Everybody is an expert in something. Whether you have a degree in psychology or life experience has just made you as wise as the Oracle at Delphi, there could be something you know that someone out there, or better yet a few people out there, will pay you money to share with them.

The website Kasamba.com makes it possible for people like you to share their expertise with others who are seeking answers to questions you might be able to answer. With categories ranging from shopping and style, professional counseling, religion and spirituality, computers and programming, coaching and personal development, health and medicine, business and finance, each broken down into smaller sub-categories, there’s a wide range of subject areas within which you might be able to fit your particular expert knowledge.

According to research, there are Kasamba experts making 6-figure incomes per year from their Kasamba endeavors alone, charging as much as $20 per minute for sessions. While $20 per minute seems excessive, at that rate just 25 minutes of your time pays $500. On the Kasamba website itself it is claimed:

Many of our experts earn thousands of dollars a month! You can as well, as the amount you earn depends solely on the rate you charge and the amount of time you are online.

Kasamba requires no document-based certification unless you are a health professional, but this does not mean you should run on over and sign up to give advice knowing fully well that you have nothing of real value to offer buyers. Not only will you do the buyer a disservice and contribute to the discrediting of the Kasamba website you will discredit yourself as well.

So before you decide to try Kasamba or any similar website, take some time to consider the areas in which you believe you might have information that could be of value to others; assess your advice-giving skills as honestly as you dare; determine if you will have time to dedicate to spending online just for the purpose of giving advice to others. In your assessment of your advice-giving skills you might ask yourself: “Do people tend to come seeking my advice, or do people generally appear to have no respect for my opinion even in matters where I consider myself competent enough to be called an expert?”

Just knowing a great deal about something doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a way of sharing your knowledge with others that will be helpful to them. Kasamba experts deliver their advice electronically and via telephone, so you need to be able to communicate well over the phone as well as in writing.

If you consider yourself an expert in one of the areas in which Kasamba provides service and you think you’re a good communicator, you have time on your hands and enjoy helping others, you might be able to join Kasamba experts who are making thousands per month sharing their expertise at rates up to $20 per minute.

I continue to be amazed by how many people are out there desperately trying to make money online and how many people are out there trying to rip off and exploit the desperate.

People are literally working like slaves, doing everything from making hundreds of posts on forums to accumulate $10, to writing multiple 500 word quality articles for less money than the people paying them spend on their lunch. And the desperate aren’t just people from foreign countries where 10 US dollars can possibly feed their family for a couple of weeks. At least for those people there is value in a US dollar when converted to their currency, so they won’t necessarily need to make slaves themselves posting on hundreds of message boards just to build up enough money to afford a loaf of bread. Many of the desperate people out there are living in the United States, selling their talent and their time to people who themselves would never in their right mind perform the tasks they’re hiring these people to do for the kind of money they’re paying them.

It’s frankly more disheartening that people are quite as desperate as it seems they are. It takes people accepting jobs that offer to pay a dime per task to embolden other people to offer only a dime. Even if the task only takes a few minutes, clearly it was a task the person paying the dime found too tedious to perform; and these jobs don’t usually come with the option of working for as long as you like so that at least you could tolerate the tedium knowing that you’ll have the $300 you need at the end of the day even if you have to work 15 hours to accumulate it. The people preying on the desperate set limits on how much you can make. For example, they’ll offer to pay a dime per post on their forum but limit you to 10 posts maximum. That’s $1.00; and it could take you a good hour to complete the whole process of signing up on the message board and making the ten posts. Who works for a dollar an hour? Here’s an example of such an offer:

10 cents per post - Max. $4

10 cents per post (1/5 should be new threads).
15 or more words per post.
Max. posting per day = 10 posts
Max. payment per person = $4 (40 posts).

I can’t help but wonder if the person offering to pay people $4 for 40 posts would ever accept any job or gig that was paying $4 for at least a few hours of his/her time. But many people are getting away with this kind of practice, paying next to nothing for people’s time and energy. They’re getting away with it because more and more people who try to make a living from home are finding themselves struggling every month to come up with money to pay their bills, and for many of these people the possibility of having to go back out to work is so intolerable that they will do almost anything to try to avoid it. And because there’s always going to be enough people responding to offers like the above, ‘almost anything’ becomes a case of performing slave labor. The slave drivers even have a way of acting like they’re doing you a favor paying a buck for an hour of your time. Even a 5-year old would scoff at an offer of $1 for 1 hour of labor.

It’s hard coping when the bills are due and you don’t have money to pay them, but if you’re going to make a slave of yourself for someone else’s benefit, aren’t you better off doing it working a 9- 5 job? At the end of the day you’re working fewer hours and making more money….

Upload -> Share -> Get paid - that’s how easy it is to make money online sharing your pictures via shareapic.net.

