How To Make Money Online With MyLot
82What is myLot?
Having previously reviewed the pros and cons of using crowdsource websites, Amazon Mechanical Turk and Microworkers to generate some extra income, I thought I’d turn my attention to how to make money with MyLot, a very different sort of make money online program. MyLot is basically a social network site in the same vein as Facebook, but with myLot you make money online by posting comments, uploading photos, starting discussions etc.
Sounds appealing, doesn't it, but what are the pros and cons?
First Impressions and Signing up to myLot
The MyLot site’s appearance has none of the simple elegance of Facebook and is unnecessarily cluttered, in my opinion. There is also a full page advert that wants to load up on their front page if you go there from Google, which is a little irritating.
The sign-up process for MyLot is pretty simple and straightforward, though. You fill out a form with your basic info and that’s about it. You don’t have to enter your mailing address or bank details, as when you make money online, it will be paid straight into your PayPal account by myLot. From your PayPal account, you will then have the option of transferring your earnings to your regular bank account if you wish, or you can just spend it on one of the many PayPal friendly online stores.
Using myLot
MyLot works in a similar way to most other social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. As I mentioned earlier, you make money online with MyLot by posting comments, uploading photos, starting discussions, adding friends, messaging people etc. My only quibble would be that, as I mentioned earlier, the myLot site feels a bit cluttered and it takes time to get used to. Also, there is a minor difference of emphasis from sites such as Facebook and Twitter in that much of the social interaction on MyLot revolves around starting and participating in discussions, (rather than the Facebook/Twitter system where each user has his or her their own “wall” where they and others post to).
Earnings and Payments
The exact formula that myLot uses to calculate how much you earn is not made public, but it’s based on the amount of activities such as posting comments, uploading photos, and starting discussions that you do to make money. The more active that you are on the site, the more you'll make money.
I can only tell you of my own experience and what other users say regarding earning rates, so the following info may not be an entirely accurate indication of the sort of sums that people earn. I visit the site on a daily basis for about 10-15 minutes each day, start a discussion, post a few comments upload a photo, and I make about 5-10 cents/day. There are site users on there who are more active than me and say that they typically earn a dollar a day or more, however.
Another factor in the rate that you make money is the myLot points that you gradually build up over time (a bit like a hub score?). The more experienced myLot people who use the site for longer periods and interact more tend to have much bigger scores than myself, a relative rookie who’s only on there for 10 or 15 minutes/day. I would expect to make money at an increased rate over time, however.
The other thing that I should mention is that there is a $10 minimum earnings threshold before they pay you. This can seem a little frustrating when you’re only bringing in 8 cents/day like me! If you enjoy social networking, however, and don’t mind spending a little time on the site, then you are getting paid for doing something that you do anyway, which can’t be bad!
In summary I'd say that you will make money if you join the MyLot site, but i wouldn't expect to buy a new car with your earnings!
The Pros and cons
Pros
They pay you money for social networking!
Social networking is fun!
Cons
Navigating their website takes a little time to get used to, plus the site has full screen ads which can be annoying.
There’s a $10 minimum earnings threshold to achieve before they pay you
Earnings are generally fairly low - cents, not dollars in my experience.
You will find more reviews of earning websites at my blog: MTurkish Delight
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I've not tried back linking there. Though I probably should. One irritation is that they don't let you copy and paste under general circumstances, which is the most useful method for copying links.
Thanks for the info. I never heard of MyLot until I read this. I always like to try new networking sites.
Thanks for the positive feedback! :-)
It seems like it is getting easier and easier to make money writing online. The payout threshold isn't so bad, Adsense is a 100 bucks I believe, but 5 to 10 cents a day seems a little low. But when I signed up for HP about 2 years ago, it wasn't a place to make an income, but now it is possible - so who knows what the future holds for sites like MyLot. Thanks for the interesting hub.
