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Los Angeles Demographics
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Race | Age | Education | Marital Status | Income | Employment |




Race

White 38.2%

Hispanic 39.0%

Black 13.4%

Native American 0.3%

Asian 8.8%

Other 0.3%


Adult Age Distribution

18-24 17.2%

25-34 27.4%

35-44 20.0%

45-54 12.4%

55-64 9.6%

65+ 13.4%






Education

Advanced Degree 5.7%

College Degree 25.5%

Some College 34.1%

HS Graduate 13.0%

Less than HS 21.7%


Marital Status

Married 43.8%

Single, Never Married 37.6%

Widowed/Divorced/Separated 18.6%






Income

150K+ 7%

100-150K 6%

75-100K 8%

50-75K 12%

35-50K 13%

25-35K 13%

15-25K 16%

5-15K 20%

<5K 5%

Median
Household
Income

$30,925


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Make Money Blogging Course for newbie

Anybody maintaining an online diary or a blog is a blogger. Bloggers have their own community, an idea, a message, and a spirit to share and initiate healthy debate. With the mouse as their muse they have gained followers all over the world, who read and respect their opinion. Although purists would scorn, some bloggers are making serious money from their blogs, and so can you.?
You've probably heard of people turning their blogs into moneymaking machines. Maybe you want to copy their success.
Well, you can make money with your blog. However, there are a few things you must know first.

Some bloggers claim to earn thousands of dollars a month. For most, blogging simply provides supplemental income. It's good to aim high, but have reasonable expectations.

Getting started

You can make money from advertisements, affiliate programs and pay-per-post programs. Before you sign up for any of these, get your blog up and going.

What you need?
A computer, an internet connection and a bit more than basic literacy is all you need to start blogging. However, among a sea of blogs on the net, only a handful are read, respected and talked about.?

Decide on a topic to write
"More than specialisation it is important to have a certain passion. Successful bloggers write on a niche topic and stick to that," says Kiruba Shankar, a professional blogger from Delhi and the founder of Business Blogging. He has his blog at www.kiruba.com. His firm advises companies on using blogs to promote their business.?

Amit Aggarwal, a computer science engineer and author of the blog Digital Inspiration (www.labnol.blogspot.com), provides value to his readers by telling them how to take maximum advantage of software tools and web technologies. Readers reward him with 1.2 million hits per month.?

Hosting your blog
You can either use a blog-hosting service like blogspot, wordpress and livejournal or buy your own domain name. "Having your own URL is the best as it shows that you are a professional and also helps in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) activities," says Shankar.?

Daksh Sharma, author of themarketingblog, says it pays to plan at the start. "There's a risk of losing your readers and Google page rank (PR) if you change your blog domain at a later stage."?

Designing your blog
"Your blog should be easy to navigate, have a clutter free interface, and no deadlinks," says Sharma. Shankar recommends taking specialised help if you are blogging seriously.?

Mumbai-based Sakshi Juneja's blog is called To Each Its Own, on which she writes about Bollywood and gender-related issues. She got Chugs Design, a design studio to lay out the blog for her when it started earning money.

When heavy Traffic is good
There are several ways of creating, sustaining and increasing a steady flow of traffic, a prerequisite when you start harbouring money-making dreams.?

Content is king
Content remains the first and the last mantra of a successful blogger. "Write good content which is unique, or provides a value-add if you are saying similar things," says Aggarwal. Aaman Lamba, publisher, desicritics.org, warns against being a doppleblogger.?

Update regularly
Blogathy or apathy to post regularly can ruin your chances as a blogger. "You do not want people to come and find out that there is no new post. Once you lose a reader it is very difficult to get her back," says Juneja, who posts every day except on weekends. Not surprisingly, the Technorati report says that the blogging elite, constituting about 4,000 blogs "post nearly twice a day".?

Subscribe to RSS
Subscribing to really simple syndication (RSS) ensures that others can read your content in their mail whenever there is a new post without having to visit your blog.?

Link to other bloggers
If you find interesting content on any other blog, you can provide a link to it, hoping that they would link back to you. Inbound links improve your Google PR. "Let other people know what you are talking about," says Gautam Ghosh, management consultant, who blogs at www.gauteg.blogspot.com. Having a Google PR of 4 or above can also help you earn some bucks through selling links, but it is not encouraged as Google does not encourage link exchange.?

Keywords
Use search-engine friendly keywords. Ensure that the titles of the posts are search engine-friendly. Try to be more specific and gauge what category of readers you are targeting and what keywords they are likely to use.?

Making money from blogs
There are many moneymaking options from your blog. While you can use contextual advertising (ads relevant to your topic) from day one, other revenue streams can be implemented only after you have a substantial audience, for which you need to concentrate on content for the first one or two years. The benchmark is 10,000 readers (both direct and indirect) per day.?

Contextual advertising
Here ads relevant to your topic appear on the page and you get paid every time someone clicks on the ad, also called cost per click. Google AdSense is the leading network, but there are others like Chitika or Tyroo. "You can sign up free and then integrate a given code to the page where you want the ads to appear," says SEO expert and Internet marketing professional Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury, who blogs at www.seo-kolkata.blogspot.com.?

Manish Vij, co-founder, Tyroo, says, "Selecting the right ad network that suits you and using those words for which advertisers pay more per click will help increase your earnings. You can find which words make more money through trial and error testings."?

Direct advertising
Blog owners who write on a particular niche can approach companies selling similar products or services for ads. For example, Shankar sells ad space to corporates as a part of video podcasts on his blog. "This took about a year and happened after working really hard," he says.?

Affiliate programmes
Here companies, like amazon.com put up links for their products on your blog. Whenever a reader makes a purchase, through such a link, you get a portion of the sales revenue. "Sign up as affiliate partners with companies that sell some product or service related to your topic of discussion. You can also use sites like www.cj.com that actually allow you to review hundreds of affiliate opportunities," says Roy Chaudhury.?

Content syndication
If you are a specialist, somebody might want to use your content on their website as that brings them ads and share a part of the revenue with you.?

Pay per post
There are various companies and websites who pay bloggers to post details of their product or service on the blog and add a link to their website. "Bloggers can sign up with websites like www.payperpost.com for this purpose. It is important that your blog is focused on specific niche," says Roy Chaudhury.?

You can also get paid to review a film, a book or a gadget.?

Jobs as a blogger
Once you have become a blogebrity, a whole host of earning options arise. Mainstream media or blogs offer editorial roles. Since your contribution will increase their readership, they will pay you for it.?

When blognation, a blog about budding entrepreneurs in the technology and mobile space came to India, they were looking for a person with passion and experience. Shankar fitted the bill. At present, he is the editor-in-chief of blognation India. Juneja is a guest blogger for Channel V's show My India Report. However, she says that she takes up such "offline offers" only when it interests her.

Other sources
Paid subscription, donations, venture capital funding and selling your blog are other moneymaking options that can be worked out. But these are extremely unlikely and cannot be banked on.?

Indirect income
Management consultant Ghosh feels that the best way to monetise your blog is to use it to "get visibility". Shankar says visibility can mean good business for a company or an individual. The image he has built through his blog helps him to get more clients for his business. "CEOs can use blogs to have a two-way communication with the stakeholders; politicians too can build their brand image through blogs," he says.?

Blogging and beyond
"Blogging is not just about making money. You can draw attention to issues or if you are making money from it, you can donate it to welfare organisations," says Lamba. Delhi-based Anouradha Bakshi, 55, social activist and founder of Projectwhy, has been doing just that. "Many who read my blog connect and reach out to help in different ways," she says.

how to make real money with blogs

Could you earn thousands of pounds simply by writing an online journal? If so, consider becoming one of the 60 million bloggers who are sharing their opinions with a global audience. The art of blogging has become a publishing phenomenon.


According to Technorati, the US-based search engine, 175,000 new blogs are started every day, while those already in existence get added to at the rate of 18 updates per second.

The most popular bloggers, particularly those offering titbits about scandals in high places, now boast more readers than many national publications, and this means they are beginning to attract the attention of advertisers.

Prime examples are the British political blogs, written by the likes of Guido Fawkes (5thnovember.blogspot.com), which came to prominence during the summer months for its coverage of allegations about the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott.

A number of these blogs have now secured deals via new media company MessageSpace which enables them to sell advertising space to pressure groups, lobbyists and others who want to get their message through to decision-makers in Westminster.

One political blogger is former Tory candidate Iain Dale. Apart from a six-month break to work for party leadership candidate David Davies, he has been writing (iaindale.blogspot. com) since 2002 and estimates up to 100,000 people read his views every month.

"I thought there must be some potential for advertising revenue when I realised how many hits the blog was getting," he says. "I should get about £1,000 a month from these ads and this is something I wouldn't have thought possible a few months ago. I still can't earn a living from it, but it gives me an incentive to keep attracting readers."

However, it's not just high-profile bloggers who can make money, says Jamie Riddell, director of innovation at online media buyer Cheeze.com. There are a number of simple ways in which mainstream bloggers can also get in on the act. "The quickest way to generate income is by hosting adverts through signing up to something like Google AdSense," he says. "You post some code onto the page which reads the blog and displays targeted ads relevant to the content. When a visitor clicks on an advert, you get money credited to your account."

You can also sign up with dedicated websites, like adbrite.com, through which you can access specific types of adverts for your blog, says Riddell. These have the benefit of looking more professional.

