Can I earn money online with RedGage?

I must confess, my main reason for joining RedGage initially was purely in order to getbacklinks for my various articles, posts and websites and help my SEO. After I got there and started using it, however, I realized that there was maybe more potential to earn money online than I had first thought. That said, most experienced hubbers and my Hubpages friend, Teresa Schultz, who also shares my interest in making money online, do not see Redgage as much of an earner. It is also true that the majority of people on RedGage make peanuts, but there is a minority who do reasonably well out of it with online earnings of as much as one or two dollars per day (how much of those online earnings come from ‘passive’ income I will discuss later).

For those who don't know, RedGage describes itself as a being: "a website that pays you for your content and monetizes your social activity." In some ways, it is like a Facebook that pays you for participating, although there are also big differences. Your content can include website links, photographs, documents, videos and blogs. Like in social networking sites, you make "friends" with people and rate and comment on their content. RedGage pay you by issuing you with a special reward card which functions as a Visa Debit card and you can use to spend in shops etc. You need to have online earnings of $25 or over before they issue you with a RedGage reward card, however.

I originally heard of RedGage through users of Hubpages and decided to do finally get around to signing up last week. I joined the site using the referral link of my Hubpages friend, Teresa Schultz, as that would effectively mean that she could potentially earn a little extra money without me losing out (See Update 2: referrals get you points in the daily RedGage competition).

Anyway, I went through the sign up procedure and joined RedGage. The site is generally pretty uncluttered and usable, but there are quite a few small glitches that need ironing out, as they can be a little irritating. It can also run a little slow at times, I’ve found. The site does have some similarities with the earn money online social network website, MyLot, which I also use from time to time. MyLot isn’t much good for getting backlinks, however, and overall, I would say that I much prefer RedGage, both in terms of usage and online earnings in my limited experience. Basically, I can tolerate slow sites and minor glitches, as long as I am making money online and I get backlinks for my websites and posts.

It helps if you already have plenty of digital material to upload to RedGage. Posts, hubs, blogs, websites are all good because you can publicize the link, maybe make some money and get a backlink in the process (which helps with SEO). Photos are good too because they are quick to label and upload. Like any of these sites, you also have to spend some time making friends and interacting with the community. From my brief time at RedGage, I would say that the community there are a very diverse bunch, but friendly.

As I mentioned earlier, most people earn hardly anything on RedGage, while a handful rake in a reasonable amount. How can this be? Well, from what I have read and my own (limited) experience, I think that the secret is to share your RedGage uploads as much as possible. That’s to say use: Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious etc. to get your work out there and get people clicking on it.

The only danger with this approach that I can see is that you swamp your readership with irrelevant material on sites like Twitter, if you are not careful. It would be a mistake to do this, as you don’t want to alienate your “real” followers and just end up left with bots and spammers. One way to avoid this problem with sites like Twitter is to do your best to target your audience. I have one Twitter account for each topic area that my various blogs and websites cover in an attempt to do this (see my Top 10 Best Twitter Marketing Tips)

That is a good and pertinent question. If you can earn money online with RedGage only by putting in lots of time and effort, then it may well be that it just is not worth it, as there are probably different earn money online sites that are relatively more lucrative. If, on the other hand, you can put in minimal effort (once you have acquired lots of friends and uploads etc.) and still earn money online, then it is worth it.

Like with most social networking, you do get an initial rush of views when you upload something new on RedGage, then those views die away and you are left with a trickle. You also get the opportunity to tag all your uploads, so I don’t know if you get a significant amount of search engine traffic in the weeks and months that follow, like you do in HubPages (at least in theory!). I have therefore tried to follow simple SEO practices, as much as possible and as I mentioned earlier, I have also worked in the past on building up targeted audiences for my various Twitter accounts, so I am hoping that they will give me a boost in terms of online earnings and backlinks, but we shall see.

In all honesty, I cannot give you a definitive answer to the passive income question at this moment in time, as I am still building friends and uploads. But I will update this Redgage review and let you know how I get on, for better or worse.

All comments and feedback and RedGage friendship requests welcome!

Uploads: 89

Friends: 206

Subscribers: 14

Earnings: $2.26

3772 Total Unique Views.

I discovered that referring people gets you points in the daily RedGage quiz. You also get points for mentioning RedGage online - amazingly, I tweeted this article and the points I got enabled me to win $25 in one of the daily competitions! I also had a link to an article featured which got me another $2! Anyway, here are my stats for the first 2 months:

Uploads: 221

Friends:317

Subscribers: 29

Earnings:$34.90

13169 Total Unique Views.

Well, I know that some people say that they have had problems with payments from Redgage, but I received my VISA card yesterday and used it at the store (I bought some beer, if you must ask! lol). My Hubpages friend, Teresa Schultz had trouble with her Redgage VISA card, however - she lives in South Africa and I live in the USA, so maybe that's an issue?

Anyway, it is good to get some money - although I've not been at Redgage that long, I have put in a lot of work there!

Uploads:281

Friends: 346

Subscribers:35

Earnings: $43.93

21555 Total Unique Views

Achieved my 2nd payout for $25 today. My credits in my account were stuck on $24.50 for what seemed like ages! To be fair, the delay was only a few weeks. I'm going to load it onto my card after I write this. Things have slowed down a little, as I have uploaded all my photos that are suitable and the "passive income" side of Redgage is a little less than I hoped (Discretionary feature and competition payments have made up most of my income so far!). Still, it's nice to get the money. Here are my current stats below:

Uploads: 364

Friends:394

Subscribers:43

Earnings: $55.26

33687 Total Unique Views

I've been feeling a little disappointed with RedGage recently. I've not got anything from features recently and the Sweepstake money was nice but just an early one off. The earnings money is generally just 10 or 20 cents/day, which isn't a great deal for nearly 400 uploads. I was hoping for better. I've not been uploading as much recently, it's true, but I thought I might still get some traffic.

My current stats are:

Uploads: 389

Friends:422

Subscribers: 50

Total Money Earned: $61.39