I make money from my blog (yes, really). But to be honest, I’d always feel a bit sheepish about it — as if I’m cheating the balance of the universe by making money from writing about non-sense. I certainly don’t make enough to quit my day job (if I had one), but earnings did peak enough to warrant making filings to the lovely IRS.

Revenue from this blog is generated by a few different sources: Google ads that you’ll see on single pages; a handful of affiliate links that earns me a buck or two; the standard text links; and surprisingly, sign-ups from survey websites (something I completely forgot about).

I wrote a post awhile back that details how you can earn money online by taking online surveys. In essence, you sign-up, fill out your consumer attributes, and the companies occasionally sends you matching survey via email. The pay varies and depends on the difficulty and time involvement in the survey.

Last week, I logged into my SurveySavvy account and was surprised to find that I have accumulated over a thousand dollars in survey incentives. That’s a lot of Cheetos.

Mmm... a year supply of Cheetos, secured!

This is thanks to sign-ups from regular readers like you.

Seeing as how I didn’t do anything special for the blog’s three year anniversary, how about we give away a $5 Amazon gift certificate to 20 random readers? This will be sure to alleviate my money making guilt and/or celebrate three years of awful blogging.

Amazon Gift Card Give Away Details

  • Click here and leave a comment along with an email address of your choice.
  • One entry per person, you cheap bastards.
  • 20 random commenter will receive a $5 Amazon gift card via email.
  • Drawing ends in a week on May 8th, 2008 at 12:00 PM PST.