Envelope stuffing for bucks..legit?

The short answer is no.

Here's the deal. For those who pursue this undertaking (usually for a fee of $29.95 or some amount along that line) thinking that they'll make some easy bucks while stuffing envelopes while kicking back watching TV or listening to music on their iPods, they're in for a nasty surprise.

It's a scam.

Yes, it is true that there is stuff to stuff in an envelope, but the "stuff" inevitably is a letter soliciting folks to get into the stuff-envelopes-from-home-to-make-bucks biz.

What happens is that even though people realize they've been scammed, they'll pursue it. After all, they're out $29.95 (or whatever) and they've at least got to get their money back.

And who knows, maybe, just maybe they'll hit it big.

Good luck.

My suggestion is to look for opportunities that you feel good about, that are based on honesty, and that you are truly interested in, and not just the money part of it.

That, in my opinion, will lead to success.

January 2008 income update

Well, the first month of 2008 has come and gone and it is now the time to report on how the month went earnings-wise for my first push at work-from-home online entrepreneur.

Working from home on my computer, I earned $242.65 in the month of Janurary 2008. Here is the lowdown for the month

• Inboxdollars.com $58.64
• Google adsense $13.72
• Amazon affiliates $1.60
• Adbrite $0.88
• Shoppingads.com $25.00
• Associatedcontent.com $142.70

Inbox dollars.com $58.64--This is one of three get-paid-to-read email sites I subscribed to. Actually, after doing some research, I found out that there are other sites that are rated more favorably than this one. In fact, inboxdollars.com was rated by one reviewer as a site to avoid. I have not reported the income from the other two paid-to-read sites because the earnings have been neglible and I have discontinued participating in them.

Google Adsense $13.72-- Earnings started to pick up toward the end of the month after I made a change to the color scheme of one of my sites. We shall see what earnings will be for a full month will the revised sites. What I have learned is that ad placement and color scheme have an effect on click ratio for adsense ads.

Amazon affiliates $1.60—I put up links to Amazon’s books and gadgets on my blogs. I probably will stick with this for a while and experiment with placement and color schemes to see if these changes will make a difference.

Adbrite $.88—Not even a buck generated. Plus, the ads are very intrusive. I’ll give adbrite another month or two to see if revenue picks up. If not, I’ll ax adbrite and look at other options.

Shoppingads.com $25—All this came from a sign-up bonus so the net “real” income is zip. This is another thing I’ll be looking at to determine whether to keep or ax.

Associatedcontent.com $142.70—I wrote a bunch of articles and got paid for ‘em. Plus, associatedcontent pays an incentive for page views to articles I wrote. This is a good income generator. No big bucks but steady bucks. What I have been doing is writing articles for my blogs and submitting these same articles to associatedcontent. What this accomplishes is added content to my blogs and some direct income for the articles.

Overall, it’s been a decent start. I’ll be happy to make $200 in February and average that for every month in 2008. My day job and my responsibilities to my wife and family take up a bunch of my time, so I won’t have as many hours to devote to my work-from-home venture. But we shall see.

Photocredit: floridatoday.com