"Rather than getting paid per click, you will receive a flat rate based on the overall number of visitors to your blog," he says. "It also makes sense for companies because it only takes a couple of sales for it to have been worth their while."

There are also affiliate schemes, such as Tradedoubler.com, that enable you to become a virtual re-seller for well-known global brand names and earn a commission on every sale that the company makes as a result of a customer coming to them via your site.

"There are also a number of new ideas coming onto the marketplace, such as Reviewme.com which offers the chance for bloggers to get paid for writing reviews on behalf of companies," says Riddell.

Other people use their blogs as a promotional tool. Author Jeff Scott set up a blog on his website, methanolpress.com, after publishing Showered in Shale, his book on speedway, and has quickly attracted a loyal readership.

"The idea was that people would read the blog and then be persuaded to buy the book - and it has worked," he says. "I get a lot of orders online via payment service PayPal and that's crucial to any blog wanting to encourage people to spend their money."

Scott, who also runs Platypus PR, in Brighton, even plans to publish a further book next year based on the blogs that he has written. "Blogging has definitely helped to drive fans and other interested parties to the website," he says. "Judging from the number of e-mails received and the people that come up to me at meetings, I have a lot of readers."

So how can you join this blogging revolution and start earning money?

According to Derek Gordon, Technorati's vice president of marketing, the first thing to decide is what you are planning to write about and how you would like your views to be expressed.

"There are many wonderful blog-hosting platforms, some of which are free and offer limited features and functionality, while some are fee-for-service offerings that include more extensive features," he says. Among the platforms worth a look are Blogger.com, WordPress, MySpace and MSN Spaces by Microsoft.

Other issues to consider include the commitment you will have to maintaining and updating your entries, what you're trying to achieve, and whether there are any existing blogs that you particularly admire.

IT consultant Mark Wilson used blogger.com - now owned by Google - when he began posting on technical issues a few years ago and says it's simple enough to allow even complete novices to start publishing.

As well as earning money from signing up to Google AdSense, the 34-year-old from Buckinghamshire has also put a link on his site (markwilson.co.uk) through which people can pay him via PayPal.

"As a lot of what I write on the blog is information, I decided to ask people to consider making a small donation if they found it useful," he says. "It doesn't happen all the time, but I'm always amazed by people's generosity when it does."

Although setting up a blog is relatively simply, the key to its being successful - and, hopefully, profitable in the longer term - is to attract a decent number of regular visitors.

Creating a community of readers by linking to bloggers covering similar topics can certainly help, suggests Iain Dale, as well as earning a reputation as someone who is willing to "stand up and be counted" - even if that sometimes means upsetting people.

"One of the secrets of being successful is injecting your own personality, because the worst thing a blog can be is ambivalent," he says. "You've got to have an opinion and encourage dialogue with readers."

However, while blogging can be fun and a potential source of extra income, it also has a darker side. As well as the possibility of being sued for any libellous comments that appear - and running the risk of offending family and friends - you also need to make sure that you don't upset your employer.

Even then you may get lucky. Catherine Sanderson, a secretary living in Paris, was sacked from her job after her identity was revealed as the author of the blog La Petite Anglaise. Since then, she has been offered a six-figure deal by Penguin for a book version of the blog, which covered the break-up of her relationship, a new love and life raising a young daughter.

Similarly, former Delta Air Lines stewardess Ellen Simonetti had her contract terminated after photographs of herself wearing company uniform were published on her blog, Queen of Sky.

Although Ellen has managed to turn the situation to her advantage by writing a book based on her experiences,Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: the Queen of Sky Blog, she recommends everyone checks whether their company has a blogging policy.

"If your company is very blogophobic, you should either not start a blog or go to great lengths to remain anonymous," she says. "But even some people who have remained anonymous have been fired."

'You could be looking at £2,000 a month'

Craig Munro is one of the new breed of internet entrepreneurs who appreciate the profit potential of blogging.

The 23-year-old web developer from Brightonstarted a blog on his site www.sober-productions.co.uk to record his opinions on films.

Now he has turned a labour of love into a money-spinning venture by not only allowing advertising on his blog, but also by writing reviews for companies.

"I found a site called PayPerPost.com which pays you for blogging about products and services," he explains. "So far I have written about 100 posts for them and have around US$1,500 (£784) in an account."

Craig has made a further US$2,200 (£1,150) by signing up to Google AdSense and posting regularly about hot new computer game Line Rider. "I'm amazed at the growth of the site over the past month - it's just been crazy," says Craig.

Even if you spend money on a website and domain name to help promote your blog, he says, you can still make a handsome return.

"You could be looking at earning a couple of thousand pounds every month," he says. "However, I'd be worried about packing in the day job - there's no guarantee that it would last."

can blog make money so you can quit your job

The vast majority of people who plan to blog for money probably should keep their day jobs.
Before you quit your day job in pursuit of online fame and fortune, know a few facts about what it takes to run a blog.

Don’t expect to make any quick money. Blogging takes a considerable amount of time and resources. In addition, you will need to keep the content fresh and constantly market the site. In other words, it is just like starting any other business.

Just 8% of bloggers in a recent survey reported any income from blogging—the practice of keeping an online journal, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, just 15% of Americans who blog say they do so for money, according to the study. For most, bogging is simply a hobby. Bloggers whose sites attract more than 100,000 unique visitors a month earn $75,000 a year on average, according to Technorati Inc., a San Francisco company that collects data on blogs.

The average U.S. blogger, however, pulls in just $5,060 a year. Many new bloggers count on their savings or their spouse’s job to pay the bills.

But low pay has not stopped folks from entering the blogosphere. There are 452,000 bloggers in the U.S, according to the Department of Labor. That is 58,000 more than the number of computer programmers.
“Even as a subset of bloggers gains prominence in the media and as traffic to blogs grows, blogging is not the most lucrative of hobbies, let alone professions,” said the study, which was released Wednesday.

Seven out of 10 bloggers who earn money do so by selling things either on their sites or through affiliates, making direct sales the most popular way bloggers get revenue, the study said.

Advertising is the second most popular way bloggers earn money, according to the Pew Internet Project. About half of Internet bloggers who make money do so through ads and about a third of money-earning bloggers do so through “tip jars” where readers can leave donations, the study said.

One in five money-earning bloggers do so through premium content that people must pay to see or read, according to the Pew Internet Project.

Also, bloggers who make money are mostly older than 50, the study said.

Of the 147 million people in the U.S. who use the Internet, about 12 million maintain blogs and 57 million read them, according to the Pew Internet Project. Not surprisingly, bloggers are more educated than the population as a whole. Thirty seven percent of bloggers in the U.S. have college degrees, compared to 27% of the population overall, and 38% of bloggers are students compared to 16% of the U.S. population overall, according to the Pew Internet Project.

Also according to the study, while the most popular blogs are updated daily, most bloggers post less frequently. Twenty five percent of those surveyed said they post every day or two; 15% said they post three to five days a week; 28% said they post every few weeks, and 19% said they post every few weeks or less, according to the Pew Internet Project.

Typical bloggers spend about two hours a week on their blogs, the study said.

ways you can earn money while blogging

Blogging is turning out to an addictive past-time for a lot of people around the world. Apart from being a great medium to express your feelingsand experiences, blogs can turn into alternate means to earn some quick bucks.It's an appealing fantasy: Start a blog. Watch it take off. Then, quit the office life, sit at home, and live off the advertising revenue.

But successful, moneymaking blogs elude most people who try to start them. The vast majority of blogs, written primarily for family and friends, attract fewer than 50 page views a day and earn pennies per month, if anything. According to a Problogger survey, most bloggers earn less than $100 per month, and 3 in 10 earn less than$10 per month. Only 16 percent of the 4,000 respondents say they make more than $2,500 a month.

With recession rocking the boat and intermittent lay-offs and salary cuts - why not make some extra money through blogging. You need no special technical knowledge or literary abilities to start a blog. Here are ways in which you can earn money while blogging:

BE THE MIDDLEMAN. Many companies run "affiliate" programs: Post an ad provided by Amazon.com or Lands' End, for example, and receive a small commission every time your readers click that ad, go to the company's Web site and end up buying a book or splurging on a down parka. Referral fees -- the cash you get from these transactions -- vary (you can earn as much as 10 percent per sale from Amazon). LinkShare (www.linkshare.com) claims to run the Internet's biggest "affiliate marketing network," with more than 600 companies on its roster of advertisers. Another service, Commission Junction (www.cj.com), runs programs for eBay and Expedia.com, among others.
Selling ad space might be the oldest way to make a buck, and with Google's free AdSense service (www.google.com/adsense), it's way too easy. AdSense allows bloggers to display up to three content-specific "ad units" (boxes that can hold up to four ads each) per page. "If you're writing about sports cars, they'll be ads about sports cars," says Biz Stone, Blogger senior specialist at Google. Each time a visitor clicks these ads, you get paid. Google doesn't disclose its exact share of the revenue, but a personalized report page lets you track your own earnings. Earn at least $100 and Google sends you a check.



No need to play the starving-artist writer-type when there are plenty of ways to blog for bucks. (Nate Lankford For The Washington Post)


The Post's new section offers entertainment listings, advice, local travel guides, home, food and shopping news and other practical information.
PLAY AD-SALES EXEC. If you want more control over the ads on your blog, hit www.blogads.com. BlogAds lets you join its database free and set your own ad prices. Companies (including media bigs such as Paramount Pictures and Random House) then search for suitable blogs and purchase ad space for a set period -- say, one month. In contrast to the way AdSense works, your earnings don't depend on whether a reader clicks the ad. All you have to do is give 20 percent of your net revenue to Mr. BlogAd, and you keep the rest. Perhaps best of all, you can indulge your megalomaniacal tendencies by approving or declining potential ads at will.



