A few weeks ago, I heard via word of mouth that there was a search engine that would pay a charity of my choice one cent for each search I performed. That seemed like a really high number (a penny doesn’t sound like a lot, but multiply it by the daily searches on any one search engine and it is a really large number).
Amusingly, none of the people in the “word of mouth chain” had actually seen the site, so I thought I’d better investigate. Sure enough, GoodSearch does actually pay a penny per search to charities. When I looked at what they are doing, that number didn’t seem so outrageous: they’re using Yahoo’s search API to provide genuine Yahoo! results (at no cost to GoodSearch), tacking on some ads, and basically splitting the ad revenue with charities.
All fine and good, but what if they didn’t have the charity I wanted to get “my” money (in my case, The Experience)? Well, that was easy enough! I submitted an “Add a charity” request, and a few days later, I was good to go.
If you’re serious about earning money by searching, you’ll appreciate that they have a search toolbar for Internet Explorer, and a Firefox Search Bar tool. That way, once you install the tool, you don’t have to remember (or go out of your way) to go to a certain website for searching.
Like I said, it’s been less than a month, and I’ve earned $3.43 for my church. That’s not going to make or break anything, but I’m planning (as the church webmaster) to create a page with information and step-by-step instructions, and put a teaser in the bulletin. Hopefully, with more than one person contributing, we could grow it up to a sizable annual contribution.
My only gripe is that I’d rather have Google search results (because I prefer the format), but that’s a small gripe and one I’ve obviously managed to get over. Rumor has it that Yahoo! is actually faster at picking up new results, so I might even see better searching as a result.
Whatever your charity of choice, I really do recommend this tool!
What a great idea! I have put it on Dave’s IE toolbar. I’m having a bit of trouble putting it on Mozilla. I will have to consult my IT help people.