Posting For Money Part 2: How To Join

The Tutorial

This is the part where I will try my best to walk you through the application process. It sounds simple enough. You sign up, post on their testing forum ten times, get reviewed and assigned a rating and then you’re good to go. If only it actually was that simple.

Signing Up

Okay, this is the easy part. You can go here to sign up using my referral link. Or, you can go here if you don’t want any association with me and you don’t want to share the wealth. That’s okay, my feelings aren’t hurt. Give Postloop your basic information, get a confirmation email, click the confirmation email and you’re good to go. First, you want to fill out your profile and choose your 7 interests, which will determine which forums you get to see. No big deal, you get a grace period where you can tweak these but they don’t want people gaming the system, so you will eventually have to settle on some you like. To find your profile, click on My Dashboard and then on the left hand side of the screen, you’ll see a button that says Settings. Click it to expand the menu and then click on Profile and have at it. Now you’re ready to test.

The Testing Phase

This is where people start to get confused. You see, Postloop doesn’t magically track your posts in these forums. You have to register on the forum, subscribe to the forum on the Postloop website, and then go and make your posts. If you haven’t subscribed, then you won’t get credit. If you subscribe after posting, you just have to make new posts because the others won’t be counted. It sucks, I know. I’ve done ten posts on a forum only to realize that I forgot to subscribe.

Some of my referrals were really confused about the process and didn’t really understand about subscribing. I’ve explained it several times and finally decided that I should just write out a detailed guide to link to them and to hopefully help others. So, to continue…

You’re freshly signed up and ready to rock. But, you have to pass their test. It’s a ten post test and you’ll write these posts on a forum that they own and is only used for testing out potential posters. First, if you’re at Postloop’s homepage, you will see this on the top part of your screen:

Click on the link that says ‘forums’ and you will see a page that looks like this:

*Forum names and descriptions were erased to protect the innocent.*

If you’re ready to test, you’ll see a forum at the very top called Postloop Portal. This is the testing forum! You’ll also see a yellow bar at the top of the screen that wants you to follow some instructions. They’re basically the same thing I’m going to tell you, but mine are better. Now, I want you to pay very close attention. Click on the Postloop Portal link. This will open up a new window where you can register for this forum. Remember the username and email that you used to sign up! Well, the password is important, too, but not for subscribing.

You have now registered for Postloop Portal. Remember, while this forum is owned by Postloop, this is still the same method that you will be using in the future with other forums. So, this is the exact same thing you’ll have to do with each new forum you want to earn points at.

After you have registered at the forum itself, return to the forum list page on the official Postloop page. Remember, the page where you clicked on the Postloop Portal forum link? Yeah, go back there.

Now, look to the right side of the screen. You will see three little icons for each forum on the list. The ones that you’re concerned about right now are the ones on the Postloop Portal row. Here’s a picture of the icons that you’re looking for:

These icons each have a different function. The blue i will expand the row to give you some extra information about the forum. This is always worth reading before you register because some forum owners have specific criteria you need to follow. You’ll have to agree to their terms when you subscribe, anyway. But, if you read it first you might find that you don’t want to post there and you’ll save yourself some time.

The ! icon will allow you to report a forum. This would be for forums that break their terms of service, which you should read, by the way. Always read the terms of service, it’s just smart.

Finally, the little person with a plus icon is where you subscribe to the forum. This is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY if you are going to get credit for your posts. This is how Postloop tracks your posts on forums. So, click the little dude, agree to the terms and give them the username and email address that you used to register for the forum. Not the ones you used to register for Postloop itself, but for the FORUM. You got it? I hope so.

Now, you’re ready to go back to Postloop Portal, the testing forum. This looks like any other forum and you should really try your best to show yourself off here. You are to make ten posts on this forum. The staff will review them and then decide if you’re Postloop material or not. It’s not hard to do. Other than following the advice I gave in Part 1, you should also be careful about what kinds of posts you make. If you simply reply to ten threads, they will count that against you. If you create ten new threads, they will count that against you. It is best to make some replies and create a few new threads. I made eight replies and created two threads, but you might do better with 7/3 or 6/4. It’s up to you. They have to be good replies and threads, though. Again, I already talked about that in Part 1. You can see how many posts you’ve made right there on the forum. It will be under your profile picture on the replies or threads themselves or you can find it in your user profile.