PASS THE CUP. If you're toiling away to maintain a blog that people enjoy, why not ask your guests to show a little monetary appreciation? The online payment service PayPal (www.paypal.com) lets you add a donation button to your blog. You can opt to receive money in U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, Japanese yen, pounds sterling or euros. When visitors give money, PayPal sends you an e-mail to let you know. Amazon's Honor System (www.amazon.com/honorsystem) and BitPass (www.bitpass.com) offer similar donation options.

SELL SCHWAG. Don't dig ads? Uncomfortable asking for handouts? Then create your own blog-branded gear at CafePress.com, which offers more than 50 products begging for your unique logo. Choose from standard fare such as T-shirts and coffee cups, or, if Grandma doesn't read your blog, opt for sexy thong underwear (ooh la la). You get to sell each product at whatever price your entrepreneurial heart desires. CafePress gets back the original base price ($13.99 for T-shirts, $10.99 for mugs); you keep the markup. Just add your online store's link to your blog, and all that's left to do is wait for CafePress to send you a monthly check. See? It's practically like your real job.

contextual advertising earn money blogging

A penny for your thoughts? Kevin Vahey has done a good deal better, turning a personal gripe into $1,000 a year of supplemental income.

Mr. Vahey started a blog called " Charlie on the MBTA" that has become a sounding board for Bostonians frustrated with the city's public-transit system.

After two months, he's gained 1,200 readers a day, the attention of officials, and – like thousands of others putting their interests online – a small revenue stream from advertising. "Yesterday I got the check from [Google], and I said, 'Hmm, that's cool.' I don't feel like I did anything," he says. He's not quitting his day job, but now he commutes to it free of charge: "[The blog] pays my monthly pass."

Through systems like Google's AdSense, advertising now can be added with the click of a mouse to the smallest of websites. The model will soon be expanded to online videos with the announcement last month that YouTube will share ad revenue with content creators.

The rise of what's known as contextual advertising has created a 21st-century version of royalties that's reaching deep into the ranks of amateurs and hobbyists. It points to a future where many people will moonlight online as small-time creators for a little extra income, with a few finding fame and fortune along the way.

"A lot of people say it's sort of like a little investment. They write something every night before they go to bed, and another page on their website gets added. And the more pages they've got, the more chance they've got of earning a little bit of money," says Darren Rowse, the webmaster of problogger.net, a site that helps bloggers improve their income.

He says he makes six figures a year blogging, when factoring in all his sites and the consulting gigs they generate. "You put something out there," he adds, "and it has the potential to earn money forever. And in that way it sort of is like a royalty."

A little more than $1 billion, or one-fourth of all advertising online, went to Google's AdSense program in the third quarter of 2006. Of that, Google shared $780 million with those running AdSense. Approximately 3 million blogs now use AdSense, according to the blog-tracking site Technorati.

What isn't known is how that $780 million was distributed over those roughly 3 million blogs. But anecdotal evidence suggests that there's a majority making nothing, a sizable minority bringing in at least $100 a month, and a few making serious money.

This past November, a survey by problogger.net of 732 self-selected respondents found that of the 625 bloggers using AdSense, 45 percent were making at least $100 a month. Another survey of 104 bloggers at a blogger summit last week in New York found roughly a third making that money, not necessarily with AdSense.

Nearly one-sixth in both surveys made at least $1,000 a month. These samples, of course, skew heavily toward the more committed and successful bloggers.

"The vast majority of people are being read by the writer and his mother, or in some cases not even by his mother," quips Sree Sreenivasan, who runs the new-media program at Columbia University.But for some, he says, new opportunities are emerging that are different from the original Web bubble.

The anecdotal numbers suggest an economic shift based on what Don Tapscott, co-author of "Wikinomics," calls the democratization of the creation of content.

"People can participate in the economy in ways that were once unimaginable. Not just moonlighting, but serious money," says Mr. Tapscott. In the past, writers, musicians, and videomakers needed to prove themselves as "home-run hitters" in order to get distributed and earn significant money. "Now, bunters and single-hitters have a chance to make a living," he says.

The AdSense system allows advertisers to bid on how much they'll pay – in cents per click – to appear on sites with certain keywords. In the case of "Charlie on the MBTA," Vahey has seen ads show up from bus companies – not surprising since he mentions buses frequently. He makes money each time someone clicks on the ads.

With the cost of publishing online close to zero, even small ad money can buoy creative output.

"The definition of 'big enough' has changed. In the old days, [an endeavor] ... had to get an audience of billions to pay for that scarce airtime," says Jeff Jarvis, a new-media expert who makes about $1,000 a month from blogging. "Now, the definition of big enough can be that it covered my costs, [or] it bought me a camera."

He notes with amusement that his son now makes more money from AdSense than from his allowance.

Yet many bloggers and video bloggers are not driven by a desire to get rich. Vahey did not start his blog to make money. And Steve Garfield, one of Boston's earliest video bloggers, doesn't see a YouTube ad model working for him, since he's more interested in forming personal connections.

"I've gotten so much from giving and sharing my videos for free," says Mr. Garfield, whose vblog is at SteveGarfield.com. "I've made so many friends from all over the world."

Still, his approach has yielded some financial benefits, such as free computer equipment, and freelance and consulting work.

It's not uncommon for successful bloggers to parlay their success into consulting. And the top Web entrepreneurs often move away from AdSense to direct relationships with advertisers, says Jeremy Schoemaker, who has a photo of himself holding a check for more than $130,000 from Google. He runs a number of sites, including a ringtones sharing site.
AdSense, which he describes as "a great product," does have its limitations. The revenue can be unpredictable, the system encourages visitors to leave a site, and owners do not have enough control over ad content, he says.

Several highly successful bloggers also caution that there's no free lunch. "I worked anything from eight- to 16-hour days over the last three or four years just trying to do this," says Mr. Rowse. "And a lot of people don't see that."

can food blog make money

A few years ago, specialty food magazines, celebrity cooking shows and coffee-table cookbooks began to proliferate. But it wasn't enough.

Internet-savvy food enthusiasts sought something more quirky or writerly or lavish or esoteric or weeknight-friendly or fill-in-the-blank.

There is the Movable Feast (www.movable-feast.com), a chronicle that captures seconds in the life of an aspiring chef, from deveining shrimp at 8:20 a.m. to typing in an apartment-door code at 11:50 at night.

The Grocery List Collection (www.grocerylists.com) showcases images of 700 discarded grocery lists and related stories about . . . grocery lists. Arthur Hungry is the Web log name of a 20-year-old international relations student at Boston University who posts pictures of everything he eats (www.arthurhungry.com). Pinoy Cook (pinoycook.net) is a Filipino mom's collection of updated traditional recipes. And Dead Man Eating (deadmaneating. blogspot.com)records the last meals requested by prisoners on death row. (Fried chicken and steak predominate.)

The Food Section blog (www.thefoodsection.com) aspires to post "all the news that's fit to eat." Late February brought a riff on "Tangerine Dream," questioning the color ascribed to the fabric in the recent Central Park exhibit of "The Gates." Was saffron, selected by artists Christo and Jean Claude, more accurate than, say, clementine? Or persimmon?

A few days later, Vittles Vamp (www.vittlesvamp.com) featured "Art Lover Alert," depicting a close-up of cheddar cheese sandwich crackers balanced on end in Central Park with the "Gates" in the background.

There are even food blogs that essentially list others, such as Kiplog's FoodBlog (www.kiplog.com/food) and Food Porn Watch (foodpornwatch.arrr.net).

Blogs now cover a miscellany of culinary topics, sometimes only tangentially related to food. The only constant among the sites seems to be that they are increasing dramatically.

And people are reading. "Every single genre of blogs has increased at an almost alarming rate over the past several years," said Biz Stone, Blogger senior specialist at Google.

That includes food. Type "food" and "blog" into Google, and the hits exceed 8 million. The number of actual English-language food blogs is far lower. Paul McCann of Kiplog puts the estimate at about 600, but says it's increasing daily.

According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project published in 2004, 27 percent of American Internet users say they read blogs, an increase of 58 percent from the previous year. In the past year, several food bloggers have seen the number of daily visitors to their sites double or triple.

Along with the proliferation of food blogs comes a proliferation of food blog awards. This year the Bloggies -- an annual award given to publicly chosen Web logs -- introduced a food category. Bloggies categories are updated annually to reflect "how trends change in the blogging universe," says Nikolai Nolan, the University of Michigan senior who launched the awards in 2001.

In addition to their own category, food blogs number as nominees in several other Bloggies categories as well. The winners will be announced next week (2005.bloggies.com).

Last year, food blogger Kate Hudson of the Accidental Hedonist had initiated the aptly named first Food Blog Awards to recognize the "wealth of food reporting and writing" taking place on blogs. She created 16 categories ranging from best recipes to best photography, solicited nominations from her fellow bloggers and tallied the votes. Winners were announced in early January (www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php?cat=250).

