Make Money Online — An Experiment and a Contest on Honesty

As a content marketer and an entrepreneur, I like to know what makes people tick. Using a contest as an experiment is something I’ve done before and I’m sure I’ll learn what I need to learn by doing it again, but in a different way. I intended to do this months ago but like always, life got in the way.

A Simple Contest

Actually, it’s more like a sweepstakes, but without all the prizes that people never seem to get (at least, no one I ever know), because it’s a random drawing. Anyway, it’s so simple, any child (if a child was allowed) could do it.

First and foremost, you need a PayPal account or some way to receive money from Western Union. I don’t have any other way to make payments.

I want to believe there are more honest people in the world than there are dishonest people. How much time are you willing to dedicate to being honest? A case in point: I make less than half of what I made back in January due to Google’s constant search engine changes. If I was a dishonest person, it wouldn’t have affected me at all, but it did and it’s because I refuse to be dishonest with anyone.

The Rules are Simple

1. Visit my contact page and fill out the required information. (A website is not required.)
2. In the comments, leave me a short note that I can understand, in English, even if it’s just “Hi”.
3. Leave your PayPal e-mail address in the comments, or a correct name and address for Western Union.
4. State where you heard about this contest, whether it was by reading it here or otherwise.
5. Tell your friends in any way you know how. More than one family member can enter.
6. The contest ends on December 31, 2012, unless I end it sooner. No exceptions — I’m using the California time zone as the cutoff time.

The Prize

I’m not rich, so please don’t expect too much. I can tell you right now that the minimum will be $20 in US dollars. However, if you mentioned a friend (or just an acquaintance) who has already entered (see #4 above), then that friend will receive the same amount.

Let’s use some common sense here. If you say you read it on Facebook, for example, it’s not enough for me to connect the dots with. You need to be very specific about who it was that posted it.

The recipient of the prize will be random, of all the people who’ve entered. I’ll have to check the referral name, if any, and get all the information together as well. So, even though the contest will end on December 31, 2012 (at the latest), it will probably take me a few days to get the money sent out.

I will announce the outcome, without revealing private details, in a follow-up article. The key to all this is honesty. If you use a fake name or a fake e-mail address or anything else that’s fake, you won’t get paid. It’s just not possible. I’m going to track where you came from, to the best of my ability, so please be honest.

Why such a huge wait, you may ask? Well, it’s because I’m not big name on the web and I’m really just an independent kind of person, so it will probably take that long, or longer, to see anything happening. I could be wrong and that’s why I left myself an “out” to end it sooner. If I receive thousands of messages in the next two weeks, for example, I’m likely to end it at the end of August.

The prize is money. What more can you ask for by being honest?