There is a trick to using these programs without getting annoyed by them. Most of them take a little time (a few seconds to half a minute) to down load anything after you click on something that gives you miles or money. If you simply stare at the screen waiting for the down load to happen, you will quickly conclude that it's not worth your time to do so. The trick is to always be doing something else while the down load is happening. I do all of my clicking while reading and acting on my e-mail. I have at least two screens open. I go the site and click, then instantly go to my e-mail. After doing something there, I instantly switch screens and click again. Etc. So the clicking costs me virtually no time, and I earn a free ticket or a few dollars every once in a while.

You can convert points to United Airlines at a ratio of 10,100 points for 5,000 miles or 5,200 points for 2,500 miles. There are other travel awards, including some from large hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt, plus a huge list of merchandise for which you may trade your points. You can also use points to get Amazon.com gift cards, Visa gift cards, or even cash to your Paypal accounts. To look at the rewards offered, travel or otherwise, click on the Rewards tab on the MyPoints site, and choose the category the interests you.

There are lots of very easy ways to earn those points:

• The easiest is to sign up for their BonusMail program and tell them you want to receive advertising e-mail for as many categories as they list, and as frequently as possible. I receive about 7 - 20 mailings a week. Simply click on the button at the bottom and you are given 5 points. Many of the offers are incredibly good and offer hundreds or thousands of points in addition to the points you receive for just accepting the email and clicking on the button.

• Shopping sometimes offers very good offers, like mega points for first time purchase, or double points for certain periods of time. There is a very large list of merchants on this very successful shopping portal. Sometimes the best or only deal for a merchant is found here.
• The Easy Points section is particularly lucrative. Many points are offered for simply registering at a site.
• New August 2005: Log into your account and update your profile in 12 categories for 5 points each. This may be important for receiving the maximum number of Bonus Mails.
• MyPoints has a travel center page wherein you can receive points for booking flights, hotels, and car rentals.

• Join via this page to receive 750 United Airlines miles.
• Join via this page to receive 500 United Airlines miles.
• You can ask me to refer you. I get some points at no cost to you. After you join, you can start referring, too. But first read the items below:
  • Before sending your request, check my What's New page to see if I am traveling, so you will know when to expect a response.
  • I need your first and last names, and your email address.
  • In the past, some people I have referred have attempted to defraud MyPoints, probably by enrolling more than once under different email addresses. MyPoints is very good at detecting this. Alas, they have threatened to close my account because too many of my referrals have tried this. So, in order to refer you, I must have your written promise that you will sign up for MyPoints only once.
  • I have only a limited number of referrals. If you ask for one, and then don't sign up and participate in the program, a referral is wasted. So please ask me to refer you only if you are certain you will sign up and participate. You must earn 125 points (easy) for me to receive credit. Thanks.

• The system works quite well and is easy to use.
  • Links to ads are posted on the page you get when you go to your home page. This is automatic if you accept cookies.
  • Clicking on each ad gives you a pop-up after you click on the link. But the original page changes to a list of a few questions at the same time. You must always answer the questions to get the miles. The questions are easy and few. I consider this worth my time.
  • Sometimes an email is sent to you telling you that you have earnings opportunities, sometime not. I recommend checking the site frequently to see if you have an earnings opportunity.
• You receive 100, 100, and 75 miles for joining, confirming, and profiling, respectively, for a start of an easy 275 miles.
• This Flyertalk discussion indicates that 1 e-mile = 2 HHonors points (post #7).
• Miles can be earned with your choice of major U.S. and international airlines, including irTran, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Frontier Airlines, or US Airways. Also, Hilton HHonors points can be chosen. However, if you wish to change your selection to another e-Miles Sponsor airline or points program, you may do so for one (1) of the following reasons.
  1. You move fifty (50) miles or more from your current address.
  2. There is a significant reduction or elimination in service to your city with your selected Sponsor airline.
  3. Your selected Sponsor airline is no longer an e-Miles participating sponsor.
  4. Other conditions could apply on a case-by-case basis, subject to e-Miles Member Agreement.
• The above condition is worrisome. Note the mention of not yet named international airlines on the front page of e-miles. This implies to me that more airlines are coming, to which you may not switch after your first enroll in the program. e-miles is run by e-rewards (which I describe below). e-rewards gives American Airlines miles. This indicates to me that those miles might be available in the future to new members of e-miles. You might want to wait awhile to join this program if it does not currently list your favorite airline.
• However, they do say that you can cancel your account and then re-enroll with another airline. The miles not already forwarded to your airline would be lost if you do this, so be sure you empty your account first and wait for the miles you have sent to an airline actually arrive.
• Miles are deposited into your airline account in 500 mile increments whenever you request them to do so.
• e-Miles miles will expire if a member does not reply to one (1) or more earning opportunities each month.
• e-Miles miles not deposited into the Member frequent flyer account expire one (1) year from the quarter in which the e-Miles miles were earned. For example, e-Miles miles earned in January will expire in April of the following year if the e-Miles miles have not been deposited. Of course, the reason miles would not be deposited would be that you haven't earned 500 of them. Presumably miles are moved out on a first in - first out basis, though they don't say this.
• Carefully read the Member Agreement before signing up for this program.

