Email marketing advice

It seems that email marketing isn't as simple as it seems. In fact, it is more complicated than it looks. You obviously need money to invest anyway. First and foremost is a bulk email sender program. Most recommend Atomic Mail Sender, but I got UltraMailer Sender Professional for free, but it is limited to only 300 keys. It is still promoting anyway. Second is SMTP servers, which are either free or cost money. Obviously it is going to cost money if you're sending over 20k emails per day. A Google search shows that there are plenty of SMTP servers out there and they aren't cheap. We're talking $300 or more per month depending on how many emails sent. PowerMTA is one most email marketers use anyway. Interspire is another one most email marketers use as well. Free ones like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo place severe limitations on sending emails to either 100 or 500 per day. Third is a VPS (virtual private server) since this is what you will use to send emails from or else your ISP will cut off your Internet service for good. Most email marketers go with Linux VPS along with Interspire. Fourth is a domain and hosting. Most people want to buy them cheap off GoDaddy, but there are others you can choose.

Email marketing seems to have a sizable investment anyway and payment to set it all up, but most people are able to make decent money on it. Biggest problem is that this will be considered spam and you won't be able to send your emails to inbox properly.

Lead Castle

Lead Castle is a CPA network. CPA means "cost per action." It's what GPT sites use to bring offers to their websites. Interestingly enough, you can do your own offers on CPA. Granted most of them seem to be incredibly difficult to get in since they do ask if you own a business and a website. After that, you can post offers on your site to see if they get approved or not from yourself and other people. The biggest problem is that CPA sites pay on a net 15 or net 30 scale, which means you get paid every 15 or 30 days. If your traffic is good and people are doing offers, then you get upgraded to net 7 and be paid weekly. In reality offers get approved if you do them correctly and you get paid much later. Lead Castle pays by PayPal which is what most GPT sites pay by. GPT sites pay by other methods like Payza and Liberty Reserve.

Windows 8

I have got my hands on Windows 8 today. It seems to work really well for those with newer PCs, especially those on the latest. As for older PCs, don't try to run Windows 8 on those that are much older than 2 years. Anyway there is a steep learning curve to learn some of the new features Windows 8 has, but it isn't so bad once you get used to it. SSDs seem to benefit the most from Windows 8 due to its new features.

I'm just waiting on Intel's Haswell to be released next year since we'll be seeing how Windows 8 really shines. With the holiday shopping craze starting to begin in a few weeks, people will be looking for new tech gadgets at lower prices. The latest trend seems to be smartphones and tablets, but Windows 8 needs to make a big wow factor on consumers to really use the operating system.

Pollbuzzer

Pollbuzzer is an interesting survey site that gives out surveys by email. They're incredibly rare though, but they do pay instantly to a verified PayPal account. The surveys are $1 each, but they pay within 24 hours so I think it is a worthy choice to use. Main reason is that the surveys are only 1 question each, which makes it really short and simple.

Email marketing

Looks like I bought an email marketing package for $275, but it turns out the software is old and doesn't seem to load at all in Windows 7 except for one. The other software has problems with memory when I tried to load an email list larger than 1 million. This is much harder than I thought and feel like I can never send what is intended. On top of that, it feels like I'm spamming messages which isn't good at all. I sign a contract stating I would do this or else the contract is nulled (can't get my money back). Buying lots of things will cost more than $500 with bulk email sending software, SMTP server, Linux VPS, and proxies.

Instasurf.biz is a scam

Looks like the scammer went back to create instasurf.biz after ripping off over $15k from people promising them 12% returns for 12 days. It's all a bunch of lies and it is from the same site as instasurfs.com which is permanently shut down for good. This new website looks the same as the previous one and uses the same template. Do not go to that website and do not invest there! The owner will rip you off, shut down the website, and make another website which looks exactly the same. I had enough of phony websites and trying to make money by ripping people off thinking of investing into the site.

