I recently moved, and am looking for new employment. Due to my housing situation, I need something that is part time or flexible for right now. While looking, a friend of a friend (red flag there, I know) suggested I can bring in a small amount of income from tutor.com and mahalo.com. I’m a bit concerned these are scams, but a few of my other friends who are more savvy about figuring things like that out say they don’t appear to be. They just don’t pay a living wage.
I’m less concerned about that, as any money coming in right now would be better than the none I’ve got. My costs are low, but they exist. I’m in the process of looking for real jobs (my roommate thinks I should look into bartending and I think I’d like to see if I can figure out how to make IRL tutoring work), but I wouldn’t mind a bit of a “bridge the gap” situation.
MyPoints is a different beast, but since I’m asking about computer based programs, I figured it belonged here rather than in it’s own thread.
I am somehow signed up for this program, and have been for years. I figured I gave my e-mail to some spammer one day without realizing it, and have been faithfully just ignoring the e-mails since. I recently heard that it’s not exactly spam (though it’s not exactly not, either), and that it’s worth doing since I’m already signed up.
Does anybody know anything about any of these websites?
I can only speak to your question about MyPoints. A friend of mine told me about it and I trusted her well enough to believe that she was legit. I checked it out, set up a special email account just for it and started an account. I get between 1-50 emails per day from MyPoints. It takes me just a few seconds per email to click the link, let the window load and then close the window. I get 5 points every time I do that.
I have had my account with them for about a year now and have redeemed anough points to have gotten five $10 $tarbucks gift cards from them. So, $50 in a year for clicking on links? Not horrible. Of course, if you regularly shop certain sites (Overstock, Ebay to name a couple) then you can rack up points that way, too.
I absolutely recommend using an email account set up just for MyPoints, as it will be inundated with spam. They send my gift cards out very quickly, I usually get it within about a week of filling out the form to redeem my points, even though the site clearly states to allow 4 - 6 weeks for delivery. If you have a lot of downtime, and could use a few extra dollars (in gift cards) then I would say it is actually worth it.
Thanks, Litoris. Alas, I didn’t set up a separate e-mail for MyPoints, so my old e-mail is inundated with spam (and is now basically a spam account). I’m not sure how I could have, though, as I really do not recall signing up for it in the first place. It’s been many years, and apparently I’ve been throwing away e-mails that could get me gift cards for the past 3+ years…
It does explain the spam, though, I guess. It might be worth it since I’m already signed up. Though if anyone else has experiences, please feel free to also post.
I used to do MyPoints. In contrast to Litoris’ experience, I only got a small part of the gift cards that were due to me. If I recall correctly, I was supposed to get one $50 and two $25 gift certificates to Circuit City with my points. The $50 came, and the $25’s never did. They said that they would send them again, but that I was on a list to not be allowed a duplicate from that time on. The two replacement $25’s never came, either. At that point, I gave up.
This was in or around 2001, so they might be different now.
Mithril, but not allowed a duplicate, do you mean never allowed to take Circuit City again, not allowed to take it at the same time, or not allowed to file a lost claim?
I had a problem with receiving MyPoints-based gift card once, but it was fixed promptly. Since then, no problems on other redemptions.
I don’t find the volume of email offers to be onerous, primarily because they are so clearly marked as being MyPoints offers. If I don’t get to them before they expire, it’s a pretty simply operation to delete the backlog.
Tutor.com is a pretty great place to work, especially if you are of the math/science variety. You have to treat it as a real job, but if you do then its $10+ dollars an hour and you feel good about what you’re doing to boot.
Parabola, that sounds great, actually. I have no problem treating it like a real job, as I’d just be happy to make money while being at home (since I can’t go out as much right now). But the $10+ number seems high from what I’ve been told. I thought it was $5 and $8/hour?
I don’t know too much about starting pay but I do know that if you move up to a certain level (I think based on how many hours you’ve tutored in total?) you definitely can get up to $10-11 per hour. Two of my friends make that much now, but they have been tutoring for some time.
Sorry I was not clear. They said they would send me one replacement for each gift card that did not arrive. They also said, in effect, that they had sent out the two gift cards originally, and that after one set of the replacement cards, that I had better not ever contact them again about a lost gift card. They came right up to the edge of accusing me of lying about not receiving the cards, and were not delicate about it at all.
The replacement cards also did not come, and I had *never *had any mail go astray when living where I was at the time. I always assumed that it was somebody in their mailroom that was stealing the cards, or it was a systematic problem with MyPoints. At that time, a lot of the on-line companies were facing problems with venture capital and all. I’m actually surprised that MyPoints is still in business.