Because blogs often take the form of journal entries -- ranging from the inane to the relatively profound, from stream of consciousness to carefully worded prose -- the biggest draw for repeat visitors to a particular Web site is something intangible: a sense of resonance, if not a shared vision of the world -- even if that means knowing where to get the best cream puff in Paris.

Whether bloggers aspire to be the next Jeffrey Steingarten, the sharp-tongued food writer for Vogue, or M.F.K. Fisher, one of the country's early food writers, they provide readers with their own personal food section, updated weekly and, in some instances, daily. The authors of these sites cover what mainstream media overlook or ignore, but in a casual, interactive manner. And, while most newspapers and magazines require payment for online access to articles published in the not-so-distant past, blogging archives are free.

Taking home four of the Food Blog Awards was Chocolate & Zucchini (chocolateandzucchini.com), a Paris-based Web site written by Clotilde Dusoulier. Her blog gracefully conveys her food experiences, such as her introduction to kohlrabi and her daydream of the ideal brunch.

Her site, named for two of her favorite ingredients, includes more than recipes and receives some 7,000 visitors a day, Dusoulier said. "Basically, the idea at first was to find a way to share," said Dusoulier, who writes in English. "I was very much into cooking and very eager to talk about it to my friends and family. And after a little while, I sort of felt like I needed a wider audience to interact with." On most blogs, interaction comes in the form of reader responses to anything that piques their interest.

Unlike political bloggers, who often express opinions and attempt to convince, food bloggers find great things and tell others about them so they continue to exist, said Hillel Cooperman of Tasting Menu (www.tastingmenu.com). Last year, Cooperman, who works for Microsoft in Washington, became the first food blogger nominated for a prestigious James Beard Foundation journalism award.

"What people lack in experience or formal training, they make up for with the fact that they love what they're doing," said Cooperman. "There are some days I don't feel like posting, but I feel an obligation to all those people visiting my blog every day."

According to Google's Stone, the increase in popularity of blogs is partly due to "blog children" -- people, such as Dusoulier, who stumble across a blog and become inspired to start their own. Many, also like Dusoulier, are parlaying their blog experience into more lucrative ventures. Dusoulier is now being approached by newspapers and magazines to write articles.

New Yorker Julie Powell, who cooked and blogged her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" one recipe at a time, landed a book deal with Little, Brown and Co. "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, One Tiny Apartment Kitchen?" is due out this fall.

Another blogger-turned-author is Heidi Swanson, the San Francisco-based photographer and cookbook writer behind 101 Cookbooks (www.101cookbooks.com). An avid collector, Swanson had begun a private recipe journal for her Web site. After people repeatedly Googled their way into the file, she decided to start a food blog. Her site combines prose, food photos and recipes.

Last fall Swanson published her first book, "Cook 1.0: A Fresh Approach to the Vegetarian Kitchen" (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2004).

Total visitor traffic to her site has nearly tripled in the past six months.

Paige Hren, a regular visitor to 101 Cookbooks from Malibu, said that reading Swanson's posts is like having your own prep cook in the kitchen: "She's found the loopholes and what the pluses and minuses are for the recipes."

"My traffic really seems to spike when I post sweets -- anything chocolate or anything cute," said Swanson.

Though some food blogs have begun to seek advertising revenue, most food bloggers "don't get into this to make money," Hudson said, but to make food a little less ordinary for at least one other person.

"How many high-quality food blogs does the world need?" asked Cooperman. "It turns out, a lot."

Singapore blogger make money online

BLOGGERS, and the syndicates which encourage them, are quietly changing the way people turn their online opinions into pots of gold.

By signing up with online ad-placement services like Google Adsense as well as local ones like Advertlets, Blog2U and NuffNang, top bloggers here are ringing in thousands of dollars per month.

According to media services firm ZenithOptiMedia, the total ad market for Singapore in 2008 is worth about $2.07 billion. Google estimates the value of the local online ad market at 3 to 5 per cent of the total ad spending.

Given all that moolah, legions have signed up with the ad placement firms. NuffNang has 13,000 local bloggers, Advertlets 12,000 while the latest entrant Blog2U has 5,000 - but there are overlaps. Google keeps mum about its numbers.
Celeb blogger Dawn offered this caveat: 'Making substantial amounts of money only apply to blogs with substantial daily readership. For lesser-known bloggers, I think it may be harder to make money.'

Although blogging provides her with a 'decent full-time salary', she doesn't rely on NuffNang alone. She also uses services like Google Adsense and Adbrite.

'The ad campaigns are not frequent enough,' she said.

But she hopes a wildcard will come into play.

'If NuffNang grows big enough to provide its bloggers with a regular stream of advertisers, I have no doubt I could be earning a full-time income from just NuffNang alone.'
Indeed, Singaporeans come up as the top bloggers regionally. Mr Derek Callow, marketing manager of Google Southeast Asia, said: 'There are more active bloggers in Singapore (using our Blogger product) than in any other country in Asia Pacific.'

For the handful of very successful opinion-casters - and they are just part-timers, mind you - the earnings are more than loose change.

There's 39-year-old Dr Leslie Tay, who likely earns a five-figure sum as a general practitioner. In addition, he gets a small pile monthly just by posting reviews and mouth-watering pictures of various hawker food on his blogsite, ieatishootipost.sg.

Nineteen-year-old, part-time model Peggy Heng pockets between $500 and $2,000 monthly while model and celebrity blogger Dawn Yang, 23, gets anything between $4,000 and $6,000.

Not bad for personal rantings about their daily lives and the occasional commentary on social issues.

How the money-making goes

ALL three parties - bloggers, ad placement firms and advertisers - stand to gain.

Bloggers earn money in several ways. The traditional way - a la Adsense - was that Google would place banner ads which match the content on the blogger's site. Bloggers are paid for page views every time a netizen clicks on the ad. In blogspeak, these are called 'impressions' and 'click-throughs'.

Bloggers can also be paid a fixed sum when an advertiser places a banner ad on their homepage for a period of time. Blog2U, for instance, pays about $5 for a banner ad which stays on a blog for 30 days.

'Should the blogger be selected, they will be notified via e-mail about the type and duration of the campaign.'

Through such ads, a blogger can pull in anything from $50 to $2,000 a week. According to NuffNang, a high-profile blogger like Wendy Cheng (xiaxue.blogspot.com), who attracts 20,000 readers daily, could get about $1,000 a week.

Bloggers can also be paid for talking about new products and services. That extra - in the case of Advertlets - is anything between $15 and $250 per post.

Said Josh Lim, founder of Advertlets: 'This service makes sure that even lower traffic bloggers get a piece of the action.'

While most bloggers earn from local vendors and through the syndicates, Sabrina Ong, 23, gets about 70 per cent of her income from advertisers directly from the United States.

'They contact me directly and ask me to blog about a certain product or service. I get between US$50 (S$68) and US$500 for each post,' said the business and law student who is attending classes at a private school here.

Certainly, the ad placement firms take a cut too. NuffNang charges advertisers from $1,000 to $50,000 per week for an ad. It declined to reveal total revenue.

Advertisers, from Nokia and GAP to Hewlett-Packard, feel that their spending is justified.

Lim Wee Khee, the head of Nokia's sales unit marketing division, considers the Nokia N82 ads which are placed on teen blogs, an 'innovative way' to reach its customers.

She said: 'We aim to garner more depth and visibility in the virtual space through placements on suitable blogs.'

The big picture

TO BE sure, the blab-and-get-paid trend is not new. In the US, where selling online opinion is estimated to be a billion-dollar business, the commercialising of opinions has been around since 2003.

Take the teams behind tech blogs like TechCrunch, Gizmodo and Engadget. In the case of Gizmodo, the six-year-old site attracts up to 50 million 'eyeballs' a month. This lets them demand a hefty price tag of US$3,000 for each ad placed on its site.

Right, this is where the wary takes one step back. Remember the expression 'If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is'? Would that wisdom apply here?

Dr Lim Sun Sun, assistant professor at the faculty of arts and social sciences at the National University of Singapore, believes that sites like NuffNang and Advertlets could well become 'industry standard' one day.

'The Internet is such an unpredictable environment that a service which may first appear fly-by-night may well become tomorrow's industry standard.

'If you think about it, services such as eBay must have appeared suspect in the first instance but are established and widely accepted today,' she said.

Even so, how full is that pot of gold?

For student-model Peggy, the few hundred bucks (and up to $2,000 a month) fuels weekend shopping jaunts.

Ming Shen admits that some of his members earn only $1.68 per week.

new work at home paid surveys sites

Cash Paid Surveys have emerged as the new money making online machine. A new site paid.cashsurveys.net has been launched recently which gives comprehensive information about how to make money from cash surveys. So many people have been extremely fascinated with the lucrative deals offered on paid survey websites. But, its dark side is full of scams. So, before finalizing the deal; one should do inquiry about the authenticity of offered paid surveys through forums, or search engines.
Besides your demographic location on most survey sites you have to fill in your profile based on your age, interests, education, income, etc. The number of surveys you will get will mostly depend on your profile. If your profile fits the required target population you’ll get more surveys and more chances to earn money. It is also possible that your profile will not fit in and you’ll rarely have an opportunity to complete paid surveys.

Paid.cashsurveys.net will soon become one of the leading sites which will provide online survey information. To achieve this goal, Paid.cashsurveys.net is making investments to develop content, improve usability and improving infrastructure to provide a better all round experience to visitors. The Press Release also mentioned that Paid surveys and cash surveys will be the only two areas of focus for paid.cashsurveys.net and no other areas of making money online will be included.