Shareapic.net operates a revenue share program whereby you can make money uploading and sharing pictures. In their own words:

Shareapic is a free service that allows its users to upload and host images on our servers. What makes us different from the rest? Shareapic has a unique revenue sharing model that compensates users for directing their friends and family to see their hosted images. When a member hosts a gallery, they can then show this gallery to others. Each time this is done, the member is paid.

So all you do is upload your photos, send the link to your friends and family, tell them to freely share the link with their friends and family and every time someone views one of your photos you make some money. How much money? Here’s what shareapic.net has to say:

Earnings vary each month based off the amount of income Shareapic generates from advertising. Once this number is finalized a percentage of that is distributed throughout Shareapic members depending on how many image views they have accrued.For example, if in month one Shareapic calculates to distribute $1,000 to our members, we will first tally up the total number of image views for that month. Using these two numbers we can determine the respective payouts for each user. If there were a total of 500,000 image views for the month, image views will equate to $0.002 each (1,000 divided by 500,000), or $2 per 1000 image views. If you’re posting lots of pics in forums, MySpace or eBay, you can see how easy it is to earn quite a bit of money!

Although we do not disclose the revenue share, we do display the amount paid for previous pay periods in the members section. Our goal is to pay out enough to keep users happy, while still being able to sustain development costs, hosting fees, salaries, etc.

The gist of this is that the average person will not make thousands via shareapic.net. In fact, it’s possible for it to take as many as 6 months to build up to just a single dollar in earnings; but if you’re aggressive as some of shareapic’s top earners, if you upload a large number of pictures and find ways to get them viewed by a large number of people, your share of the shareapic revenue becomes that much larger.

If you love sharing your pictures on the Internet, shareapic.net is a good way to do something you love and make a dollar or two doing it.

Since Monika St. John (probably not a real name), Co-Founder of projectpayday.com was offering access to the Project Payday system free of charge until midnight November 15th, I decided to go ahead and sign up so I can get a closer look at the program to see exactly what it involves.

First I filled out the sign-up form. It asked only for my first and last name, an email address and preferred password. Simple enough. Simplicity is good when it comes to online forms. When you start to get detailed and invasive I usually don’t bother unless it’s something I have no choice about doing.

Naturally I did not provide my main email address. When you join these types of things your email address usually ends up on somebody’s spam list. I also did not give my real name.

So I clicked the “Create and continue” button and it pretended to load a new page with the following message (it really just scrolled down to the sales pitch on the same page but inserted the name I’d provided to “personalize” it:

Pat,

This may feel like a blow to the stomach, but I’ve got to say it. You probably don’t have what it takes to work from home and make money online like me.

Does that sting? Before you get up to slug me, let me explain. What I have that you probably don’t … is a lot of free time to work on my Internet business.

Most Average Joes don’t have the time to sit down and learn how to start a home business. They’re too busy working their rears off at low-paying jobs. Sometimes even balancing two full-time jobs.

Many Average Joes are going to school … sometimes in addition to working. And lots of Average Joes are busy with kids. Any of this sound familiar?

Another big obstacle is money …

Do you have endless cash to spend on business opportunities? Many “home business” type programs require you to buy supplies … risk loads of money on advertising … and more. How ironic is that?

The reason you’re looking to make extra money is because you need more of it! Not because you have a bunch of extra cash laying around to spend. Right?!

You’ve got bills to pay. Loans to pay off. Credit cards to pay down. Skyrocketing gas prices to deal with, and more!

These are the reasons I’ve always hesitated to share my primary money-making system with others. My paycheck is proof my strategies work, but I know most people don’t have the time or resources to make money the way I do.

And that’s ALWAYS a recipe for failure - so I vowed never to produce a “how to make money on the Internet” product for the Average Joe.

But as it turned out, I’ve had to eat my words …

I just had no idea I’d stumble on another stupidly simple way to make money online. Or that it would turn out to be the perfect system for the Average Joe!

I skimmed over the text, glanced at the PayPal screen shot that shows gross income in the amount of $4,915 supposedly earned by a Matt O’Connor from Palatine, IL between November 2nd 2006 and November 30th 2006. I read the testimonials from people who supposedly bought the program and started making money from their first day; then I clicked the “Click Here to Continue and Get Started Now” link.

After clicking the link I came to a page with the following message:

Risk-Free Account Activation Required
Welcome aboard Pat,To activate your account just Complete One (1) of the Free Sponsor Offers below. It just takes a minute, and you’ll get instant access to Project Payday.Like Miguel, you could make over $400 your first day, and consistently average around $4,000 a month. I bet that would reduce some of your financial pressures, wouldn’t it? Click Play to hear what he has to say …

I clicked to hear what Miquel had to say. He claimed he was a college student with a full-time schedule that made it necessary to seek out easy work at home opportunities. He said he’d tried everything from surveys to pyramid schemes with no success but managed to make $450 within 24 hours of trying out the project payday system. I wasn’t convinced that Miquel was not a paid actor; but I was determined to at least get to the point where I could actually learn what the Project Payday system is all about so I moved right on along, reading through the “Law of Gravity” $100 Guarantee that if I follow theprojectpayday system and don’t make money within 24 hours, I’d be paid $100. (By whom? I wondered. Who’s this talking to me anyway? Is it still Monika St John, if that is even real name to begin with?)

