How Being Creative And Helpful Can Get You Paid

Do you consider yourself a creative person? Do you have some special skills in web design? Do you have patience and like to be helpful? Do you have a good business sense? Well, if your answer to any of the those questions is an astounding YES, then here is something that you can do to put those skills in motion and good use, while having the possibility of getting paid for it.

We all know that blogging is definitely one form that is at our disposal to build and establish an online presence. Done properly, it is also a form of making money online, albeit having a road to follow to achieve success. Reasons aside, blogging may not yet be working for you. Although this is the case, it does not mean that you have to quit and throw everything away. Patience is a virtue, and with the right mindset and determination, you may just be surprised one of these days.

Anyway, in the past, I have mentioned that there are many forms of making money online. As a matter of fact, there are even ways to make money without a blog or having an online presence, for that matter. That said, this is what I am going to talk about today. Another opportunity that can get you paid by having the following three basic ingredients. These are:

• Creativity
• Genuine Desire To Help
• Expertise

Luck (a bit, more or that later)..

Interested? Read on…

Couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon Prizes.org, a site which objectives is to allow users to create contests, of virtually any sort. Such contest are sponsored by a contest creator and are mostly in the form of “asking” for help or advice to community members about something specific to their needs. Much like Yahoo answers, but with a twist. For example, some topics include…

• Help me create a slogan
• Help me design a logo
• Help me find a domain name for my company
• Help me create a name for my business
• Help me ….

The contest creator provides exact details of what they need, how long it will last, and the prize money they are willing to give to the winner. An example of such contest can be – “looking for a good slogan for our next marketing campaign of our luxury apartments in Houston. In this case, the contest creator sets the Prize money, runs the contest, you join (unlimited entries), wait for it to end, and see if the creator picks you as the lucky winner. If the creator does not pick any winner within 6 days, then the most voted entry wins.

Legit or Scam? Credibility Test

I have seen some contests over there indicating that “some” of them were scams. As it appears, some contest are rigged and the winners are picked not by their entry, but rather, on a variety of tactics (votes manipulation, etc..). What can I say, they are all over the place and someone always wants to “game” the system. In any event, Prizes.org has a team of moderators that are strictly monitoring any suspicious activity and that is a good sign. After all, Google did quietly launched Prizes.org via their acquisition of Slide last year, and that gives t a boost in credibility.

Anyway, I am the curious kind of guy, so the best way to see how these things work is by giving it a go. That I did. Signed up (on 2nd November), and started to scour for topics that I felt I had a good chance to win (domain name ideas, business advices, etc.) and participated on some of them. The results?

Won three contest and two honorable mentions.

That’s $400 in total. After that, I waited for 2 – 3 days for the prize to be credited to my account and once confirmed, I redeemed the prizes and minutes later they were in my PayPal account, less the 15.5% fees that Prizes.org charges, sweet :). Now, and based on my experience, I obviously can not say that Prizes.org is not legit, on the contrary, I have no complaints.

Secrets To Winning The Contest?

Not a secret per se, but a very important tip. Read carefully what the contest creator is asking for and provide your answers to the best of your ability. There is no guarantee that you will win of course, but, one thing is for sure, if you do not participate and apply the “ingredients” I mentioned above, then you never will. The more contest you participate the better your chances of winning, and maybe win enough money to spend your next cancun holidays for free 🙂

That’s it! Now go be creative, helpful and put your skills to test. At the very least there is always something to gain. Believe it or not, one contest creator already sent me an email that may lead to a interesting business prospect. We’ll see..

What say you? Have you tried Prizes.org before, or is this the first time you are learning about it? Is this something that you think may interest you?