For more information visit http://www.CashSurveys.net
• Website released filtered schemes offered by numerous companies. Professional trend staffs make sure that all schemes must be spam/scam free.
• USP (unique selling point) of website is its easily perceptible database which is regularly updated with the latest deal available in the market.
• lifetimebiz.com offers an useful e-book worth $385 at no cost. It is compilation of complete business opportunity collection.
• Survey ends as soon as few basic questions are answered.
• Surveyor can get its money through paypal or click bank.
• Lifetimebiz.com has decided to provide a new height to this smart concept. It has brilliantly organized reviews and provided proper feedback to all the businesses.
• Normally, there are chances to make approximately $500-$5000 per month. Basically, the earning amount is directly proportional to the time you spent on surveys work.

He demonstrated the member login page of the website where first you need to create an e-mail account then regularly you get update pertaining to survey information in your mail-id. A free e-mail id through yahoo, Gmail or hotmail also would be sufficient. Never let you inbox stagnant because it would be like throwing away opportunities.

In contemporary competitive market, always you need to stand on your toes. So, companies organized surveys and feedbacks to know the grievances and expectation of their clients. Few opportunists try to be benefited with such situation and hence spam information is flooded everywhere. Lifetimebiz.com has proved an effective tool to get rid of such situation. This press release reveals its various aspects. For more information Visit: http://www.lifetimebiz.com

craigslist dog scam

Puppy fraud is one of the most common Internet scams - and it's on the rise, according to RCMP Corporal Louis Robertson, director of the Canadian anti-fraud centre PhoneBusters, which is managed jointly by the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP and the Canadian Competition Bureau.

It all started when Rebecca responded to an Internet ad websites like Petfinder.com or Craigslist for a free puppy, owned by a poster who said he could no longer afford to care for the animal.
Rebecca Aobaugh: "There was always a line in there that always got me. It was, 'please, please promise me that you'll send me pictures of my puppy.' So that kind of pulled at my heart strings and that's why I went for that."
She sent $200 dollars for shipping of the dog to Cameroon, Africa. No dog arrived. An employee of Delta Airlines told Rebecca this could be a scam.
Rebecca Aobaugh: "I said, no it's not a scam. How could it be a scam? How could people scam you for a puppy?"
Then came a request for an additional $600 dollars. She didn't fall for it and that's how she ended up buying this little guy.
The same thing happened to Michelle Waltenburg of Tacoma. She was on the Craigslist web site looking at the classified ads for pets when she came across an ad for a "lovely English bulldog puppy needing a loving and caring home."

"Something about the way they worded it jumped out at me," she said. "It was an adorable little bulldog puppy, just sitting there, looking at the camera. That's it. That's all it takes."

Michelle responded and got a quick reply from a James Campbell. He claimed to be an American working in Cameroon. He said he wanted someone in the United States to adopt his bulldog puppy, Suzy, because the weather in Africa was no good for her.

"And he said, 'No, there's no fee, but I need you to pay for the puppy to be flown home,' " Waltenburg recalled. "And I said, 'Oh cool. I can do that,' having no idea what was involved."

Waltenburg thought she was going to get a purebred puppy for free, as long as she paid for the shipping, which the "seller" said had to be wired via Western Union.

Michelle sent him $180. That's when the requests for more money started coming in.

"Unfortunately, there never was a dog and you're never going to get your money back," said Alison Preszler, with the National Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Some scammers ask for financial deposits in exchange for a dog that will never materialize, he said. Others send photos of dogs asking for money to help rescue them from famine or homelessness - a scam that was particularly popular after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.

PhoneBusters has received 168 complaints of puppy scams over the past five years, probably only a fraction of the actual number because people are often too embarrassed to admit they've been duped, Cpl. Robertson said.

Another Toronto woman who answered the same ad as Ms. Vanderbrug, on Kijiji, which is similar to Craigslist, said she felt something was wrong after she realized the puppy was too big to be a Coton de Tulear


Others are similar to the one Ms. Vanderbrug ran into, he said; sellers post ads for dogs they claim are purebred but they're actually mutts or come from puppy mills.

craigslist apartment rental scams

In the past, some fraudulent Craigslist ads offered vehicles for sale, taking descriptions and photos from legitimate ads for used cars, Watanabe said. “They were selling the same car over and over, and people actually wired money,” she said.Just be careful about renting an apartment off Craigslist. Don't wire money without meeting the landlord or rental agent.
For Leslie Dean, a single parent looking for housing, the online ad offer seemed ideal: $800 in rent for a three-bedroom house in Kahana near shopping, restaurants, beaches and golf.

“I happened upon one of those too-good-to-be-true deals,” she said.

She soon learned it was exactly that.

Responding to the posting on the free advertising Web site Craigslist, she began corresponding by e-mail this month with “Bello A.” He claimed to be a “successful petroleum engineer” who had “urgently” moved his family to West Africa for his new business before he could make arrangements to rent the three-year-old house. Explaining the low price, he said he was more interested in finding someone “who can promise us good maintenance and take the house like his or her own.”

After soliciting personal information, including her name, age, occupation, address and telephone number, “Bello A.” said he would “ship” the house keys to Dean once she wired an $800 “commitment fee” to him in Nigeria.

“There were the red flags,” said Dean, a West Maui resident who never sent the money but continued the correspondence for a few days to see what would happen. “I’m just one person, but I wonder how many people might have sent the money.”

At least one person from Oregon was duped by the scam while using the Craigslist Web site to try to find a rental on Maui, said Terry Tolman of the Realtors Association of Maui.

He said the scam has surfaced in recent weeks, with Craigslist ads offering rental homes in various Maui locations for as little as $800 a month. The rent usually includes “hydro, heat, laundry facilities, air condition and so on.”

The ads give addresses of actual homes that are for sale, with accompanying information and photos taken from online sales listings.



The online Web site allows anyone with an e-mail address to post free classified advertising listings in various categories, including jobs, housing and items for sale or trade. The listings are grouped by location.


“As soon as I mentioned the word ‘scam,’ they completely shut down,” the man said.

That offer was followed by a second similar offer from another “buyer,” which the man also ignored.

“People who lose money always wire money,” Watanabe said. “It’s an immediate transfer of funds and you don’t know who it’s going to, especially if it’s going out of the country.”

She noted that craigslist doesn’t collect information on buyers and sellers, unlike some other Internet sales sites such as eBay, which has cooperated with government subpoenas in fraud investigations.

In fact, the craigslist Web site includes the disclaimer: “Craigslist is not involved in any transaction, and does not handle payments, guarantee transactions, provide escrow services, or offer ‘buyer protection’ or ‘seller certification.’ “

Among tips posted on Craigslist for avoiding scams and fraud is the recommendation that buyers “deal locally with folks you can meet in person” to avoid “99 percent of the scam attempts on craigslist.”

Another craigslist suggestion: “Never wire funds via Western Union, money gram or any other wire service — anyone who asks you to do so is a scammer.”

In the case of the fraudulent Maui home rental ads, Tolman said there’s no way of knowing where or who the scammer is.

“He could be sitting in New York City or on Molokai,” Tolman said. “It’s spooky how much information people will give away through e-mail to somebody they don’t even know.”

While the fraudulent ads haven’t affected the actual homeowners or Realtors, “it’s a distraction,” Tolman said. “What you would hate to have happen is for the agent to be showing the house and somebody trying to move in.”

He said anyone who lives on Maui would realize the rental offer is too good to be true. Anyone who drove by the advertised houses could see they were for sale, Tolman said.

That was the case for Dean, who contacted a Realtor and learned the Kahana house was in escrow — and not for rent.

MysteryShopLink.com scam

Mystery shoppers are paid to shop or dine out and then provide reports about the experience.
An operation that lured consumers with promises that they could earn big money as trained and certified “mystery shoppers ” has agreed to pay $850,000 to settle charges of deceptive marketing and contempt.
In exchange for a $99 fee, consumers were promised enough work to earn a steady full-time or part-time income as mystery shoppers. Instead, consumers received a worthless certification and access to postings for mystery shopping jobs controlled by other companies. Consumers had to apply for these mostly low-paying jobs, and had no advantage over anyone else who found the postings elsewhere on the Internet for free. Most consumers got no jobs and earned no money.
According to the FTC, the defendants claimed that MysteryShopLink.com was hiring mystery shoppers in local areas nationwide. The company ran help wanted ads in newspapers, and on radio and TV. Consumers who responded to the ads reached the defendants’ telemarketers, who represented that MysteryShopLink.com had large numbers of available jobs and not enough shoppers to fill them.

The FTC also charged five of the eight defendants – Mystery Shop Link, LLC, Tangent Group, LLC, and Robin Larry Murphy, Andrew Holman, and Kenneth Johnson – with contempt. The 1997 consent judgment barred Murphy from making material misrepresentations of fact while telemarketing, and required him to post a $100,000 bond.



Under the settlement, the FTC will collect the proceeds of Murphy’s $100,000 bond. The settlement also includes a $17.8 million judgment, which is suspended based on the defendants’ inability to pay. The full judgment will be imposed if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition. This settlement prohibits all the defendants from making misrepresentations in the future. As a repeat offender, Murphy is permanently banned from telemarketing, except for non-deceptive sales to businesses of telecommunications equipment.



