I’m always looking for ways to benefit off free online service or my site, so I signed up for Triond. All I have to do is create something original (e.g. documents, pictures, or music), publish it, and then earn royalties! Doesn’t this sound easy and simple? Of course. Earning royalties is great, as it’s part of the passive income. This means that all I have to do is just publish some material and it’ll earn me X amount of money for however long Triond is around.

So how did it work out? Well, a 40% success on my initial attempt. I submitted five of my articles (Correlation Between Money and Happiness, Why Using the Debit Card is Smart, Discover Open Road vs. Citi Driver’s Edge, Yodlee.com and Mint.com) and waited to see what would happen. Surprisingly, they were all reviewed within a day and… three out of the five were rejected for being too marketing oriented and being a duplicate article on my blog. That’s OK, since my other two went undetected. But I will probably need to start creating articles specifically for Triond. That means I’ll be doing double the work!

I haven’t exactly figured out what my earnings will be because payments are sent on the 15th of each month. Triond will figure out how much my materials have earned me by using this formula: Earnings = Views of my content * (Value of my content / 1000). Value is a fixed number between $0.50 and $10.00. And, I just gave myself another view on both of my contents. Unfortunately, you aren’t paid until you make at least $50.00. That means my earnings, if under the minimum amount for payment, will just roll over to the next month, and then to the month after that, and so on.

Here are the two articles that were published

Discover Open Road vs. Citi Driver’s Edge
Correlation Between Money and Happiness

Be a friend and give me some page views!

I’m finally in the positive net worth status.

My current net worth is $126.70. It feels really good to not see a negative balance and a lot of red font color.

What a great purchase: Costco’s filet mignon (6) wrapped in applewood smoked bacon for 12.99. Amazing.

I gave in and signed up for an ING Direct online savings account. I received $25 for the bonus sign up fee immediately after opening. The process was easy and fast. Not only did I receive a bonus, the person who referred me also received a $10 bonus. I just have to transfer $250 for the bonuses and keep it there for 30 days. The APY is at 4.20%. If you want to sign up for one and earn $25 for just moving some money over to a high yielding online savings account, then contact me and I can send you an invite: seankim at kittenpile dot com.

Sharedreviews.com approved another five of my reviews which earned me another $10. Yeah!

I got $26 for basically nothing at all on Halloween:

1. I received a free burrito bowl at Chipotle, one of my favorite restaurants, for wearing a piece of aluminum foil on my arm on Halloween. I believe Chipotle does this every Halloween and even during other holidays. Also, if you are a student, you can receive a free drink by showing your student ID. So, keep it even after you graduate college.

2. Sharedreviews.com finally reviewed all five of my reviews and rewarded me with $10. I only reviewed five to see how things would go and now I’m liking it. Reviewing five things took me no more than 15 minutes. They must be extremely packed with other reviews since it took about eight days for my reviews to be approved. Here’s a link if you are willing to earn easy cash on the side: sharedreviews.com

3. FNBO Direct’s 5.05% APY earnd me nearly $10 on interest for the month of October. And speaking of FNBO Direct, they offer FNBO Direct ExtraEarning Visa Card to selected members. Here are the card’s features:

• 7.99% fixed APR.
• Earn cash back faster with 2% back for the first 12 billing cycles and 1% back after that directly deposited into your FNBO Direct Online Savings Account.
• Redeem your cash back by requesting a $25 deposit into your FNBO Direct account for every $1,250 in purchases on the card for the first 12 billing cycles after your account is opened. After that, rewards are redeemable in $25 increments for every $2,500 in purchases.
• No annual fee.
• 7.99% balance transfer APR.

Not too bad. I don’t think I will apply for this card though. The purchase APR is pretty good and the rewards are extra, but I don’t need it.

4. I have three subscribers now. I don’t know who you are, but thanks, guys!

I’ve made a post about this service previously and the only reasons why I even gave it a shot is because it was heavily recommended by the current users and I found it to be a worthwhile deal. Although rolleyes has been active since October of 2005, PayPerPost (PPP) will probably reject me because of one eligibility requirement:

Minimum Blog Age. Blogs must be live for a minimum of 90 days, counted from the date of the Blog’s first post, with at least 20 pre-existing posts prior to registration with the PayPerPost Marketplace. The majority of these posts may not be in a single month and there must not be a gap of more than 30 days between any posts during the 90 day period immediately preceding sign up for registration in the Marketplace.

Pretty lame. Even though I’ve been posting various sort of things here and there over the years, I don’t think this service will approve due to its eligibility rules. Sigh, it does suck, but I understand it and I should have read the finer print before I submitted rolleyes. Maybe in another month or so I’ll resubmit. Dammit.

My work is extremely boring. Apparently I’ve been promoted to the unofficial title of Assistant (to the — lol) Manager of my work. So which means I do even less work than before while I still take on more responsibilities. I’ve trained a young employee to at least supervisor status so she is taking over my old title. Since I got even more free time now, I just surf the web, blog, look for deals, and just relax… more than ever before. It’s sometimes too much. Anyway, I decided to check out www.sharedreviews.com - a site where you write some reviews about a bunch of products and you get money for it. THAT’S how bored I am at work.

I just signed up for it today, and the sign up process was very easy, and for some reason some of the buttons and options didn’t show up on my mac, so I had to use the PC. Maybe it’s some java error? I don’t know. Anyway, I did five reviews on some of the copy machines at my work as well as the new iMac and my car. They weren’t exactly the best reviews because I’m not sure what they’re looking for, but I just wrote whatever came to my mind to fill up the review requirements. I’ll test this out for a bit and I’ll see how it works.