Teen Money Canada

THIS SITE IS NO LONGER OPERATIONAL… it is now searching for ‘charity’ (though I’m unsure of the legitimacy of the donation part, the site is still a fine place to do your searching).

I first discovered ‘Homepages Friends’ in August of 2008, and I must say that it is a very interesting idea. The service pays you to make internet searches — just like you would do on Google or Yahoo. They give you a portion of the money they make from advertising on every (legitimate) search that you do.

As soon as I found out about this, I must say that I immediately started searching several times a minute for a couple hours, until I had about 250 searches (which is approximately 500 pence). The next day all of the searches were gone – it was then that I realized there was a cap on the amount of searches. A safe amount is more like 50/day, which amounts to a pound a day if you can keep up the pace.

As I mentioned earlier, only legitimate searches are counted — these are searches that you type in, and actually *click* on one of the results. Simply typing in hundreds of random searches won’t get you anything… I found that out the hard way.

The actual search engine is far better than I expected. It is based on and hosted by Yahoo, but I believe it is superior to it in some ways. As soon as I signed up with HPF, I searched for a site I had been looking for for ages on all the major search engines with no results… Guess what? It was the FIRST link on the page! After that I had pretty much decided that I’d keep using it even if I didn’t get paid.

Payment is at 20 pounds, which took me about three months to get. Their website says it takes a month and a half to two months to get your payment. For the equivalent of around $40 CAD, I thought it was definitely worth the wait. When payment time came around, however, I didn’t get anything. I figured I would wait another month, as they’re probably pretty busy… after that I just kept waiting until it was nearly five months past when I should have gotten my payment.

I e-mailed them via their ‘contact us’ page, and received a relatively speedy response:

The customer service rep. said she would pass on the details to the finance department, and I would receive my money soon. I was encouraged by this, and decided to search a bit more while I was waiting for my payment. After waiting for three weeks, however, I emailed them again and asked about it. I received yet another response saying it was on its way, but the department was tied up. Finally, in late July of 2009 I received my 51 dollars via Paypal, with a small note attached apologising for the long period of time it took for delivery.

This is most certainly one of my top money making sites. I’ve searched several websites/forums, and about 85% of them say that HPF is for real — check it out yourself if you find it difficult to believe.

If you want to start searching, you can click this button:

http://www.myhpf.co.uk/banner.asp?friend=166937

to sign up.

Enjoy,

Austen.