The second settlement includes defendants Harp Marketing Services, Inc., and its principals, Aiden Reddin and Marc Gurney. Harp Marketing was the primary outside telemarketing firm that handled consumer calls, and thus sales, for Mystery Shop Link. This settlement requires Harp and its owners to pay $750,000 in redress and prohibits them from making misrepresentations in the future. The Harp settlement also includes a suspended judgment of $6.8 million, the total amount of Mystery Shop Link sales made by Harp’s telemarketers. The full amount of this judgment will be imposed if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition.



Both settlements prohibit the defendants from collecting payments from Mystery Shop Link customers, and from transferring or benefitting from information about those customers. Both also contain record-keeping and reporting provisions to assist the FTC in monitoring the defendants’ compliance.

USA 800 Telemarketing call center job

USA 800 officials announced Monday plans for a $565,000 expansion at its St. Joseph facility and an immediate need for customer service representatives to work at the area office at the Mitchell Woods Business Park. Most of the 350 jobs will be created within the next two years.


Telemarketing careers could be just a phone call away as USA 800 officials look to expand their St. Joseph facility and add 350 new jobs in the area.According to its Web site, USA 800 is an employee-owned customer care center that serves industries that include catalogs, insurance, travel and leisure industries.
Brad Lau, senior vice president of economic development at the St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce, said he’s pleased to see USA 800 expand in the area and offer much-needed jobs.

“They could’ve expanded anywhere, so this is great news for St. Joe,” Mr. Lau said. “Obviously this shows that the company has a lot of confidence in St. Joseph and the business community to expand operations here.”



Tom Davis, president and chief executive officer of USA 800, stated in his company’s press release that he’s been pleased to see growth throughout the past two years, which included adding 150 employees last year in St. Joseph.

“We’re excited about our growth in the St. Joseph area and know that the creation of these jobs, with health care and employee ownership benefits, will help the community in years to come,” he said.

Jeff Schmucker can be reached

at jeff.schmucker@npgco.com.

legitimate work-at-home call-center agents

companies which claim that you can make money working from home by signing up for their system or getting their work from home directory. Unfortunately, almost all of these ‘opportunities’ are either rip-offs or scams.

Many big companies such as Hilton and AT&T are cutting costs by hiring home workers. Cable/phone and hotel companies usually hire home workers for customer service. Also, the TV shopping shows hire homeworkers to take calls. I have worked from home for more than 10 years. You just know how to find these jobs. Stay-Home-Income.com has a FREE list of hundreds of LEGITIMATE work at home jobs offered by well known companies. These jobs do NOT cost you money.

This makes it very difficult for stay-at-home moms and other individuals who would like to find a legitimate means to make some supplementary income from their home. Fortunately, there are some legitimate opportunities to fill positions where the location of the worker does not matter for people who would like to be able to work from home .

These at-home workers handle hotel and airline reservations, roadside assistance, tech support and sales calls. Retirees and near-retirees watching their retirement accounts shrink may find these legitimate work-at-home opportunities a way to earn extra cash.
AlpineAccess.com – This is a virtual call center in which you will be taking customer service calls from your home.
Alpine Access hires its agents as employees, both full- and part-time. The company provides subsidized health-care insurance for full-time workers, and part-timers can buy into the company's group health plan but at full price. There's a 401(k) plan available to full- and part-time workers. Applicants are paid for the hours they spend training, and the sole cost -- other than setting up your home office -- is $45 for a background check once you've been hired.



IntelliCare – This is a company that provides phone services for the health industry. They take customer service calls for services such as health plans, healthcare providers, and care managers. If you have any sort of background in medicine, you would that the opportunity to provide clinical customer service calls which could potentially mean a much higher rate of pay.


Hilton Hotels employs about 900 work-at-home reservation agents, while outsourcing companies such as Alpine Access, Arise Virtual Solutions and LiveOps, among others, hire agents to handle various types of call-center work for their clients.

And Alpine Access will hire another 250 agents this year, plus 1,200 in the first quarter of 2009, said Chris Carrington, chief executive of the Denver-based firm.

Carrington said that growth is driven largely by companies moving call-center operations back to the U.S. from overseas -- in part because wages and other costs are rising in other countries, but also because communication difficulties can result in customer backlash.

These jobs aren't for everyone. They often require some experience. For example, Carrington said Alpine hired just 2% of applicants this year.

And, while the flexibility is a perk -- in general, agents set their schedule about a week in advance -- many are part-time, with pay ranging from about $8 to $14 an hour, often without benefits.

You'll need to have a quiet space to work -- a barking dog or noisy children will present problems (the calls are recorded, so agents can't pretend it's not happening). These jobs often require equipment: A relatively new computer, high-speed Internet access, and a dedicated phone line.


Once they pass the test, Arise agents must undergo training for the specific firm for whom they'll handle calls -- that training costs another $25 to $200, depending on the complexity the training.

For Mary Ann Lawrence, an Arise agent for eight years from her home in Pembroke Pines, Fla., the initial hurdles were worth it. "It was a bit of an investment, but not huge," Lawrence said. "It was enough to make it where I was serious about it but not enough that if I changed my mind I'd be like, 'Oh my God, what have I done?'"

The 58-year-old, a retiree of BellSouth, said she works about 30 to 35 hours a week handling roadside-assistance calls for AAA. She said she "finds it rewarding to be able to help people."

And some companies require a fair amount of upfront investment. Miramar, Fla.-based Arise Virtual Solutions, for instance, requires its agents to be stand-alone incorporated businesses. That means paying an incorporation fee -- most states charge about $100 but it can run higher -- plus Arise requires applicants to pay $99 for an 18-hour online training course. While 98% of applicants pass the course, those who don't forfeit that fee, said Mary Bartlett, a vice president at Arise.

Africa airline jobs scam

Airline Employment Scam

When the management of Trans Africa World Airlines asked job seekers to come with N15, 000 each for the procurement of e-passport and N3,000 administrative fee last month, many thought it was passport to a new world. Thousands of desperate job seekers trooped to the airline’s office.

The company, which address was given as ”Murtala Mohammed International Airport/Local Wing, Ikeja, Lagos State,” is located under a large, white canopy erected in the premises of an uncompleted two storey building located at 190/192 Egbeda/Idimu Road, Abule-Odu Bus Stop in Alimosho, Lagos, where it conducted the interview for ‘new staff.’

Nobody knew the actual number of positions available, only that there were vacancies for those interested in cargo handling and being part of the cabin crew excluding the pilot.

The vacant positions were not advertised, rather, participants were drawn from churches and social organisations known to the company’s management.

Some of the applicants who visited the employment site and who spoke with our correspondent observed that the whole process is akin to kalokalo, the one-armed bandit game of luck.

In fact, many others left the venue unconvinced that the positions were really available. They did not know if they had been employed or if they were being kept in view, even on the last day, Friday, August 15, 2008.

Investigation by our correspondent revealed something ‘shady‘ about the whole process.

Trans Africa World Airlines, which claimed to deliver its service with ”A touch of class and excellence,” is yet to acquire the legal approval to operate as an airline company, which core positions, it was seeking to fill with staff.

Only recently, the company obtained an Air Transport Licence after transforming from an undisclosed name.

Checks at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, which has records of all airlines in Nigeria, showed that Trans Africa World Airlines was yet to obtain an Air Operation Certificate, without which it could not operate any air flight schedule.

Head of Media Relations at the NCAA, Mr. Sam Adurogboye, confirmed the pending position of the company.

“From NCAA records, Trans Africa World Airlines existed in another name in the past. They transformed into the current name. It has a licence for the new name. But it is yet to get an AOC.

“The implication is that without an AOC, it cannot operate an air flight schedule any where in the country. It will have to get that first, before any other thing.”

Our correspondent gathered that those who applied at Trans Africa World Airlines, – people with different educational qualifications, including secondary school leavers - were instructed to come for training in white and black uniform. No written test, no interview, no short listing was carried out.

According to the company, all the applicants that fulfilled the requirement of paying the sum of N18,000 employment fee were as good as being employed.

The company remained silent, however, on how the Passport was going to be obtained, as well as when the job was going to begin.

Other requirements included an application letter, photocopies of educational certificates, a medical report, a police report, birth certificate and four passport photographs.

Worse still, no receipt was issued for the payments. Those who paid were given a piece of paper (handwritten) indicating the sum collected from them.

A copy of such letter had neither company’s stamp nor signature. However, the applicants were told after the exercise to go home and wait for further information.

Asked if Trans Africa World Airlines had the power to employ staff for jobs it was not licensed to carry out yet, Adurogboye said NCAA was equally investigating the report.

”We have heard before you came today. We are equally investigating. We have summoned them for a meeting on Tuesday. You may join the meeting if you want.

”We will issue a categorical statement when we conclude our investigation.”

Although the meeting was held as scheduled, our correspondent was not allowed to attend as promised, owing to the absence, from office, of Adurogboye on the day.

It was however, reliably learnt that that was the third meeting NCAA held with the Executive Director of Trans Africa World Airlines, Mrs. Yemisi Wellington-Alafa, on the activity of her company.

Following her tacit denial, she was required in the previous meetings to denounce the activity or put the record straight within seven days, through a national media advertisement.

Curiously, while she has failed, for whatever reason, to carry out the advertisement, NCAA‘s investigation has also remained inconclusive.

On Tuesday, August 26, our correspondent met with her at Citi Guardian Chambers, Gbemisola House, Ikeja with a media consultant, Mr. Babatunji Wusu, in attendance.