You will see an alert on the official Postloop website telling you that you’ve made the required 10 posts and to wait until they contact you with your results. You’ll get an email that basically says the same thing. It usually only takes a few hours to hear back, so go kick back and watch some TV, play around on Facebook, or whatever it is you do when you’re waiting on emails.

Finally, you’ll hear back from them hopefully saying that you’re in. Congratulations, you can now post on other forums! You will get credit for the posts that you made when you tested, so that’s pretty decent of them. Here’s a little bit of information to help you navigate the site.

Your dashboard has a lot of different links, but I’m not going to go over all of them because my fingers hurt at this point. They’re pretty self-explanatory, anyway. If you ever want to see the big list of forums, you need to hit the forums link at the very top of the page, which is also where you’ll find your dashboard link. You will register and subscribe for forums the exact same way you did when you were testing.

On your dashboard, the most important sections are: Dashboard, Subscriptions, Ratings and Deposit/Withdraw. The dashboard link just takes you back to your dashboard if you’re in one of the other parts. Subscriptions is where you want to go if you want to find the websites you’ve subscribed to, duh. There’s two sections in the subscriptions area. One is for active sites and the other is for inactive sites. Sites go inactive if you haven’t posted in them for a few days, if they run out of points and the owner takes them down or if the owner takes them down for any other reason. A lot of them will go inactive and active once a day, more or less. Some stick around for a long while.

Ratings is the area where you can see your ratings. Duh, again. When a forum owner rates you, this is where you’ll find it. When Postloop gives you your first rating, you can see the comment that they left on it to see why they liked you and if they had any comments on things you can improve on. You can also leave comments on their ratings. I always take the time to thank them. I did this once and they said they meant to give me a rating of 5 instead of a 4.6 and bumped it up. Whether or not that was true or if they were just impressed with my politeness doesn’t matter. It always pays to be polite when it comes to things like this. Plus, it’s just nice.

Finally, Deposit/Withdraw. This is where site owners deposit funds to buy points and posters (you) can withdraw your earnings. You need to have at least 100 points, which is $5, to withdraw. It might seem like a big pain to get, but it’s easier once you’ve subscribed to several forums that you like and have an easy time posting on. This is sort of a trial and error thing, but you’ll get it down. They ask for your name, address, etc. before you can withdraw, but your information is safe. You can review their privacy policy if you’re concerned and they’re great about answering any questions you have. You also have to give them your PayPal email address, which doesn’t warrant an explanation.

Semi Pro Tip

When you go to a forum, click on a button that says ‘What’s New?’ ‘New Posts’ or something along those lines. This will show you new discussions or discussions with new replies. This is useful if you have already visited the forum and done some posting on a previous day.

Pick out some things to comment on from this page and open them in new tabs. If there are already a lot of threads in different forums and the owner doesn’t care if you make new threads, just pick out 5, 10 or however many it takes to reach the limit and open them in new tabs.

Pick some out that you feel like you could contribute to. Then, go through each of them and reply. Make new threads in subforums that you are interested in. This will streamline the process and you’ll spend less time browsing around trying to find something to comment on.

Congratulations! You have completed the tutorial. I hope that I was helpful and I look forward to seeing you on some forums! Have fun!

Posting for Money Part 1: Getting Paid for Being Social

The Review

This is part one of a two part overview of Postloop, a site that pays you to post on forums and comment on blogs. I want to share my experience and create a tutorial that will teach you how to sign up, test for a position and use it once you are accepted. It’s actually pretty confusing, so I hope to arm you with plenty of knowledge before you dive in. I will be speaking about posting on forums rather than commenting on blogs because that’s all I really have any experience with. Please read this entire post and the tutorial before you join!! This will ensure that you do not have to deal with the learning curve that can be so difficult for some.

