After registration - Once you reach the member's area look for something that says "available offers", "surveys/offers paid to complete", or the like. This is where you will likely find the lists of offers that you get paid to or gain points towards prizes to respond to. Usually the offers will be sortable by classification or type of offer (free offers, credit card required offers, cell phone required offer, financial offers, etc.)
If you are a newbie I would suggest that you stick to the free (to you) offers for a while until you have proper experience in what to expect before you progress to the offers that require a monetary investment (buying something or subscribing to a service) on your part but usually offer a many-fold higher payout.
Prioritize while completing offers and surveys. A lot of the sites present you with offers and surveys duplicated on other sites. You usually only will have one chance to complete a particular survey/offer with your correct information. I prefer to use that one chance up on a site that will either pay me more, or a site that will pay me faster. Save the "juicy" offers for the best paying sites.
A Note about Co-reg Signups:
During registration on some incentive sites and embedded within a lot of offers themselves there will be checkbox questions offering to sign you up (pre-register you) at other incentive sites. You would be wise to not check those boxes. After you've gained some experience on incentive sites you will fully understand what I mean.
You see, some of the co-reg checkboxes actually submit you for credit as a lead to other survey sites - some of these site are actually featured as an offer on their own. So, if another site pre-registers you at the site then when you actually go to complete the paying offer to sign you up at the particular survey site then you probably be denied credit as a unique lead for signing up.
So of you are completing an offer and it says something like "Would you like to earn loads of money for completing surveys at LoadsofCash.com?" then DON'T check the box. Instead, keep your eyes peeled for an offer that will PAY YOU to sign up for LoadsofCash.com.
Browser Cookies:
The care and feeding of your browser cookies - Their are many people and site owners that will try and push their own particular advise on proper browser cookie handling upon you - unfortunately most of the popular advise out there is patently WRONG. Using an improper cookie handling procedure will likely cause you to miss credit for offers that would have normally credited if only you new the secrets behind the offer tracking and crediting system.
Before I go on... If you have no idea what a browser cookie is I would suggest that you take a look at The Unofficial Cookie FAQ or browse on over to the Wikipedia article on the HTTP cookie.
Some people and authors of anti-spyware
software would have you believe that all browser cookies are bad (especially "tracking
cookies".) When it comes to paid survey, incentive, GPT, and PTS sites (hereafter
referred to as the "incentive site" for the sake of simplicity) cookies are your
very best friend.
How do incentivized offers track?
Most use a combination of tracking cookies, the single pixel gif, a sub-id containing your site membership information, and your unique ip address:
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When you click on an offer/survey the incentive site's software will note your click.
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You then will be sent to the offer's url with a sub-id usually containing your incentive site user name appended to the end of the url. Though is may seem instantaneous and direct on pretty much any connection other than dial-up, your browser is actually being sent on a wild goose chase of many different urls to get to your final destination (incentive sites use sponsor (or "affilate") networks as a source of their offers - those sponsor networks usually get their offers from other bigger sponsor networks.) The only way to properly make sure that everyone the should be paid for your "lead" will be paid is to send you through a daisy-chain of successive urls (each noting and crediting themselves your lead.)
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Ok, you arrive at the survey/offer. You fill out information, make a purchase, or perform whatever "action" is required to generate credit. This is where the tracking cookie and single pixel gif come into play. Once the action is performed then you are usually sent to a confirmation page that will place a cookie on your computer eventually reporting to the original incentive site that you have indeed completed the required action for credit.
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Another reporting method is the mysterious single pixel gif. This is a uniquely named image (picture) file that is so small (1 pixel by 1 pixel) that it is invisible to you that is placed on the confirmation page. The gif is uniquely named so that it specifically and only refers to you specifically. The offer's web server knows that you have completed an action when a request is made to "show" that one pixel gif (known as the gif "firing" in the industry.)
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If the offer site notices that you already have a cookie on your system from a previous session at that site (indicating that you are NOT a "unique lead") then it may internally note this, allow you to continue, though ultimately report to the incentive site that you are not qualified for the incentive (ouch!) The same goes for if you are recognized by your ip address or entered information such as your name, email address, etc.) Your ip address also plays a part in identifying if your are within the required geographic location for that offer.
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Once you are done viewing/completing the survey/offer, close browser window of leave the site, and end up back on the original incentive site then the tracking cookie reports that you have or have not qualified for your incentive.
Considerations:
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If your browser cookies are disabled then you will definitely not be credited for the offers - ever (a setting in your browser's configuration.) To make sure that your browser cookies are set right simply go to Google's cookies page. All browsers that I know of default to cookies on (a minimally proper setting.)
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If your browser is set not to display images (any images) then you will most likely not get credited for offers (the single pixel gif won't be requested and "fired".) If you see ANY pictures while browsing the internet then you are all good. All browsers default to images on (the proper setting.) Some people change this setting usually on lower connection speed in order to not have to wait for images to load while surfing.