But she refused to have the interview recorded, explaining that there was no need since it was planned to be ”a family affair.”

She denied knowledge of the illegal recruitment activity initially, but blamed other people for her woes, when she eventually admitted that money was indeed received from applicants. She said her company was still at stage four of AOC acquisition.

Asked if her company‘s activity was legal, Wellington-Alafa said, ”I did not know you are now a lawyer. The youth activity that my Mum does has been on for a long time now. It is the activity that was held there. It has nothing to do directly with Trans Africa World Airlines.”

Later, she added, ”And I told my Mum not to conduct the exercise even though she said it would involve only her church members.”

Asked why she has not carried out an advertisement to denounce the activity, if Trans Africa World Airlines was not in a hurry as she claimed, the Executive Director said she was not rushing it because she was planning to include many other things in the advert.

classified ads data entry jobs scam

Job seekers responding to classified ads or postings on Internet job sites have become a favorite target for scammers. The results can be not only financial loss, but possible criminal charges and the legal expenses associated with defending against them.
Ellen had posted her resume on CareerBuilder.com and was pleased when she was contacted by someone who said he was with a charity called Children in Crisis, which is a real organization based in London.

"I was told it was a clerical job, and that I would be doing data entry and processing payments," Ellen told ConsumerAffairs.com.


AS A part-time student, Ellen, 21, wanted to earn some pocket money. She saw an advertisement asking people to assemble electronic gadgets at home. She thought it would be an honest job that would give her the flexibility of working from home.

She dialled the number and a man answered. He told her to send a postal order worth US$70 if she wanted the job. Upon receipt of payment, she was promised the parts would be mailed to her within five to seven days. The naive lass sent the money and waited. And waited.

“After three weeks of my calling him, he finally said the products would arrive soon. Eventually, he stopped answering my calls. Then one day, I called and found out the number had been disconnected,” relates Mogana.

She tried to track the company down but all she had was a post office box number. She complained to CAP but could not recover her money as the man and his company had vanished.

A few months later, still hunting for a part-time job, Mogana chanced upon another advertisement in the papers. This time the advertisement read, “Looking for data entry clerks, experienced not necessary, minimum SPM, call for interview”. She called and ended up in a dingy office in the city, where a “consultant” awaited her. This consultant told her the job was available but she had to pay RM139. What for? she enquired.

“So that we can send your resume to the company and they can do the paperwork for you. In a week, you can start work,” he answered. Mogana didn’t suspect anything was amiss and paid up.

Months later, she still hadn’t heard anything. All her calls went unanswered. She finally gave up. Luckily, through a recommendation, she found a job at a factory.

“I’ve been cheated twice so I don’t bother to read the advertisements again. I really can’t blame anyone because it was my fault. But, I’d like to advise others to do a background check on the company before they decide to send money or start the business,” she says.

Engineer T.H.Wong, 47, wanted some extra income to save for his children’s education. He came across an advertisement in an English daily to assemble products. Thinking it would also be good weekend family activity, Wong responded and was sent a flyer.

“I had to pay RM85 for member registration and the job was to assemble remote control toys. In addition, there were some legal fees to be paid, etc. The entire amount came up to RM345,” recalls Wong, who decided to give it a try. Within a week, he got his first “product”. When he saw the kit, he was unhappy as the assembling proved difficult. He sought a refund.

He called the number and spoke to an “agent” who claimed the company had offices all over the country and the products were from Taiwan. When Wong asked the names and numbers of these offices, the man refused to divulge the details.

Numerous calls to the “agent” subsequently failed. When he did a background check, Wong discovered the company did not exist.

Okay, I confess. Yours truly was a victim too. When I was a struggling student in the United States, every penny counted so I often scoured the local papers for part-time work. I saw an advertisement which offered US$2 (RM7.20) for every envelope stuffed with their flyers. The envelopes would already be addressed with postage affixed. All I had to do was send a SASE (self-addressed stamp and envelope) along with US$20 (RM72) for more information and US$2 for shipping and handling to the address.

No harm in trying, I thought so I parted with my US$22

My package arrived with a five-page manual on another money-making venture – how money could be obtained by surfing the net for articles on construction companies.

I was expected to photocopy the last page of the manual and distribute to as many people as possible. My flyer would read, “Make money surfing the web! Send an SASE with US$20 for more information and US$2 for shipping and handling to (my address).”

Clever, isn’t it?

It had nothing to do with surfing the Net. I would get US$22 from every person who responded. There was no product or business whatsoever. Infuriated and embarrassed that I had been duped, I trashed the manual. After that, I did waittressing and babysitting to earn my dough!

FTC targets Internet work-at-home scams

Project FAL$E HOPE$ crackdown targets Internet-based schemes, work-at-home scams


-- Money Making Secret: These defendants promised "Top 12 Programs to Make Big Money!" and charged consumers between $47 and $129 to access a "members only" Web site with "money-making secrets," the Federal Trade Commission said. The Internet-based programs that were offered varied, including online survey programs, free government grant money programs, mystery shopper programs, and online data-entry programs.

Project FAL$E HOPE$ includes new cases announced Tuesday, developments in existing cases, criminal convictions, and state actions. The project also announced new education material for advertising sales staff, aimed at helping screen ads for bogus business opportunities.

-- The Results Group: Working out of what the FTC called a boiler room in Phoenix, the operation charged between $99 and $599 to build and host Web sites "affiliated" with the sites of large retailers such as Amazon.com and Overstock.com, the FTC said. Consumers could supposedly make money when those retailers paid commissions for sales made through the consumers’ Web sites. In fact, the large retailers were unaware of any such affiliation, and consumers made no money.

The FTC accused the operation of falsely representing that purchasers would receive substantial income as well as substantial assistance from an expert staff, and using false and misleading statements to encourage consumers to buy the business opportunity.



However, these programs did not exist, or did not offer easy money with little time or effort, as promised, the FTC said. The FTC's complaint charges the defendants with making false and unsubstantiated earnings claims.

The FTC also has new guidance for publishers, offering them help to screen out deceptive ads for business opportunities. The alert, "Ads for Business Opportunities: How to Detect Deception," suggests advertising sales staff to give an extra look at ads that make claims such as: "No risk! Guaranteed" "Quick and Easy!" "Earn $2,000 a month."

The FTC alert warns that legitimate business ventures involve risks, and start-up businesses require a lot of work to get off the ground. The law requires earnings claims in ads be accompanied by the number and percentage of previous purchasers who achieved the income, the FTC said.

banks fake check schemes

A new scam uses banks as unwitting accomplices to take consumers' money.

Avesjha Wilson said she posted her resume on Monster.com and was hired by a company called Recruit Med Inc. as a part-time data entry specialist.

"It wasn't anything about data entry. That was the tricky thing about it. Nothing to do with data entry," Wilson said.

Instead, Wilson said, Recruit Med Inc. instructed her to cash checks sent to her in the mail, take out a 6 percent commission, then send the rest of the money to a post office box in London. The first check was for $3,900.

"It was made out to me," Wilson said.

Wilson said it looked legitimate. It was drawn on a Wells Fargo bank account. She took it to the bank’s branch at 51st Street and Ames Avenue in Omaha and cashed it. Wilson said she is not a Wells Fargo customer, and she was surprised to be able to walk out with cash.

The check turned out to be fake.

For security and privacy reasons, Wells Fargo declined to comment on the case.

The Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance said it is surprised that the bank cashed the check. The banking department says most banks would hold a check for that amount until it could verify the transaction with the account holder.

As for consumers who may be tempted by this scheme, the Better Business Bureau’s Jim Hegarty warned that all similar offers are almost certainly scams. Hegarty said that by cashing the check, Wilson unintentionally participated in a crime.

"You are abetting the scammers in this endeavor," he said.

Wilson had already wired $3,600 to Recruit Med Inc. before she had second thoughts and went back to Western Union to stop the transaction. She could only get $1,000 back.

"Luckily, the bank was lenient with me, and I didn't get in big trouble for it," Wilson said.

She said she returned the $1,000 to the bank and learned a valuable lesson: If it's fast cash without an honest day's work, it's probably a scam.

"It's crazy," she said.

The Better Business Bureau said check fraud schemes are on the rise. If you have any questions about the legitimacy of a check you should contact the BBB or a banking official.

students fooled by work-at-home Internet schemes

Today's students might belong to a tech-savvy generation, but they are also dangerously blind to consumer fraud techniques, said Barry Elliott, the creator and coordinator of PhoneBusters, an arm of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Work-at-home offers represented just 1 percent of the total Internet complaint filed with the league in 2005, but they accounted for 44 percent of complaints from people younger than 30. On average, work-at-home schemes tapped victims for $1,785.

A man Graham Rodrigue wants to share a secret.

He used to be a workaday slob, a wage slave, a cog in the corporate wheel. Now, he stays home and earns $1,800 a day for typing.

Rodrigue pledges to help you do the same - after you send a $47 money order to his apartment in Quebec.

Similar solicitations cram some e-mail boxes and pepper online job boards. Most are fraudulent, and many target students, according to a January report by the National Consumers League.



"Some of them are quite expensive," said Susan Grant, director of the league's National Fraud Information Center. "Competition for good-paying jobs is fierce, so when somebody advertises that you can make lots of money from the comforts of your home, it may be more appealing to people who haven't found the jobs they're looking for yet."