Whoever it was that was talking to me reminded me in bold type that I didn’t have to buy anything and there was no obligation. All I had to do was try one of their sponsors’ products at no cost for a short trial period … They outlined the steps in the process:

Step 1: Select and complete one of the free trial offers below

Step 2: Wait 1-2 minutes for your Project Payday account to update

Step 3: Access the Training Guide and start making money TODAY

Then they reminded me that the free no obligation offer would end at midnight on November 15th presumably in 2007. They didn’t state the year in which the offer would end at midnight on November 15th; but after November 15th, presumably in 2007, I would have to pay the normal membership fee of $34.95 which I could also elect to pay at that moment if I preferred not to have to complete one of their sponsors free trial offers before I could access the training guide. Since I had no intention of spending any money on a training guide that had a higher likelihood of proving useless, I went ahead and clicked on one of their sponsor offers so I could activate my account that way.

My first attempt failed because after I had filled out a name and address to receive Auction Monster’s Ebay success toolkit, I was taken to a page requesting my credit card information which no one clearly told me I was going to need to provide. Maybe it’s in small, practically invisible print somewhere but usually when warnings like that are made in small, practically invisible print it’s done like that so you won’t see it. They were only trying to charge me $1.87 for shipping but where I come from ‘no cost’ means no cost and I was not about to give my credit card information to sneaky people who try to make me think I’m getting something for free and then turn around and try to charge me even a penny for shipping. After they charge you for other things that they told you about in even smaller, more invisible print that you didn’t know anything about, you can try getting back the $99 they bill to your credit card.

So I tried another offer. This time before I clicked the button to get my free CD mailed to me from Ultimate Grant Secrets, I clicked to read the terms of service. In the terms of service I read:

A. User agrees to be charged by Ultimate Grant Secrets after 7 days of ordering the FREE CD in the amount of $39.95 for access to the Ultimate Grant Secrets Grant Help Center. The first day of the trial is the date of order. No refunds will be given for failure to use the requested and provided services.

B. The user will continue to be billed for $39.95 each month there after unless the user emails Ultimate Grant Secrets using our Contact Form.

C. If the user cancels their 7 day FREE trial into the Ultimate Grant Secrets Grant Help Center before the 7 trial days are up, the user will not be billed $39.95 or any charges thereafter.

D. By not cancelling Ultimate Grant Secrets Grant Help Center during the trial period or during any billing cycle, you agree that any reoccurring charges billed to you will be non-refundable.

This is all for a free CD. First they charge you $3.95 to ship the free CD and then 7 days after that they charge you $39.95 for accessing their help center, then every month after that they charge you $39.95 just because they can. Of course you can always cancel before you get charged so you’ll only pay them$3.95 to ship the free CD to you; but what they bank on and how they get people, is that we don’t bother to read terms of service agreements. It’s too tedious. The document is usually so long and so formal that we get a headache just contemplating reading it. And it doesn’t tell us anywhere else but in the terms of service document that unless we tell them not to by canceling their offer, they’re going to charge us $40 bucks every month for no other reason but that we provided our credit card to them, giving them the means to charge us $40 bucks per month.

Well I wasn’t about to proceed with that so it was back to the project payday website to try another offer. Surely at least one of the free offers would actually turn out to be free? Project Payday did promise in bold type after all that I could gain access to their training package at no cost. They never said I could gain access to their training package at no cost but after I paid one of their sponsors some money. This is what they said exactly:

And remember, you don’t have to buy anything and there’s no obligation.

Just try one of our sponsors’ products at no cost for a short trial period …

I was beginning to get bored and time was running away from me. I had work to do, but I’d started the process and I had to see it through so that I could base my conclusion on whether or not project payday is a scam on actual knowledge of what project pay day is about.

Unfortunately every last one of their sponsors offers was the same: get this program free, just pay shipping costs and remember to cancel within 7 days, 11 days an so forth, otherwise we’ll bill you $39.95 per month, $59.95 per month - you get the gist.

At least one the first questions I asked when I saw their sponsor offers was answered: why am I being offered a rebate if the cost to try the offer is $0. The answer: Because it doesn’t cost zero dollars.

So after an hour filling out forms to try to get to the point where I could access the project payday training guide I was faced with a dilemma. Either I would have to bite the bullet and give my credit card information to pay for shipping for one of the programs and try not to forget to cancel within the time frame to prevent being billed more money; or I would have to fork over $34.95 to Project Payday in order to get instant access to the training guide.

Well, folks, I wanted to be able to provide you with the answers you seek to your questions about whether or not project PayDay is a scam; but I will not be purchasing their training guide that they promised I could get for free, and I will not be providing my credit card information to companies that would try to trick me out of my money. And I don’t recommend you waste your time and your money either.