   

This looks like a very good program, but I have no way of monitor it, since I do not live in the U.K. So you are on your own with it.

On February 27, 2008, a reader wrote:

"I see you still have Eurmiles shown on your site. They are a disingenuous company who does not provide what they say at all, NEVER provide the additional points for any transaction, and take 4-6 weeks to respond to any e-mail to customer services. All comments I have seen about them are very negative. I have canceled my account with them. It was a waste of my time and I strongly suggest you remove them from your site."

Please use the links I provide to join the programs, as I get some money for your doing so, at no cost to you.

• $25 Restaurant.com e-Gift Card for 400 Swagbucks.
• $5.00 Amazon e-Gift Card for 450 bucks.
• Cat and dog stuff starting at 349 bucks.
• $50 Southwest airlines e-Gift Card for 5700 bucks.
• $5 credit to your PayPal account for 700 bucks.
• $20 Target e-Gift Card for 2350 bucks.
• $10 Barnes and Nobel for 1250 swagbucks
• $15 iTunes for 1850 swagbucks
• $50 REI for 8400 swagbucks
• $50 TicketMaster for 8400 swagbucks
• $50 Lowes for 8600 swagbucks
• Please tell me if any of the specific prizes I mentioned disappear, or if a good one of general interest is added. Thanks.

Not all searches result in bucks. This seems to be random, with some limit on how many successful searches will give you credit each day.

• 20 Swagbucks per day gets you (about two successful searches), for example, a $5 Amazon.com certificate every 23 days. Easy. Just do the searches you would do anyway via Swagbucks.
• I seem to regularly be awarded 10-20 bucks for my second, third or fourth search in the morning and again at night.
• Frequently clicking on page two or three of a search result gets me a swagbuck. So now I automatically do this for every search.
• Searching, clicking on a result, then clearing out my cash and clicking on my back button almost always results in bucks.
• When you see the usual notice of award for a search, sometimes you must enter a 3 letter code to actually receive the buck. You must do this promptly, or the offer of the Swagbucks will expire. The code is case sensitive.
• SwagBucks will deactivate your account if they think you are doing "unatural" searches. I suggest you just open a separate window for SwagBucks and simply do your normal searches there.

SwagCodes are codes provided by Swagbucks on its Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter pages, in its emailed newsletter for which you may sign up, on its toolbar which you may download, and on its blog. Sometimes the code comes in the form of an interesting puzzle which you must solve.

• Fortunately you do not have to read all of these to get the codes. Some enterprising Canadians post them on a RedFlagDeals.com thread. The codes last for only a short period of time. So it is best to sign up with RedFlagDeals.com, then subscribe to the thread. You can chose to receive instant notice of new posts to this thread via email or cell phone. After you receive a notice of a new post you must visit the thread while you are logged in to receive another notice. I just stay logged in and click on the link to the thread in the email. Please carefully read the instructions at the top of this thread. It is for posting SwagCodes and their expirations only. No thank yous, no discussions, etc, because every time you post something on that thread it gets emailed to everyone subscribed to it, thus forcing us to visit the thread to get the next email.
• SlickDeals has a similar thread, but it does not have the level of cooperation of RedFlagDeals, as people post thank you's, comments, duplicate information, etc. You may subscribe to the thread and opt to receive a emails for any new post.
• Flyertalk has a similar thread. You may subscribe to the thread and opt to receive a emails for any new post.
• Swagcode Spoilers reliably lists swagcodes. It also has a Swidget, which can give you swagcodes. But the site does not offer a mailing list.
• SwagCodes usually earn about 5 -20 easy bucks. To get credit for a code, enter the code in the Enter your SwagCode field on the home page, and click on Gimmie.
• Please do contribute your finds of SwagCodes on these threads.

A reader provided me with a list of many other easy ways to earn Swagbucks. He says he gets around 20-25 bucks/day from these.