He said a survey by his agency revealed that 69 percent of university students have shared debit card PIN numbers with acquaintances. This nonchalant attitude has helped fraud peddlers use the Internet to revive classic telemarketing scams, he said.

"The key thing with spam and e-mails is don't open up unknown e-mails," Elliott said.

On Feb. 7, an associate identified as Deborah Lewis sent an unsolicited e-mail to Kent State students that advertised a stay-at-home data entry job paying thousands a week.

"All you need is access to the Internet, have basic typing skills and follow our simple step-by-step system," the e-mail said.

A follow-up e-mail led to a one-page Web site hosted by atspace.com, a free service a German company offers to anyone with computer access. In turn, that page links to www.data-entry-jobs.com, a site registered to Rodrigue.

Rodrigue listed a Quebec City phone number when registering his sites, according to the Register.com whois database. A call to the number yields the voice of an operator who said alternately in French and English that "this number is no longer in service."

Most of Rodrigue's Web sites are linked by claims that seem incredible, something Rodrigue acknowledges. In the FAQ section of one site, he answers the question "Is this program a scam?"

"We would not have been around for six solid years if our program was a scam," Rodrigue said. "Everything listed in our site is 100 percent true, and the potential pay rates are real. As long as you follow our instructions and type ads daily, you'll be paid for your work."

Grant, of the National Consumers League, said consumers need to answer some questions for themselves. Most legitimate work-at-home opportunities come from local companies seeking local help. An advertisement that seeks home-based employees worldwide should raise red flags.

"One thing is a demand for money before you even get the details of what you're going to do," Grant said. "Another is any claim that you can make lots of money with just spending a few hours a day from the comfort of your home. If that were true, we'd all be doing that."

If it's not true, those who are promising sky-high payoffs for little or no work could be committing a crime.

"If there are deceptions that are being made with intent, then it's fraud," Elliott said. "It could be anything. There could be an organized-crime connection, or it could just be a guy operating without a lot of common sense leaving a huge trail."

At Kent State, the Career Services Center bars employer recruiting by those who charge a buy-in fee to start a job. Assistant director Ami Haynes Hollis said she notifies faculty members when she is alerted to non-sanctioned recruiting. Employers who participate in campus events or post on the official jobs site, FlashForward, must pass a screening process.

The first point of contact for U.S. Internet fraud is the FBI-operated Web site, www.ic3.gov. Consumers can also visit www.fraud.org or www.phonebusters.com to file complaints.

Data Entry jobs scam Online Fraud

Data Entry jobs sound promising. Simply by paying a fee, sometimes as much as $100 or more, a person will start receiving offers from companies that need help entering data online. All you have to do is enter in short 3-4 line sentences or copy data onto forms provided.
Online fraud has become a vast global network, bringing together bands of cyber criminals to do what they do best ? steal money and identities from unwitting online users.

While legitimate data entry leads can sometimes be found online (most data entry work is outsourced to India and other lower-cost countries), you'll have to wade through cyber-acres of scams to get to them.

Data entry scams often claim you'll earn a certain amount for every "application" that you process. As with the envelope stuffing scam, you pay a fee and in return are instructed to run the same ad that you responded to, and to collect checks from those who reply. are from people like you, except now the role of scammer is yours.

Another common data entry scam involves having the applicant pay a fee for software that he or she will "need" in order to complete the data entry jobs. Once you purchase the software, however, it becomes clear that you yourself will be responsible for finding the data entry work --
Perhaps the biggest scam of them all. The victim is lead to believe that they will earn thousands a day simply by typing, or entering data for a company. The program usually requires an up-front fee of $100 or more. After payment, the victim discovers, that in reality, they will have to do marketing to make money.

Upon filling out my application I received within two seconds an email explaining that all I had to do was send the same advertisement out to other unsuspecting people along with an application for employment, review the application (for what reason, I do not know) and send them the congratulatory letter that there employment has been approved.

The Reality:
This is actually another marketing scheme similar to envelope stuffing. After filling out the application and paying the money, you will discover that you earn these hundreds of dollars by placing a similar advertisement in order to flease others out of their money. Some even require you to send half the money to the person who recruited you.

There are several ways to determine if a scheme is a scam. Any job that requires any payment, for registration, and the buying of manuals and goods before one earns any money, is a scam. Any job that promises quick, easy, good money is also a scam. Any e-mail sent by an unknown party that asks me to click onto a link to fill in my personal details, such as banking information and password to my online accounts will be deleted.

All I know is that earning an income from working at home requires earnest, diligent work

Real Legitimate Paid Focus Groups To Make Money

Online focus groups and paid surveys are a cost effective alternative to conventional "face-to-face" focus groups. market research focus groups where there are a small group of people who are paid for their opinions on certain products Online focus groups generally invite 8 to 10 people to join for a specified period of time (90 minutes to two hours) in a specialized chat room. This controlled environment allows participants to view text, graphics, sounds/jingles, video or multimedia for evaluation and testing. There's no cost to you to join a focus group and pay is generally excellent, ranging from $15/hr - $100/hr+! .


Below is a list of paid focus groups . Find one that is located in your area then check their site out!

http://www.2020research.com 20/20 Research Incorporated · 20/20 Research provides qualitative research support services, including focus groups. Receive payment for discussing products and services you already use! USA only available for Nashville and Charlotte, NC.
http://alacarteresearch.com A La Carte Research, LLC · Focus Groups in New York City and Syosset, NY.
http://www.accurdata.com Accurate Data Marketing, Inc. · Focus Groups in Glenview, IL.
http://www.awres.com Adler-Weiner Research · Focus Groups in Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA.
http://www.anr.com Alan Newman Research · Online surveys. Focus Groups in Richmond, VA.

http://www.boulderfocuscenter.com Boulder Focus Center · Focus Groups in Boulder, CO.

http://www.athenamarketresearch.com ARG · Focus Groups in San Bernardino/Riverside, CA.
http://www.askmiami.com Ask Miami Reseach · Focus Groups in Miami, FL.

http://www.atkinsresearchinc.com Atkins Research Group, Inc. · Focus Groups in Los Angeles, CA.

http://www.consumer-logic.com Consumer Logic, Inc. · Focus Groups in Tulsa, OK.
http://www.cosvc.com Consumer Opinion Services, Inc. · Focus Groups in Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Boise, Salt Lake City and Chicago.


http://www.campos.com Campos Market Research · Only apply if you live in these Pennsylvania areas: Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington, Fayette, Butler, Beaver, Lawrence, Greene, Indiana, and Somerset. Anyone within this area would be eligible for focus groups if they are willing to travel into Pittsburgh.

http://www.cqsinc.com CQS Research, Inc. · Focus Groups in Houston, TX.
http://www.superooms.com Consumer Research Associates CRA/Superooms · Focus Groups in San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX.



http://www.digitalresearch.com Digital Research, Inc. · Online research is a specialty. Web surveys and moderated chats. (All North America)

http://www.delve.com Delve · Focus Groups in Appleton, WI; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO.

http://www.e-jury.net E-Jury · Provides mock juries and summary trials conducted via the Internet. Attorneys present their case facts, the jury questions what would be used at the actual trial, and personal or follow-up questions to get additional feedback. The E-jurors review these facts, answer the questions, and provide additional comments. Payment is $5-$10.
http://www.eckersf.com Ecker & Associates · Focus Groups in San Francisco Bay/San Jose, CA


http://register.i-say.com/research/

http://www.elliottbenson.com Elliott Benson · Focus Groups in Sacramento, CA.
http://www.fieldwork.com Fieldwork Network · Focus Groups in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fort Lee NJ, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle, and WestchesterCounty.
http://www.ffrsf.com Fleischman Field Research · Focus Groups in San Francisco, CA. Refreshments are always served and an honorarium ranging from $60 to $150 is provided as a token of appreciation for the person's participation. Consumer and executive/professional discussion panels.
http://www.focusonboston.com Focus On Boston · Focus Groups in Boston, MA.
http://www.focusonmiami.com Focus On Miami · Focus Groups in Miami, FL.
http://www.focuspointe.net Focus Pointe · Focus Groups in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, LA, Manhattan, NJ, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
http://www.focusline.com Focusline · Conducts web based surveys, one-on-one interviews, and group sessions. Surveys usually take about 10 minutes to complete. Group sessions and one-on-one interviews are conducted in a chat based environment and usually last for 30 minutes to an hour. You'll be financially rewarded for your participation, typically between $25.00-$45.00 for your participation.
http://www.mcmillionresearch.com/getpaid McMillion Research · Conducts interviews on a variety of different topics, with a variety of respondents from youth to senior citizens. Charleston and Barboursville, WV.
http://www.pragmatic-research.com Pragmatic Research · Internet surveys and in person focus groups in St. Louis, MO.
http://www.shifrin-hayworth.com/questionnaire.htmlShifrin~Hayworth · Studies include one-on-one interviews, telephone interviews and focus groups. Studies last from 30 minutes to three hours and pay from $50 to $250.
http://www.sonicdrivein.com Sonic Drive-In · Register to participate in focus groups, taste tests and market research. (Click on Register)
http://www.surveysite.com/about.htmlSurveySite Web Panel · Answer online surveys or participate in online focus groups. Pays a minimum of $35 if you participate in an online chat discussion. Cash or contests for online surveys. (Age 16+)
http://www.focusgroups.com FocusGroups.com · Marketing Research Services listed market by market. Database of many companies. Not all want to hear from you as they do not keep a database. This list is for clients to hire companies.