My Homepage Friends (formerly My Search Funds) closes site to US

In a surprising twist, My Homepage Friends (paid to search site) has decided to no longer support users from the United States. Shocking, considering that the US is usually pretty low on the click fraud scale, compared to some other countries. I'm not sure the US has ever been banned from using a GPT-type site. Guess that wasn't the case with MHF. Too bad, because I enjoyed earning with them. It wasn't much but when you are a stay-at-home mom making money online, everything cent matters.

Recently I attempted to do a search with MyHPF and was re-directed to a page with the following message:

Due to a change in the terms and conditions of our partners we are no longer able to offer our service in your country. Due to the significant amounts of click fraud, the countries we are able to offer a service are:
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
Australia
Thailand
Singapore
Indonesia
Philippines
Vietnam
Malaysia
Canada
If you are in one of these countries and are receiving this message, please contact us in the usual way. Please note that if you are not in one of these countries, you will still earn money on affiliates who are. We thank you for using our service and once we have been paid by our partners we will be paying you your outstanding balance regardless of whether you have reached the £20 or not. Due to the changes they have implemented this may take a few months but rest assured you will be paid. Please ensure that you have entered your payment details. Thanks again for using our service!

It's great that they will still allow earnings on affiliates that are in those countries for people who have worked hard to gain those referrals. Even better is their mention of paying everyone, no matter if they reached the minimum payout amount or not. Many sites do not make this offer and will just take your money and run.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that in a few months I will be receiving approximately $15 USD from them.

Swagbucks has always been my number one search site but MyHPF was always number 2. I have a few backups that I guess I am going to need to start using from now on, to maximize my earning potential!

Saving my online earnings at Swagbucks-Making and Keeping Resolutions update.

I last cashed out at Swagbucks in December for Christmas gifts. Since then I have earned enough for another $20 in Amazon.com gift cards, plus some! Not too bad, considering I do it almost all by myself. I have one semi-active referral that helped (thank you Mel!!).

What the heck is a Swag Buck? (You can also click on "Paid To Search" under Categories to learn more)

At Amazon.com I can enter all of my gift card codes into my account, as many as 5 at a time (I think) to use for future purchases. Because I have a limit to the amount I can enter at one time I am cashing in at Swagbucks periodically so that I can save as many as possible before I need (or want) to make a purchase.

So my SB account balance is going down, but I haven't wasted it! I am either saving for a Steam Cleaner or birthday presents. My daughter Amara's birthday is this month so there isn't time to order anything for her. But I haven't found anything for her that is worth it on Amazon anyway. I have found some really cool ideas for Zachary and his birthday is in July, so I have some time to figure out if I want to use Amazon for him or not. If not, Steam Cleaner it is! I really really want it. Though I am having trouble deciding which one I really want because there are so many to choose from. I have decided that I want one primarily for cleaning the non-carpeted flooring in my house, with the option to do the carpet and fabric as well. And to also be able to get into hard places and really clean anywhere I want. The particular one in my wish list is the best one I could find for the price. If anyone has any experience with it please let me know.

The important thing is that I am sticking to my resolution and I am saving!

Making and keeping New Years resolutions- saving my online earnings

I made a few New Years resolutions for 2009. Normally I don't make any resolutions so this is a big deal for me!
The first resolution I made was that this year I will try to save as much of my online earnings as possible to use for Christmas and maybe birthdays. Some of the sites I belong to only give out gift cards and merchandise as prizes and those are the ones I am mainly focusing on for saving. On the sites where I earn cash only I will try to save it in my Paypal account but will use that for bills if it becomes necessary. Over the past few years when I have earned points or whatever I have immediately redeemed them for whatever gifts I could get. Sites like Gather and MyPoints gift some great gift cards and I like to spoil myself sometimes! It's hard to just leave the points there to accumulate when you could get a $10 Olive Garden gift card or a $25 Target gift card and use it right away. But now I am going to leave it alone. Or at least try to leave it alone more than I have in the past!
I have been successful so far but it is only January. I have enough points at Swag Bucks to get a $5 Amazon.com or $5 Starbucks gift card but I am not going to redeem it. I am about 200 points away from a $10 MyPoints gift card and will be there probably in about 2 weeks or so. I will NOT be redeeming it right away! I am getting close to cashing out at a few different sites and I am going to try my hardest to keep everything in my account and save it.

