Provident Direct Lowers Its Interest Rate

Today, I received an email from Provident Direct saying that their online saving interest rate will be dropped by 0.25% to 3.50% on May 19th, 2008. I've covered it as one of the highest yield saving accounts before. It still will be even after the 0.25% cut. Here is a comparison list:

Bank	Online Savings Annual Percentage Yield**
Provident	3.50%
FNBO Direct	3.25%
HSBC Direct	3.05%
ING Direct	3.00%
Emigrant Direct	2.75%

Make Money While Flaunting Your Prophetic Ability

Have you ever bet on a football or basketball game with your coworkers or colleagues betting on the rival team? Do you still remember the last time you won the bet and feeling great about being able to foresee a result that many others are not able to? Ever since year 2008, you probably have already talked to your friends relentless about how certain the oil price will break $120 by the end of August 2008, how certain France will be the first country to announce a boycott to the Beijing Olympics, and how certain Obama will win the democratic presidential nomination. Now, instead of talking about your predictions, you can start making money off of them, under the condition that your predictions are more accurate than other people's.

Thanks to Predictify, a company lets you input to their website your predictions about the outcomes of future events. You may be compensated if your prediction comes to be right or close to be right. The idea was so intriguing to me that I waited no time to join it. By the way, the joining is free and all you need to do is to provide an email address, a user name and a password.

Here is how Predictify works. There are two kinds of events available for you to make prediction on: premium and free.

• Premium: The payout money pot for the premium events are greater than $0. (I've seen ones raging from $500 to $3000 so far.) Each premium event has a limit on how many people could participate. You also have to give a little demographic information such as gender, race, and age (basically like taking an anonymous survey). The payout you receive depends on how accurate your prediction is and how early you sent out your prediction. There are new issues added every day and premium issues tend to be fill up quite quickly. So far, I participated in two premium events, and not sure of my payout yet since these two events are still running.
• Free: The payout money pot for the free events is $0, which means that there is no cash payment involved. You will instead receive member points and hence rankings if your prediction comes close. Why do you want a high ranking, because with a higher ranking you can earn a bigger bonus in the premium events. With the highest rank, "Guru," you can earn 3 times of your payout in an premium event. See here for details.
  

The events listed cover a broad range from sports to pop culture, from politics to economics. For example: the outcomes of the democratic presidential final nomination or the sale price of a house. Even better, you can create free events that you want public opinions for others to predict. Of course, you can create premium events as well, which will cost you $1.00 x the number of participants you allow. By the way, creating events can also increase your member points.

Finally, with your prediction you can add a comment explaining your reasoning behind and you can change your prediction as long as the poll is not closed.

PineCone Research Opens Its Panel Again

I've talked about my online paid survey experience before, and PineCone Research is the one I highly recommend due to its survey frequency, apt payment, and free sample trial out. Click here for details. One non convenience about it is that you cannot join anytime out of your own will, you can only join through referral.

Recently, I received an email from them asking me to make referrals. They are growing and hence opening up their panel again. So if you'd like to try it out, please click here to join. For more information, please refer to the following pages:

What is PineCone Research

Privacy Policy

Another $300 Income On the Side This Month

Earlier, I mentioned that I took a document prep side job. It turned out that I didn't have any project work for my daily job for the past week. So I've been doing this side job at my regular job time. This means I didn't spend extra time to make this $300. I've received the full payment $300 over the weekend. Moreover, I was offered to do another job with the same amount of payment plus bonus. The time to complete is one week. And I took it.

When someone is offering a side job, are you going to take it? I will if

1. It won't take me long hrs to finish. This implies that it must be something within my areas of expertise or easy for me to figure out.
   
2. It pays good money comparing to the hrs I'll spend on it. I consider $25 per hr to be good.
   
3. It pays good non-monetary returns such as a new connection, some new learnings, or reinforcement of old knowledges/skills, etc.
   

Once I decide to take the job, I make sure I get the job. If a job passes the above 3 criteria, there are usually many people who will be compete for it. How are you going to win the final deal? Before telling the person that you will take the job, make sure you

1. Show great concerns about the job. Ask for specifics about the job.
2. Show your competence. Show what you can do related to the job requirements.
3. Be honest about 1 and 2.
   

After you are offered the job, remember to discuss the installments of the payment. I don't like to receive a lump sum at the job delivery time. The person who is offering the job may not feel comfortable of paying you the lump sum at the beginning either. The best is to set up specific installments according to completions of sequential job tasks.

Getting Paid for Filling Out Online Survey

I wrote a post on PineCone Research before. Besides it, I've also tried out the following paid online survey sites: Surveyspot, GlobalTestMarket, your2cents, Opinion&Outpost, and BrandInstitute. Here is my experience with them so far (I started on Feb 9th, 2008), ranking from my most favorite to least favorite:

1. PineCone Research: $14. Fast payment. The check usually arrives within 5 days of survey completion. Free sample try out. You always get paid every time you start a survey, regardless your answers. I receive one survey per week on average.

2. Surveyspot: $15. Lots of survey opportunities. You can log in to your account and actively choose to answer the available surveys. Lots of surveys only let your participate sweepstakes, which I'd skip. Plenty of paid surveys. The highest payment for a single survey I encountered was $7. In order to get paid, you have to be qualified for that survey. It happened to me that after spending 5 minutes on a survey, it tells that I'm not qualified. Slow payment. It even takes 4-6 weeks for the payment to show up in your account.

3. Your2cents: $17. Not that many opportunities. But have high payment surveys. For example, I made $11 off of one survey.

4. The rest: Just not worth the time. It is almost always that I fail their qualification after spending 1-5 minutes on the survey.

$300 Income On the Side This Month

I took a document preparation side job a week ago.
I was asked to come up with a technical 60 pages minimum report in 2 weeks.
I was offered $300.00 base + bonuses depending on the quality of my work.

I've received $100.00 in payment already, and will receive the rest at the end of this week.

What's best? I learned a lot of technical stuff as I was preparing this document. One stone two birds.

$5 from PineCone Research

Have you ever done online surveys? Have you ever got paid for doing it?
I started this online paid survey thing a month ago. PineCone is my favorite so far for the following two reasons:

1. Their survey is personalized to your household. You can only take the surveys that are assigned to you. Once a survey is assigned to you, the money is yours ($3 or $5 depends) regardless the answers you provide. (None of the other websites I tried work like this. Most of them have a screener for you to pass before you can claim the money, which is quite annoying since it is almost always the case that after spending 5 minutes on the survey, and they tell you sorry that you are not qualified. At least, it was the case for me.)
   
2. They pay you promptly. They usually issue the check the next day after you complete the survey. I just got mine for my first survey last week. They have paypal paying service as well, but somehow I was told that I'm not an established member for them yet and hence can not receive my payments via paypal, which is not that convenient. Hey, check works for me.

One thing to notice is that they only open up their panel periodically. And one can only join via referral. I joined via this, not sure whether it is still working. What are your favorite online paid survey sites?