Spent some more time thinking about strategy and how to approach this with the best long-term goals.  I was becoming overwhelmed and discouraged by the sheer amount of info available on the forum.  Finally, I decided to take advantage of one of the many offers for newbie hand-holding and PPD mentors, and contacted a mentor.

My mentor was very friendly and helpful, with lots of information and encouraged me to ask questions.  Fantastic!  I kept thinking of more.

At this early stage in my career, I’ve decided that going after electronics instead of cash really isn’t worth it.  The values tend to stay the same – the payout-per-referral ratio, that is – and cash really is much more flexible.  I could refer 25 people to a site for a MacBook Pro, cash equivalent $2000… or, I could get that same value in cash, and find my MacBook on sale somewhere else on the internet.  By the time you factor in the cost of buying referrals, you’re spending a bunch of money anyway.  Maybe I’ll change my mind… but probably not about the MacBook – I want a souped-up one, anyway.

I’ve realized I need to be careful with where I spend my greens

– yeah, there’s a ton of offers out there, but when I look at the ones I actually want to bother to complete, that won’t cost me more money than I’m willing to spend, the pickings get slim.  So I want to spend my greens wisely, with a mind to Method 2 development.

I’ve determined that the least hassle, most profitable structure is 1-referral, instant cashout sites.

What got me in the beginning was this: I looked at the most valuable freebie sites, and got discouraged by the number of offers I would have to complete in order to get a credit.  It would be easy to spend more money than I’d be making!  The 1-credit identifier is misleading at best; I prefer to rank the sites as easy, moderate, or difficult.