CashCrate - A Scam?

Update: Since writing this I have now made over $400 with CashCrate! Come and see proof of my cashcrate earnings at my new blog here: CashCrate proof of payment.

I have been a member of CashCrate for a while now, but I have had little success with them because they have far fewer offers for non-USA/Canada residents. I had actually half given up on them, but they recently made these interesting updates:

The more referrals you get, the higher % they payout.

Bronze - 0 Active Referrals - 20% First Level, 10% Second Level
Silver - 50 Active Referrals - 25% First Level, 10% Second Level
Gold - 150 Active Referrals - 25% First Level, 15% Second Level
Platinum - 300 Active Referrals - 30% First Level, 15% Second Level
Elite - 500 Active Referrals - 30% First Level, 20% Second Level

These are locked-in levels, once you reach them there's no way back
down.

Point System
For each $1 you earn in completed offers, you will earn a point. You
also get points for doing "Point Offers". These are then exchangeable for
awesome prizes at the prize shop!

Offer "Rating" System
The way offers are rated has changed from 1-5. The offers are now rated
using a complicated mathematical formula which will bring the greatest
approving offers to the top. This will also help weed out poorly
approving offers.

As well, you can now sort by "Free Offers" and "Trial Offers". Free
Offers are those that do not require a credit card whereas Trial Offers
are the higher paying ones that do.

Daily Surveys
For a few minutes each day you can complete a $0.80 Daily Survey. These
will not confirm instantly as they approve all offers once per day for
the ones done before that.

Along with those they have added a few other smaller features, such as
making it easier to submit and remove offers and overall improving the
CashCrate experience.

As well as that, this contest was announced by the CashCrate Admins a couple of days ago:

- Win a 30GB iPod Video! The user who gains the most active referrals
(users who complete atleast one offer) during the month of March will be
awarded with a shiny, brand new 30GB iPod Video. This can hold up to
7,500 songs!

- The user who refers the second most active users will win $50, third
will win $25 and the next 10 users will each win $10.

- As well, whoever completes the most $ worth of offers will receive a
$50 bonus!

It looks like CashCrate is finally getting it's act together. They have a shiny new layout which makes them look much more trustworthy than before. So if you have been thinking about joining, now is the time to join CashCrate, and get referring to win that ipod!

Goals for March

Remember these aims for February?:

- "Provide a blog that people actually find useful and isn't just me displaying my knowledge."
This is the biggie, it is an on-going process but I would say I have done quite well with this (well I hope I have, I have no way of telling for sure).

- "Increase traffic to 300 visitors a day if I make one post per day."
I have failed; I have increased traffic to a high point of 256 page views in a day, yet alone unique visitors.

- "Get into the Technorati top 100,000 (at the moment I’m ranked about 170,00)."
I achieved this ages ago, I'm now ranked 23,534.

- "Get Dugg once (achieving this would basically mean I achieve my other aims)" .
I failed, but then to be honest I haven’t really been trying to get Dugg.

- "Get 100 people in my AGLOCO network (at the moment I have 25)".
I failed- I have 40 people now in my AGLOCO network.

- "Get to Level 7 on Bestcashrewards (at the moment I am on Level 3)".
I failed, but only because they have been 'restoring the member pages' for weeks, preventing me from getting any referrals.

So again a mixed month, but in my opinion a lot of those goals showed my naivety and were over-optimistic. I am very happy with the progress this blog has made and I see little point in making goals like this for another month. I am obviously going to try to achieve all of the failed aims from last month, and continue developing this blog. I'm expecting a Google PageRank update in about a month (because they do them every 3 months or so), which will make things really get interesting.

Week 8 Earnings Report + Rankings

Here are the figures for this week. The figures in brackets are the increase since last week, the main figures are cumulative. It is fairly self-explanatory; have a gander!

Mylot: $19.89 (+$0.47)

AdSense: $41.64 (+$10.05)

Text Link Ads: $50 (no change)

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $32. (No change, apart from a bonus $10HMV voucher :D)

Ciao: £6.67/$13.34 (+$1.24)

Cashcrate: $3.25 (no change)

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (no change).

