How to Earn/Save Money Online in Singapore Series - #3 Doing reviews

This post is somewhat related to my earlier post on buying and selling books for my reading habits.

I find that a good way to remember the content of what I have read, as well as capture my thoughts on the book at the point in time, is to write a review. I started off writing my reviews using the Virtual Bookshelf application on Facebook. Unfortunately, the application was stopped some time earlier this year as the developers had decided to focus their attention on other initiatives.

Not willing to stop what I think is a good practice, after googling online, I came across the site GoodReads.  Basically, once you have signed up for an account (membership is free), you can write a review for the book, give it a rating, read other people's reviews, find similar books, and see what others are reading.

It is during one of my searches for a book that I came across the following website Fishpond. It is more than a website for books, as it sells music, toys, lifestyle items etc as well. What attracted me to this website was, besides offering books at a discounted price and having free shipping worldwide, it offers a cash reward in the form of credits which you can use to offset your purchases from the website.

One of the qualifying activity for the reward is to write a review for any product that is posted there. For example, you can write a review of a Lego toy that you have, or a boardgame that you have played before. To earn a reward ($0.20 per review), your review must be over 50 words. The review must be done on products which do not currently have a review, and must be your own creation.

Since I already have a habit of writing book reviews, I found it easy to continue this practice on the Fishpond website. Since I started a few weeks ago, I have written more than 10 reviews, and earned myself some credits which I can use for buying my next book. At $0.20 per review, it is not lucrative. However, I consider it an easy task, something I can complete in less than 5 minutes. Furthermore, as doing book reviews is something that I am already doing, to be able to get paid for it, I think it's not bad at all.

How to Earn/Save Money Online in Singapore Series - #1 Doing Surveys

Most of us spend a lot of time on the internet everyday, be it surfing the web, doing online shopping, reading the news, finding out the latest gossips, watching online media, and the list goes on......

How nice would it be if we can use our time productively, and not waste them on frivolous stuff? Have it crossed your mind that you may be able to spend time online and generate income at the same time? I found out about SingPost's My MailMoment initiative two years ago through their booth at the Singapore Toy, Game and Comic Convention (STGCC). The person who was manning the booth approached me and said 

"What do you think of the idea of doing some simple online surveys, that probably just take you 5 - 10 minutes each, and in return, you accumulate points which allows you to exchange for vouchers from NTUC, Golden Village, and Coffee Bean etc?" 

I thought the idea sounded interesting and being cautious, i asked them if there are any upfront costs or membership fees involved. I was happy to hear that the service is free, and all I had to do was to sign up on the spot or online at their website:

http://www.mymailmoment.com/content.aspx?page=HomePage

Two years have passed since I signed up and I have completed quite a number of surveys... my guess is about 30 of them, in exchange for a few $5 NTUC vouchers and $1 Macdonalds vouchers, which are mailed to my house courtesy of SingPost. Most of the surveys take about 5 minutes to complete, and topics relate to general, everyday issues such as my ideal holiday, what I look for in a dream car, how I manage my financials etc. They are presented in multiple choice format, such as 

"On a scale of 1 to 7, 1 being strongly disagree and 7 being strongly agree, please indicate how well you agree to the following statements."


"Please rank the following in order of how important it is to you."

You have a choice of the surveys that you want to participate in. In other words, you can choose to only do those surveys that you want to do.

For each survey that you complete, you get points that you can accumulate to exchange for vouchers once a certain target is reached. The number of points you get is dependent on the difficulty of the survey - the harder it is (more questions thereby needing more time to complete the survey), the more points are awarded. Oh, and each survey you complete entitles you to a chance at a lucky draw that takes place every quarter.

For those of you who are interested to have more chances for the lucky draw, my MailMoment has a Refer-a-Friend scheme which allows you to invite your friends to participate. For each successful referral (i.e. your friend has signed up and completed at least 3 surveys), both your friend and you will receive a lucky draw chance.

Before I sign off, please note that you should fulfill the following criteria to sign up as a member:

a) You should have a valid Singapore residential address, and you are currently living in Singapore.

b) You should be at least 17 years old.

Membership is limited to only one per person.

Easy isn't it? Sign up now!