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If something (software) or someone (you) messes with or deletes the proper cookie from your system before it has a chance to report back to the original incentive site then you will not get credit for that offer. Many anti-virus and anti-spyware software packages will delete these cookies when scanning. Make sure that you don't have any resident anti-spyware packages running when visiting incentive sites (though it IS a good idea to run a through scan AFTER you are done and logged off of the incentive site and all of the expected surveys/offers have had their credit status finalized.)
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Lately there has been a trend to recommend that you clear all of your cookies between each and every offer/survey completion - I agree with the following caveats:
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Only delete all of your cookies after you have gained or been denied credit for each offer (a big waste of time in waiting the 15 or so minutes - depending), or (better)
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Complete a string (series) of completely different (companies/sites) surveys/offers, delete all your cookies only after credit acceptance/denial of all those offers, continue on to complete another string of offers (this time you may complete any similar offers to the first string once before deleting your cookies and starting over with another series. That way similar offers wont recognize you by your cookies and you don't waste time and effort deleting cookies when you don't really need to.
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...to be continued.
SPAM
(Unsolicited Bulk Commercial ("junk") Email)
and
Telemarketing Phone Calls:
Before I go any further, I feel compelled to say something about spam (unsolicited bulk commercial email), junk mail, and telemarketing calls. Please note that in most cases when you complete paid surveys and offers you are inviting the incentive site's sponsors to contact you. After all, that is what they are paying the incentive site to pay you (or buy you cool prizes) for -- sales and marketing leads.
The more active you are in completing offers the more you should expect to receive email, phone calls, and the occasional letter or brochure from the sponsors (advertisers.) If you a squeamish about getting spam or being interrupted at dinner by a telemarketing call or two I would only suggest that you stop here and go back to your day job.
Always give the original paying site your real information - I'm talking about the original (the one listed here on AquiFund) site that pays you by sending you to other sites to complete offers and surveys. Most of these sites have intricate verification systems that if you fail the test by giving fake info then YOU WONT GET PAID. This is also common sense, if they send your check to the wrong address or to the wrong name or try to verify at the wrong phone number then WHAT'S THE USE?
You do have a bit more leeway when it comes to actually filling out the offers and surveys. Some have been known to "accidentally" miss a number on their phone number - and that may result in avoiding an unwelcome or unexpected call or two (smile.) I wouldn't recommend this procedure though.
I am not suggesting in any way that you attempt to thwart the sponsors from contacting you by using fake information or lying when completing the offers - Please don't get me wrong!
If you are concerned about the rather large (huge) amount of spam email you may potentially generate then I would suggest the use of a secondary email address. Some people choose to get an alternate email address (other than their main personal or business email address) from the various free email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, NetZero, etc.) in order to use it for the purposes of completing offers. That way they still provide a means of contact that they check regularly to receive promotional emails while avoiding it interfering with their normal personal business email. <-- Still "your email address"
I have also heard that there are a few online services out there that offer you your own free local telephone number with voicemail for little or no charge that may allow some people to avoid receiving inconveniently timed telemarketing calls (while still being able to receive the messages at a time of their own choosing.) <-- "Still "your phone number"
A word to the wise - most all of the offers are on the up-and-up. But, always keep your guard up and always read the fine print! A very few offers come with surprises that may turn out to be a headache for the unwary. In my online travels I have run across offers that seem too good to be true until you read the fine print. Here are a few snags to look out for:
Offers that state in the fine print that you are signing up for some sort of service (usually voice mail, or the like) that will be billed on your telephone bill (yes, they CAN do this - even if you give them the wrong number! -- they'll look you up and "correct" your obvious error (smile)) My advice is to always read the fine print and call your telephone service provider (AT&T, etc.) to "Block Third Party Billing" (beforehand.) This practice is called "cramming" you phone bill (though in most cases YOU are actually signing up to be billed if you read the fine print.) You can read a bit more on cramming here (FCC link.)
Offers that are "free trials" that charge you some nominal fee (like a buck or two) during the trial period but if you don't cancel within the trial period you will be charged full price (usually a much greater cost) or that your credit card will be billed on a recurring basis until you cancel (Argh!) Again, read the fine print!
Free/low cost trial offers that turn out to be extremely difficult to cancel (some customer service numbers run perpetually busy, or put you on hold for hours, etc. ...or some web site based cancellation links just lead you to an "error".) Read the fine print. Save all copies of emails you receive. Print out any specifics such as login info, account numbers, offer agreements and terms of service (TOS), etc. that are presented on the screen.
Offers that ask for credit card or other private financial information without presenting you with a secure server. In Internet Explorer, you will see a lock icon in the Security Status bar. The Security Status bar is located on the right side of the Address bar. The certificate that is used to encrypt the connection also contains information about the identity of the website owner or organization. You can click the lock to view the identity of the website. If you are being asked for any private financial information without them taking minimal precautions to protect that information (by using a secure connection) then move on - don't give them any information!