Out of work, but another job assignment

Out of work for now, but I did get another job assignment for doing email marketing at home. Not too shabby and could help me earn some extra cash since I don't make as much on surveys anymore.

Sitizens problem with Explore bar

Looks like Sitizens is having a tournament that involves both money and rubies, but the problem is that under the Tournament of Explorations, mine hasn't gone up at all past a certain number. Yet the Tournament of Arrivals seem to be doing fine. Even though some other people have gotten explorations just fine, many are stuck at what they are at. Not sure whether it is a glitch or something else, but people just wonder if they're arrival and exploration count goes up at all. Not a big deal anyway, but some people cheat their way into it with bots.

MassProfitShares slow

The site is getting slower lately in paying people, so I guess that means people aren't investing into the site anymore. I shouldn't even waste money on it in the first place when there are better passive income sites out there like ProfitClicking and PassiveRevShare. Just goes to show you to spend as little money as possible once a site opens up to see if it is indeed worth investing.

Will be done with job soon

Looks like I'll be done with the job assignment soon. It's just stuffing 3 teddy bears, a ballot box, and some information packets into the box. Not that hard but it's slow since only 2 people are running the line. I'll be done on Monday or Tuesday depending on how fast we can go. With 2 people, we can only do 240 boxes while with 3 people we can do 448 boxes. There are 350 boxes left to make so we'll be done in 1 or 2 days.

Last job assignment

Looks like I'll be working on the last job assignment for this month. It's stuffing 3 teddy bears with information packets into a box. There are 1,070 of them to put in and load onto the shipping trailer, but the kicker is that only 3 people will work on the line so it'll take at least 4-5 days to finish unless 1 more person is there to load them onto the trailer. Not bad overall and at least I get some money out of it. These teddy bears are the Coca Cola polar bears that you usually see around Christmas in their advertising campaigns.

Back to work

Looks like I'm going back to work tomorrow. The assignment is suppose to be until next week, but it could either be finished early or be delayed even further. Once the job is over, I'll be buying an email marketing kit and will be working at home so I'll be using my PC more often. This is just a small stepping stone for me since I still can't find a job here in Georgia. They want candidates with experience so I'm out.

InstantCashSweepstakes

InstantCashSweepstakes is a survey site that pays you to take their surveys, which are short and fast. Of course, you get paid in tickets and coins for chances to win $50 each day or $2 every 4 hours. Sometimes you do get paid from 1 cent up to 10 cents occasionally. Minimum cashout is $2 and it only pays by PayPal.

Bugs in MassProfitShares

There seems to be a bug in the auto repurchasing when I click on a checkmark, it seems to buy more shares than I intended. I've only spent $10 and it seems to have spent over $24 on it by some fluke. MassProfitShares is still relatively new, so they need to work out the problems. It isn't so bad, but repurchasing after 2 days going by seems like a PITA and the auto repurchasing is still buggy.

MassProfitShares

MassProfitShares is an interesting site which is somewhat similar to Instasurfs, but it only has opened recently. You make money by investing a small amount into advertising packages for as low as $2 to as high as $60. You get money in the form of dividends and people continuously invest in the site. They expire after 2 days, then you can auto-enroll again with the dividends that you made. I'm not familiar with it, but I assume it is similar to ProfitClicking and PassiveRevShare. Not sure how long they'll last since they'll probably turned to scams, but it's better to invest early instead of later so you'll get some extra money. A decent way to promote your websites and gain traffic. Also you'll be making money before the site turns sour.

Slow work week

So much for a busy work week when there are only 3 temps. working in our kitting department. I assume there would be more, but due to shipping problems our work has been delayed. I'm still busy anyway and I have to clean up the mess left behind, mostly cardboard to recycle and trash to throw away. At least the money is coming in, but hoping for a full-time job somewhere else is impossible for me since they still ask for relevant work experience. Let's see what next week will bring anyway.