Yes, you're right, $100 is one heck of a threshold! :-)
Thanks for your comment, Alexander. I wanted to "big up" myLot, but found myself opting for honesty instead. I don't think there's many people on there making much more than $1.50/day. Having said that, it is fun to do and requires no skill or real effort, unlike HP! :-)
Ha ha! Some people do publish on HP without skill and effort, but you and I do not belong to that category thankfully.
I just joiined MyLot two days ago, and my biggest frustration is not being able to paste even a sentence to move it from one place in my writing to another. I use it constantly when editing, so it's a habit. I forget I can't do it on MyLot. I think you have to have 500 points before you can, and I'm only up to 34 after two days. This can get very tedious.
The other frustration is those ads you mentioned. Those ads always seem to pop up when you want to go to a different page and they want you to enable 3rd party cookies for the ad site. I have to close the tab and type the MyLot URL in again to get where I was headed.
@WannaB - Yes, the ads are annoying on MyLot and not being able to cut and paste can be tedious - I guess they are concerned about spamming, plus they pay you according to how long your comments are, so copy and paste would mess up their payment system. I've not found the overall earnings to be great either, compared to something like Hubpages, although Hubpages requires far more effort to reap any rewards and is a different sort of set up.
Have you tried RedGage? It has some similarities with MyLot, but I think I prefer RedGage to MyLot and the earnings are better there, I would say - although the site can sometimes be glitchy, which is a bit irritating at times. The RedGage community seem pretty friendly though. I wrote a hub on Redgage and plan to add updates to my earnings and stats as I progress.
I've been on RedGage for at least a couple of years and have made some money, but the interaction is more tedious, I think. Comments are often shallow and I prefer more challenging conversations than trying to think up great replies to comments like "pretty." Those sorts of comments seem to get booted off MyLot. Also RedGage is slow sometimes and I hate having to log in again every day. But it's good for backlinks.
What I like about RedGage is that once you have stuff uploaded, you earn money even when you do nothing. I have only been there a month, but will earn 20 or 30 cents even when I don't upload anything new. MyLot doesn't require much effort, but you have to keep going there and writing stuff, if you want to earn.
Paul, that's true. It is also getting hard after only three days to keep thinking up new discussions to start that someone else hasn't started already, since we aren't supposed to duplicate discussion questions.
Wow, I have never heard of mylot, but this sounds like an interesting thing. I will check it out. Thanks!
Great information on myLot! Check out my website, it's all about myLot! http://mylotfun.weebly.com/
Hi Paul, Let me surf Mylot as I didn't know about it.
regards,
Techbook
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I can't work out from your review if the earnings for one's efforts at MyLot are on-going or if they are only once off for every activity one does. If they're on-going, then I may consider having a look at it sometime in the future - just so busy with many other things right now, that I don't think these low earnings on MyLot are worth spending much time on investigating right now - for the future though, any place that can earn one a passive income, no matter how small, is worth a consideration at least. Keep us updated with how it goes for you on MyLot.
You earn for each activity, Teresa. It's worth doing if you're into social networking and enjoy spending time chatting etc. But there are no ongoing earnings from adverts etc.
I'm still a newbie at myLot, and I think it has a place in an overall income plan. I will be writing some hubs on my experience there. Mylot is great for practicing your skills and using a few minutes here and there to make a few extra cents. So far in five days of myLot I've made $4.15, whereas for this whole month I've only earned $2.32 on HubPages Ad Program and proably much less here from Adsense, where , last time I looked, I had earned only about $23.00 for all my sites over a period of over two years. So the prospect of making $20-$30 a month on myLot alone doesn't seem too shabby. I also love getting into discussions, so I enjoy it. While I'm playing over there and watching the pennies add up every day, my lenses and hubs are making a bit of residual income. To each his own.
Barkley Rosehill 15 months ago
It sounds as though the payout may not be so great, but if MyLot allows back-linking it may prove to be a profitable journey worth taking. Paul, if I sign up for MyLot will I be able to use it as a resource to add back links for my hubs?