I have been a Postloop member for a little over a week as of the time of this posting. I am really enjoying it. I can make money from home while meeting new people and talking about things I’m interested in as well as things I want to know more about. I’m going to go over a few key points so that you will understand what it is, what you need and what you can or can’t expect from it as a work-at-home gig.

Before I go further, I want to go ahead and put this out there. Not everyone likes referral links, so I’m not going to hide mine in a hyperlink. I’m going to put it right here: http://www.postloop.com/invite/BonnyC and you can click it or not. I’d really appreciate it if you would sign up under me, but you are not required to at all. It doesn’t hurt you to do it and it helps me. Plus, you can message me on there and I can help you out if you have questions or problems. If you refuse to, you can sign up at this link: http://www.postloop.com/users/sign_up and you’ll be good to go. Don’t go farther than signing up, because you might get lost if you don’t finish this entire post.

• About The Process

Postloop is a website where you can get paid to post on forums. It is NOT a scam. This is absolutely legitimate. When I tell people about it, they usually ask why they would want to pay people for that, and it’s a good question since many of them don’t understand how search engines rank forums. To be honest, I am not an expert on this, but I did try to learn more about it. From what I understand, forums get better ranking depending on the amount of activity the forum has. The number of threads that are created which are relevant to the topic the board covers increase its ranking. Lots of comments on these posts also increase the ranking. So, people who start a new forum or obtain one that’s already died need to get traffic there to increase their ranking. This is hard to do from scratch, which is where Postloop comes in.

Postloop uses points as a type of currency which is exchanged between the forum owners and the posters. Forum owners that need more traffic will buy points from Postloop. Sometimes they buy several thousand points and sometimes they only buy a few hundred or even less. Posters then earn these points by posting relevant threads and responses to existing threads at that forum. Postloop monitors the websites to track the posters’ activity there and rewards them while deducting points from the forum. Postloop is the middleman bridges the gap between the forum owners who need more traffic and the posters who are there for some cash while taking a cut of the profits. Everyone wins in this scenario and everyone is happy.

• What They Want From You

If you can’t write a decent paragraph with few to no errors that makes sense, you will not do well on Postloop. Your grammar should be better than average. You need to understand how to use proper punctuation and capitalization. You need to be able to make sense. You need to be able to contribute to a conversation. You need to be able to do this in three sentences or more.
Honestly, it’s not hard to do. They really like it when posts are a bit longer than what you might normally see. When I have been rated by the forum owners, the ones that leave comments always mention that I have great post length. That’s a good thing and a bad thing, but it’s because I can’t seem to stop writing once I get started. This means that I make less per hour. Still, a good rating makes up for it to an extent. More on that later.

Basically, when you start posting on a forum, you need to give the impression that you are going to be a high quality member who contributes to the board itself by making new threads and replying to current topics with interesting and insightful information. If you reply to a post with three sentences that all basically say how much you agree with the original poster, this is not quality content. It’s redundant and useless. If you go into the thread and use the first sentence to express your agreement and follow it up with some interesting facts that add to the conversation, then it’s quality content. It’s really fairly simple. You’re schmoozing the forum owner for money! You want to impress the forum owners because they can rate you on your performance. This will make your overall rating change which will change the amount of points you can get from posting.

• What To Expect

While some people claim that they can make $8 an hour with Postloop, this is not the norm. I might make around $5 an hour unless I really get into posting. I would not suggest that you look at this as an income replacement. I prefer to see it as a way to spend some of my extra time that I’d normally use to watch funny cat YouTube videos or staring vacantly at my desktop. Or looking up pictures of Ian Somerhalder on Pinterest. Basically, it’s a more profitable way to spend time that would otherwise be wasted. Okay, looking at Ian isn’t a waste of time, but the sentiment is the same.