SlashmySearch: $2.57 (+$1.45)

Total: $173.19 (+$23.19)

Technorati Rank: 23,534 (-8,786) (remember a ‘ – ‘ is a good thing with rankings!)
Alexa rank: 511,221 (-49,347)

So, over all, a bit of a mixed week. The main improvement has been AdSense earnings, which last week were not even on an average of over $1 a day. This is actually a double since last week, which happened because of a double in traffic. I will go into this in more detail tomorrow with my second Google Analytics Weekly Overview.

The "bonus $10HMV voucher" from Lightspeed Panel Surveys was not officially a bonus, but more of a surprise. I have been a member of Lightspeed Panel Surveys since before they started their current points system and the HMV voucher was something I 'earned' before they made the switch. It hasn't arrived yet but why would they send me an email reminding me about it if they weren’t going to send it?

Also, don't let the low increase in Mylot earnings fool you, Mylot has been a substantial source of traffic for this blog and a great promotional tool for getting referrals, namely for SlashMySearch, where I got 8 referrals over nigh from a single post on Mylot. Almost all of the SlashmySearch earnings are from my referrals, so I don't consider that a loss either. There is a lot more to say about this, all of which will be said tomorrow, so stay tuned!.

P.S. The AGLOCO Viewbar is scheduled to be out later this month, so those earnings will be kicking in soon!

Week 7 Earnings Report + Rankings

A while back I said I would be switching to weekly earnings reports from monthly ones (which just take too long to wait for). You can see my January Earnings Report here.

So here is the first weekly earnings report, which is at week 7. The figures in brackets are the increase since the last earnings report, which in this case was 3 weeks ago. The main figures are cumulative for the 7 weeks.

Mylot: $19.42 (+$0.57).

Adsense: $31.51 (+$17.01).

Text Link Ads: $50 (+$25).

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $32.

Ciao: £6.10/ $12.20 (+$1.20).

Cashcrate: $3.25 (+$0.45).

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (+$0.00).

SlashmySearch: $1.12 (+$1.12).

Total Exactly $150

Technorati Rank: 32,320
Alexa Traffic Rank: 560,568

A word about Mylot. Don't be deceived by the low earnings. I have been using it for getting referrals for other programs, namely SlashmySearch, which I am still experimenting with. And with the Lightspeed Panlel Surveys, that $32 is not all from the 3 weeks, I missed it out by accident before so I don't know how much I had earned at the end of January.

It is quite surprising that Text Link Ads is the largest earner, especially because I was rejected from their publisher program for not having a Google Page Rank. Those earnings are just from their afffiliate program! I received the first $25 from them a few weeks ago and you can view My proof of Payment here.

Also, don't forget about other things like AGLOCO and Bestcashrewards. Bestcashrewards is currently undergoing some maintenance so you will have to wait until its fixed before you sign up :p. Nevertheless, once the AGLOCO Viewbar is released the earnings will start to arrive, although most of the earnings will be from the stock market when AGLOCO floats on it at the end of the year. You can see my post about John Chow getting 1000 ALGOCO signups in 10 days which has info about my predicted earnings from AGLOCO.

Tomorrow there will be the first Google Analytics Weekly Overview, where you will be lucky enough to find out how much traffic this site gets and where it gets it from.

Treasure Trooper - Online Money

Treasure Trooper is much like Cashcrate (see post on Cashcrate). You get paid to complete offers. These usually involve filling out a form or signing up to a survey panel. Often they request for an email address. I would recommend quickly starting a new email account using Yahoo or Hotmail, which are free and very easy to set up. You can then use that email address to fill out the forms. Unlike Cashcrate where I have earned $212, I am fairly new to Treasure Trooper and so I am yet to make much money from it.

note: with
Treasure Trooper and
Cashcrate

You will earn you much more if you live in the USA or Canada as there are far more offers. This does not mean you cannot earn if you live elsewhere (I still earned $212 with Cashcrate and I live in England so think of how much you can earn if your are from the USA/Canada!).

If you do decide to sign up, please do so through one of my links, as I gain 20% of your earnings (don't worry you don't lose anything!).

Coming up:
News about the latest up-and-coming affiliate programmes.