Post Published on December 26, 2017.
Last Updated on February 13, 2018 by davemackey.
This photo was generously provided by Nattanan Kanchanaprat and Pixabay.(Post Updated: Feb 13th, 2018)
What is Earn.com?
Earn.com is a nifty site where individuals can receive and respond to messages from various organizations and other individuals in exchange for a few dollars. For example I’m a member1You can see my profile at: earn.com/davemackey/referral/?a=aj1r4df6vzgufrio of a number of lists including:
- Facebook Users
- GitHub Users
- HTML Programmers
- Instagram Users
- Pinterest Users
- Reddit Users
- Twitter Users
- YouTube Users
When someone wants to communicate with a certain population of individuals (e.g. twitter users), they can send a message through earn.com which pays x amount for each response. Or if someone wants to communicate with a specific individual they can reach out to that person with a message and an offer of payment for a response.
Why Would Anyone Send Messages Using Earn.com?
There actual use cases where one would want to send a message a groups of users or a specific individual For example:
- Send a poll to Facebook users providing images of two different potential ads and asking which one would interest them more.
- Sending out some content to Pinterest users you believe will go viral in hopes that they will pin it and share it.
- Sharing a link to an awesome new YouTube video.
- Contacting a CEO of a company you believe will be interested in your product or service.
- Communicating with a well-known scientist who might otherwise not see your email among the innumerable she receives each day.
The more general the group the less one is likely to get paid per message…but there are also all sorts of niche groups – for example digital currency investors, hackers news users, and so on. I tend to see offers from these a bit more frequently – the cryptocurrency related messages seem to pay especially well.
Is There Any Money In Using Earn.com?
Sure. You aren’t going to get rich off it, but it is fun and provides some extra pocket change.
I’ve been on the site for a while2I don’t recall how long, long enough that I was on it before it was called earn.com and accumulated around $120 with relatively little effort.
But there is more to Earn.com than pocket change for the occasional message…
Using Earn.com to Monetize Your Email
Earn.com can integrate with Gmail (your choice, I personally haven’t integrated yet). When you receive an email from an individual or organization that you don’t necessarily want to spend time responding to, you can “bounce” the email to Earn.com to gauge how serious they are in their desire to talk to you.
The individual or organization receives a reply email from Earn.com that indicates how much it will cost them to receive a response from you. They can then choose to go find someone else to bother or, if they are really interested in what you have to say or really think their product is meant for you, they can pay up. You spend a few moments replying to their message, pocket the cash, and if it is something you are actually interested in, the relationship continues from there.
Granted, this isn’t something that is going to work for everyone. But if you own a business and are being constantly propositioned by sales people, one way to weed out those who are running through an address book name by name is to charge them a few dollars for a response. They will probably move on to the next name on the list.
Similarly, if you are a public personality of some sort (e.g. actor, author, blogger) and you receive a lot of communications you could choose to charge a few dollars to get a response.
Obviously, this tool could be used poorly. I wouldn’t recommend charging your own family and friends to contact you.3Doing so may result in the loss of said family and friends. And if you are an internet personality I’d suggest not requiring payment for every correspondence. On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to bounce some of those requests for guest posts (or to review a product) to Earn.com to test their seriousness and to make a few bucks.
Bonus: Your Money is Bitcoin
You’ve probably heard the words Bitcoin, digital currency, or cryptocurrency being thrown around on occasion – whether on/in the news or by a geeky friend. You probably also know that Bitcoin is worth a lot of money – I mean thousands of dollars for a single Bitcoin. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way for folks to get Bitcoin without spending a significant amount of money at this point in time (kind of like buying gold).4It used to be one could “mine” Bitcoin using one’s computer. These days there are specialized machines mining Bitcoin which make it almost impossible to earn anything significant using one’s own computer. But Earn.com keeps your earnings as Bitcoin. As such your earnings can increase with Bitcoin price increases5That is how I hit $120 so quickly….the value of my earnings increased with the increasing price in Bitcoin! and you can cash out in dollars or in Bitcoin.
In general I’m not recommending buying Bitcoin at the moment (I’m not a financial advisor, so go talk to someone who knows what they are talking about to decide whether to buy or not) due to the significant price fluctuations occurring (and the likelihood that another technology will supersede Bitcoin), but I would suggest keeping your Earn.com earnings as Bitcoin.
What About Those Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)?
There are tons of companies right now trying to get in on the cryptocurrency boom. Some are for real but many of them aren’t. Of those that are real it is almost certain a majority of them will fail. If you get an offer to buy into an ICO I recommend, in general, not investing. If you decide you really think it is worth investing in, be sure to do your own research and DON’T INVEST MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE!!!!
Closing Thoughts
Earn.com is a fun, free way to make a few extra bucks. It is also a way you can contact individuals (and actually receive responses) that you might not otherwise be able to converse with (e.g. CEOs or blogging personalities). Because your earnings are kept as Bitcoin you also have the opportunity to get into the Bitcoin market at no monetary cost (just a few minutes of your time).
For those who are confused about what Bitcoin is and how it works – don’t worry, I plan on releasing a few articles in the near future on how cryptocurrencies work.