will support the referral model allowing you to refer your friends to earn from their searches.

I’m not going to let hearsay get the better of me here. I’ve only heard of this though the folks at Digitpedia; as you can tell from Glumble’s own site, and wonderfully insightful blog, well… you can’t tell anything from their blog or site.

Rest assured, I’ll stay on top of this exciting news so you don’t miss out on the opportunity to get paid to search. Who knows, maybe they’re on to something, you can still get paid to Digg.