Money Mondays, v2.0

(Posting a day early as my internet at home is still out because of recent weather...not sure if I'd be able to tomorrow!)

As promised, here’s a little update about some convenient ways to make or save a little bit of cash online, which may be especially useful to those of you with smaller or unstable incomes, like myself:

Mypoints.com - as predicted, I ‘cashed out’ for a $10 Panera gift card the other week. So far, I think I have to say this is my favorite online cash cow - I get points for reading emails, writing reviews on certain websites, or using a few internet applications (like a weather channel desktop app or their own search toolbar). Not a lot of work at all. And get this - after I requested my gift card (which was right around 1500 points), I got a 500 point bonus for ordering the card. Yes, that’s right...I’m already a third of the way to my next one! All this for doing their smaller, ‘no purchase required’ offers; if you actually use their interface to place orders through their supported merchants (and there are a lot of them), you can rack up thousands of points on each order, which could essentially make your purchases free or close to it. Definitely recommending registering with this one.

Netverdix - I hadn't mentioned this before, but this is a smaller but well-reviewed survey site. They don't send many survey invites, but qualifying is easy, and there is no minimum to cash out. So I took a short survey back in December and automatically received a check from them this week for it. (Ok, ok...it was only two dollars, but hey - that's a cup of coffee for work tomorrow, eh?)

Free stuff updates - Hey, look what’s in the mail! I got a free energy drink mix, a book about wine, two fragrance samples (from StartSampling.com), and a sample of GoldBond Lotion from Wal-mart.

Getting paid for your junkmail? Not so much. I registered for a company that supposedly will pay you for certain junkmail and spam email (specifically, anything relating to finances - banks, credit, insurance, etc.) at the suggestion of some of my online pals. While they have (and continue to have) a very positive experience with the company, I can only assume the business is not taking new consumers on as I have yet to get any response from them after registering. Total bummer, too, since I get so much junk mail that would qualify.