• Click on Daily Polls, answer the single question, and receive 1 SB.
• Click on Trusted surveys - 1 SB even if you don't do any.
• Click through the NOSO link - decline everything [between 3-6 pages] - get 2 SB [currently requires a code that they provide on the final page].
• If you have the SB search bar you get 1 SB per day automatically for just using it at least once.
• Click through 'Special offers'. They have several sites to try in turn to play videos.
  • Ad Rewards gives you 5 videos per day to watch. Watch for the numbers and key them in. You get at least 1 SB per video, often more
  • Click though the other sites and press videos, or free. Click on any videos. You get 1 or 2 SB per video. You do not need to watch these; just let them run.

There is a useful general discussion of Swagbucks on the afore mentioned RedFlagDeals.com. This is where you read and post comments other than finds and expirations of SwagCodes, say thank you if you must, etc.

Whenever you successfully refer someone, the bucks earned in that person's account from searches are matched in yours, to a maximum of 100 bucks per referral. This, of course, is why I hope you will use my referral link to join the program. Thanks.

• A $10 credit is offered for signing up.
• Then you choose categories of emails you want to receive (be sure to chose 25 of them), and click on them when you receive them. This brings you to your login page. Log in, then click on a link at the bottom of the ad you see, then wait for the message at the top to tell you you received money. Note that the ad does not always tell you to do this, but you must click on the bottom of the add and wait for the messsage to receive credit. Do something else on another screen while you wait. You get 2 cents per email. After you accumulate $25, they credit your Paypal account. Easy.
• If you refer others, you get 1 cent per ad read by them, and 1 cent per ad read by anyone they refer. This really ads up.

Some hints for this program:

• After you sign up and select your categories of interest, go back and edit them. Not all of the categories I originally chose were checked when I went to the edit page.
• All of the categories in the Money & Employment section of the Interest Categories page have been particularly active in sending me emails.
• Special note: Recently my Earthlink spam filter service started filtering out emails form Hits4Pay. Be sure to check to see if yours is doing the same, and if so
  • Check the file of filtered out spam daily, and
  • Repeatedly tell them this is not spam until they get it.
  • Put the email address from which the ads are sent on your list of addresses to be trusted.
• Of the many people I have referred, none of those with Hotmail or MSN accounts have clicked on any emails. This leads me to believe that Microsoft is completely barring Hits4Pay emails. So I strongly recommend you do not sign up via a Hotmail or MSN account. Yahoo email works fine - the mail goes in your bulk mail folder. If you travel in foreign countries, you will want both Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts, anyway. Sometimes one works well where the other doesn't.
• The ads you see no longer say you have to click on them to earn money. But you must click on the ad. You should see in a frame above the new ad you get from the same merchant a sentence that says "Please View The Advertiser's website below while we Credit your account. Please wait...". Wait about 30 seconds for that message to change to tell you how much you earned and to click on a button to see the next ad.
• Occasionally the first ad I click on in any session does not produce the wait message after clicking on it. No amount of waiting produces any payment. The solution to this is to click on your back button, then click on the initial ad again. I then get the wait message on top. Subsequent ads in this session do not have the same problem. Nor do ads in the "Not validated messages" section.
• Regularly check the "Not validated messages" link to see if there are any ads you missed, perhaps due to the above problem.

This program is paying me almost monthly. All payments are via PayPal, so money is received instantly and securely.

• A $5 credit for signing up.
• Then you choose categories of emails you want to receive (be sure to choose 25 of them), and click on them when you receive them. This brings you to your login page. Log in, then click on the bottom of the ad you see, then wait for the message at the top to tell you you received money. (Do something else on another screen while you wait.) You get 1 -5 cents per email. After you accumulate $30, they credit your Paypal account. Easy.
• If you refer others, you receive 2 cents/ad they view, or 1 cent if the ad is a repeat. This can really add up.

Some hints for this program:

• All of the categories in the Money & Employment section of the Interest Categories page have been particularly active in sending me emails to my Hits4Pay account. I suspect this may be the same for Deals 'n' Cash.
• Special note: Recently my Earthlink spam filter service started filtering out emails from Hits4Pay. Be sure to check to see if yours is doing this for deals 'n' cash, and if so
  • Check the file of filtered out spam daily, and
  • Repeatedly tell them this is not spam until they get it.
  • Put the email address from which the ads are sent on your list of addresses to be trusted.
  • If you are no longer receiving emails from this program, a reader helps:

    "After I went in and confirmed my e-mail address I was back in on Deals N Cash. For some reason confirming my email did not work for the past 9 months or so but did recently, as it did for my wife too."