I'll keep an update so everyone (including ME) can see how I am doing. I seem to do a better job when I keep track like this. Wish me luck!

I just won 20 Swag Bucks in a contest!!

The Swag Bucks team had a contest on their blog: Guess the score for 20 Swag Bucks

on January 7th. The contest in short:

Tomorrow night is the BCS College Football Championship game featuring the Oklahoma Sooners vs. the Florida Gators. As if there wasn't enough hype around the game already, I'm going to give 20 FREE SWAG BUCKS to anyone who guesses the correct final score!!

So I figured I would give it a try and see if I win. Couldn't hurt. I e-mailed them the score Oklahoma 14 Florida 24.

I kind of forgot about the whole thing then. I knew it was happening soon but I couldn't remember when. Since SB has introduced all sorts of new ways to earn Swag Bucks in recent weeks I have been checking things out more often so today I checked out their blog and saw that they had announced the winner. I got a flutter in my gut when I read it as if I knew I needed to see what it had to say. And sure enough...Winners of the BCS Score Contest. Here is a little blurb:

Why is Tim Tebow so excited? Because loyal Swaggernauts Lorri L. and Alexandra K. (THAT'S ME!) each just won 20 FREE Swag Bucks for beating The Swag Guy's Challenge and correctly guessing the final score of the BCS national championsip game: Florida 24-Oklahoma 14. He's probably also happy because he just won a National Championship :)

So I won! It was VERY exciting! I have enough Swag Bucks now to get a bunch of things but the two best ones are a $5 Starbucks gift card or a $5 Amazon.com gift card. This time I think I will wait though. I trust them enough now to hold on to my Swag Bucks for a while and maybe get something big...or just cash out a bunch of $5 gift cards all at once.

Since joining Swag Bucks on March 30, 2008 I have received 7 $5 gift cards and a t-shirt. Not bad for a short period of time! This is my most successful paid to search site that I use. I actively use 3 different sites for my searches and they all reward in some way.

Want to search and win too? Sign up free at Swag Bucks or click the banner:

This is a good way to start off my birthday weekend!

I Don't Search for Free.

And neither should you!

Why would you search for free when you could win prizes or earn money to search the internet. I belong to a handful of "paid to search" sites. Some of them randomly give out points (or their currency of money) when you search, some pay per search. Most of them give you entries into contests for every search you perform.

My favorite is Swagbucks. At Swagbucks you search and they randomly give out "swagbucks" that vary from 1-5. It might go higher than 5 but that is the highest amount I have ever won. Every buck you win can be redeemed for prizes. If you search daily you will likely win 30 or more swagbucks every month. Prizes can be redeemed starting at 6 Swagbucks, though the amount changes with promotions. Right now they have a bunch of baseball cards that are mostly 10 swagbucks. 6 Swagbucks will get you a $5 e-certificate to a site called Overdrive Electronics. A $5 Amazon.com gift card is 45 Swagbucks and a $5 Starbucks giftcard is 50 Swagbucks. These amounts can change from time to time. They have tons of prizes under 100 Swagbucks and more are added all of the time. If you are not impatient, like I am, you can save for a really big prize like the WII Fit for 1200 SBs, the PSP for 1600 SBs and much more. I use Swagbucks for my homepage so that I can search everytime I get on the computer! I have redeemed 253 Swagbucks to date and currently have almost 40 SBs ready to cash in. I have primarily choosen Starbucks gift cards but have also picked out one Amazon.com gift card. I think this time I will try to save a little longer, especially since I now trust this site to pay!

Next is My Search Funds. MSF pays money for every search. They pay in pounds instead of dollars. There are two ways to use MSF to earn money. You can set your search box to be MSF. That is what I have done. Once I have won my Swagbucks for the day I move over to MSF to make some money. You can also make it your home page. Since I already have my homepage I don't use this option. The most I have made in one day at this site is .44 pounds. (sorry, I don't know how to get the symbol). Mostly I only do a search or two a day. So my earnings there are pretty slow. This site also has some fun gadgets, especially if you want to make it your home page. You can customize it to show a variety of things like news, currency converter, blogs, games and more. I have set mine up but it would be more worth it if it was my home page.

Stay tuned for more of my favorite search sites!

Always remember that you must follow the terms of every site so that you do not violate them and lose everything!