How much you are able to make is dependent on several variables. Some forums are bonus forums and you get 10% more points per post there. Forums with a larger pool of points need more posters, so you usually get more points on those, too. On a very basic level, one post is equal to one point, but this really doesn’t apply since there are so many things that change how many points you get. Your rating also changes your potential earnings. You get more points with higher ratings, so at a 4.8 rating I’m currently getting 1.75 points per post before you figure in the other variables. Not too shabby, in my opinion. This means that someone who is rated at a 5, the highest possible rating, will get 2 points per post minimum. I can confirm this when I get to 5, I’m working really hard on it. I’ll go into more detail about your ratings in the tutorial.

• Final Notes

Some last things to consider when it comes to your earnings is the amount you earn per point, the daily post limits for forums and the types of forums you subscribe to. As of this posting, you earn five cents per point. Most forums that I have seen have a five post limit per day. Some have ten or more and some of them are actually unlimited. So, that’s around 25 cents per forum. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but you have to take into consideration that you will probably be earning more points per post due to the variables in place. They’re super secret, so I can’t share the mathematical formula. If you subscribe to forums based on topics you actually have a little knowledge on, you’re going to have a much easier time finding topics to reply to and creating new threads that are relevant and high quality. You won’t have to think too hard and this will help you get to your post limit quickly. And remember that you are getting paid to have fun and be social. This is not an income replacement. I have been at it since April 9th and I’ve earned $38 plus some change, not including my referral earnings. I’m writing this ten days later, so that’s not too shabby for that period of time. The total comes to about $43 total.

They do have a referral program. This is actually a great way to earn points without having to post a lot. You earn 20% of the points that your referrals earn and I really feel like that’s a great deal. You probably know some people who would like to do something like this, so you need to get them to sign up using your referral link. It all adds up! To date, I’ve made just over $5 from my referrals alone and that’s been over the course of a week. At first, it was just one person but then it started catching on. I went from getting 10 points a day from referrals to over 40 as of this morning. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill and you can have a snowball of your very own. I’m hoping that I can eventually only post a little bit here and there and my referrals will continue to bring in a little extra income for me without having to do anything myself.

You have to have a rating higher than the average rating for Postloop in order to get paid. This number varies throughout the day, but is generally around 3.7-3.8 in my experience. You have to have a PayPal account to get paid. There are no other options at this time. There are no age or location requirements at all, but you do have to have excellent English grammar.  So, no broken English. They do not specify that you need to use US English and I’ve seen plenty of other posters that I’m pretty sure are Postloopers using UK or AU English. You’ll know they’re a Postlooper because you’ll see the same screenname in several different forums. So, this is a great opportunity for anyone. Some forums may have an age limit, so that’s worth watching for if you’re a minor.

So! If this sounds like something you’re interested in, please head on over to the second part of this post and read the tutorial on how to join. It is not as easy as you think and a TON of people get confused about the testing process, subscribing to forums and so on. Even if you think it looks easy, I urge you to read it anyway. I have seen other tutorials posted about how to sign up and they’re all lacking. I’m going to try to be as thorough as I can to help you get through it with no trouble and hopefully with a great initial rating. Thank you so much for reading!

• *Disclaimer*

The information in this post is relevant as of April 19th, 2012. I will try to update it when things change, but that might not always happen because I’m easily distracted by shiny objects.  The higher-ups are frequently implementing improvements and new features, so I will try to include those when I can.

If you found this helpful and want to join, you can show your appreciation by using my referral link to join, but you certainly don’t have to! http://www.postloop.com/invite/BonnyC

I’m back!

It’s been a really long time since I’ve even thought about this blog. It used to have a smattering of semi useful posts about working at home and various different writing companies. I don’t remember why I stopped posting, to be honest. I guess life got in the way like one of those a-holes at the grocery store that take up the entire aisle and totally ignore the fact that people want to get through, forcing you to either throw a fit or go back the way you came. It’s really annoying.

I tossed everything out of this blog and I’m starting over. A lot of the information was out of date and Google’s Panda bs basically pwnt all of the writing sites (content mills) that I had covered, so it wasn’t relevant anymore. In fact, the only gig that I still work on from back then is Textbroker. And this stuff was from two years ago.

I’ll go into more detail soon about what I’m up to and how others can get into it, but this is just a greeting to the interwebs to say “Hi, honey, I’m home!”