• Of the many people I have referred to Hits4Pay, none of those with Hotmail or MSN accounts have clicked on any emails. This leads me to believe that Microsoft is completely barring Hits4Pay emails. They may do the same for Deals 'n' Cash. So I strongly recommend you do not sign up via a Hotmail or MSN account. Yahoo email works fine - the mail goes in your bulk mail folder. If you travel in foreign countries, you will want both Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts, anyway. Sometimes one works well where the other doesn't.
• The ads you see no longer say you have to click on them to earn money. But you must click on the ad. You should see in a frame above the new ad you get from the same merchant a sentence that says "Please View The Advertiser's website below while we Credit your account. Please wait...". Wait about 30 seconds for that message to change to tell you how much you earned and to click on a button to see the next ad.
• Sometimes first ad I click on in any session does not produce the wait message after clicking on it. No amount of waiting produces any payment. The solution to this is to click on your back button, then click on the initial ad again. I then get the wait message on top. Subsequent ads in this session do not have the same problem. Nor do ads in the "Not validated messages" section.
• Regularly check the "Not validated messages" link to see if there are any ads you missed, perhaps due to the above problem.
• Deals'n'Cash will send you additional emails for which they do not pay you. You can deal with this unsubscribing at the bottom of one of these emails. This will not cause your account to be closed or stop paid emails from coming to you, but it will stop the unpaid emails.

• This program has paid me several times. All payments are via PayPal, so money is received instantly and securely.

• A $5 credit is offered for completing your profile after joining.
• More credit is offered for
  • Receiving their emails and then clicking on the link that opens a web page, and then clicking on the link on the web page. (So do something else while the page downloads.) I am receiving a steady 2 cents/email.
  • Many lucrative free offers. Click on the 100% FREE Offers link to see what is available.
  • Completing surveys - $0.50/survey and a chance to win $50,000 for every completed survey
  • Playing games.
  • Shopping on line - a very large number of familiar national merchants, 1% - 15% cash rebates plus access to discount coupons.
  • Insurance via NetQuote.
  • An opportunity to refer others. You get 10% of your referrals’ earnings for shopping through the website. This is why I hope you will click on one of the links in this writeup, so I receive referral credit at no cost to you. Thanks.
    • Completing offers
    • Taking surveys other than Profile Surveys
    • Playing games
    • Shopping online - lots of good rebates.
  • After $30 of credit, you request a check for the money ($3 fee).
  Be sure to click on the Member Profile link in the left column and click on those that seem to be most promising for receipt of emails.

  The notes for Hits4Pay above regarding SPAM filters may apply here, also. You should probably use a email address other than Hotmail or MSN, and you should check your bulk mail or SPAM folders regularly.

  This program has paid me regularly for several years. Its checks have not bounced.

   

I have not checked out the validity of any of these causes. Presumably the businesses financing the causes have done due diligence.

I also list a nifty way to contribute your unused computer power to do some very useful research.

Free Rice. Answer multiple choice questions on vocabulary as often as you like. Whenever you get a correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to help end world hunger. A caution from personal experience: My S.O. found this website. Now I must use it regularly, or soon I will not be able to understand a word she says.

Care2. Marine wetlands, rainforest, American prairie, oceans, big cats, primates, pets in need, breast cancer, violence against women, children. My link takes you to the first three. Use the tabs on top for the others. Be sure you are logged in before you click.

• New: Buy 1 pound of Carbon Offset per day with one click per day. Click the "Offset 1 Pound of Carbon" button every day to remove a pound of CO2 from the atmosphere. Care2 will then make a donation to pay for the removal.

EcologyFund.com. Save rainforest, coastal habitat, and Wilderness, protect endangered species, and reduce pollution (2 pounds of carbon dioxide per click). Click on a brown button. Click on an ad on the page you get to increase the contribution. Then go back and click on the next brown button.

The Rainforest Site. Rainforests, Animal Rescue, Literacy, Breast Cancer, Child Health, and Hunger. My link takes you to the Rainforest page. Use the tabs at the top of the page to the other causes.

Tree4Life. Click to plant a tree in the Brazilian rain forest. My link brings you to the Brazilian website in Portuguese. Clicking on the picture brings you to a thank you page. There are links to other languages. All bring you to the same picture, but clicking on it does not bring you to a thank you page.

The Environment Site.org. Currently your clicks support the Surrey Wildlife Trust in England.

The Sloan-Kettering Institute. Help the The Sloan-Kettering Institute conduct research to fight cancer.

Red Jellyfish. Click to save rainforest and feed chimps. Also very nice e-cards.

The first and most famous of the projects was SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), but currently there is a huge number of them. Categories on March 31, 2008, included

• Science (22 projects)
• Life Sciences (22 projects)
• Cryptography (7 projects)
• Internet (9 projects)
• Financial (2 projects)
• Mathematics (44 projects)
• Art (4 projects)
• Puzzles/Games (5)
• Miscellaneous (2)

I have been using this type of software since 2001 and have had no problems with it. It is a very smooth, easy way to contribute to valuable research at no cost to you.

Click here to read about the process and find the links to the various programs.