Introduction
A lot of the articles and posts I’ve written so far have been covering the more advanced topics of how to use SEO, PPC and affiliate marketing to make money for your site. Apart from these skills, you obviously need to have some web design and programming skills, not to mention hosting, domains and everything that comes with being a webmaster.
However, there are a lot of ways to make money online without even having a website. Today I want to give a beginners’ guide to, Subvert & Profit. In a nutshell, you sign up and get paid to Digg and StumbleUpon specified sites. If you’re already a veteran Digger & Stumbler, you probably want to go straight ahead and sign up, and skip to the “S&P Tips section” at the end to get tips on how to get the most out of S&P and how not to get your accounts banned. I’ve already talked about using Subvert & Profit from the advertiser side to exploit Digg for links. Today I’m going to talk about using it from the social user side and earning yourself some easy cash.
Get a PayPal Account
I imagine just about everyone has one of these. I rarely meet a person that doesn’t. S&P pays via PayPal, so if you haven’t got a PayPal account, you’re going to need to go to www.paypal.com and sign up. C’mon… You got a PayPal Account, right?…
Sign up to Digg
Whether or not you already have a Digg account, it’s best to go and sign up for another one. Head over to digg.com and in the top right corner hit “Join Now”. Signing up to Digg is a pretty simple affair, so fill out the form and activate from the e-mail.
Sign up to StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a network of almost 3 million members using the “StumbleUpon Toolbar”, which is a neat little bar that allows you to give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to any web page you’re currently on. When you’re not voting for pages, you can click “Stumble!” and be taking to highly user-rated pages on topics that you specify in your profile. Nip over to stumbleupon.com and click their “Join StumbleUpon Today” link. You will have to sign up and download the StumbleUpon Toolbar. There is version for both Internet Explorer and Firefox and it’s not very intrusive and can be quite fun when you’re not just making money from it!
Sign up to Subvert & Profit.com
I know all of this signing up is a chore, but this is the last one - so almost there! Hoss over to subvertandprofit.com and enter your e-mail address that you use for PayPal. This will give you access to the sign up form.
Fill out all of the usual sign up gumph then check your inbox for the activation e-mail.
Set up Subvert & Profit
Once you first login to S&P you’ll need to have your Digg and Stumble usernames handy. These are entered into your profile and they will give you a verification task of a story to Digg & Stumble. They will then have to verify your actions, which can take a few hours. So go put the kettle on. Make the tea. Drink the tea. Then probably make and eat dinner as well.
Ready to rock!
We should be all ready to go out there and make some money now. Subvert is a dead easy system, they will send you an e-mail every time they have a new task for you (most days generally). Then you login and follow the request URLs and either Digg or Stumble them. (There’s two sections here, one for Digging and one for Stumbling - so get it right!). Every time you Stumble or Digg a story you get paid $0.50. Now, say you’ve got 6 stories to Digg/Stumble, you can open all 6 URLs at once and it will take around 30 seconds to complete the Digging and Stumbling. This essentially works out as earning $360 per hour for your time.
Digging Pages
Sometimes, S&P will pop you directly to the story on Digg.com, so it’s nice and easy - just login and hit the “Digg This” button. On other occasions, you will land directly on the page/article that is being Dugg. If this happens, there will be a “Digg This” button or link, somewhere on the article. So just have a quick scan and you should be able to see it. Another $0.50 in the bank.
Stumbling Pages
Stumbling is a dead simple affair. When you land on the page, no searching around - just hit the “I like it” thumbs up button on your browser toolbar. Sometimes you are the first person to Stumble a page, which means it will pop-up a form asking you to fill in the page title, description and tags. This is pulled from the page, so just hit Stumble! One bit of advice, if you have multiple tabs open to Stumble several sites, wait until the “thumbs up” icon goes green before you try and Stumble the next page. Sometimes Stumble gets a bit confused if you Stumble pages really quickly.
Some FAQS & Tips
Digg & Stumble of course, don’t really “approve” of this kind of usage and although it’s not “illegal” by a long stretch, it is against their Terms of Service, so there is a small possibility you can get banned. (I haven’t and I’ve been using this service since launch). So here’s some tips on avoiding getting banned and getting the most out of S&P.
- Make a new Digg account. They’re quick to make and if you get banned, S&P lets you quickly and easily change the Digg account you’re using from their interface
- Digg and Stumble other stories! Don’t just Digg and Stumble paid for stories! Use your Digg account normally and randomly Digg & Stumble a few things between subverting. This makes it very hard for Digg or Stumble to ban you. Afterall, any user could randomly Digg or Stumble a paid for story without knowing it - lots do in fact! So as long as you balance your profile out, you’re onto a winner
- Make sure you’ve got a system to alert you immediately when you get a new e-mail from S&P. Advertisers only pay for a specific number of Diggs & Stumbles, so if you don’t react for 24 hours, you’re going to have missed the cash boat. If you stop Digging & Stumbling pages for S&P, they seem to send you fewer notifications - so keep on the ball!
How much can I earn?
Once you’re signed up and get a couple of friends on, you can on average you can earn about $6 a day at the moment. It’s not loads, but add it up, $42 a week, $168 per month - just over $2,000 a year. Certainly not a figure to scoff at. Especially when you’re doing next to no work at all!
I’ve been using this service for a few months now and I’ve decided it is worth recommending and trying to increase the amount of users. It’s still fairly young, so sign up now and you can get your friends onto it as well. The more people that know about Subvert & Profit, the more people will buy Diggs & Stumbles, which means more money for me and you!
I’ve been pretty specific and this blog post is still pretty short! That’s really all you need to do, hardly any effort or time. It’s about as close to free money as you’re gonna get guys. Go get some! If you feel I’ve missed something out or want to know more, leave me a comment and I’ll try to answer your question