...you ain't seen nothing yet.

NetShepherd Inc. (NSI), a publicly traded Canadian tech company, has been paying out major amounts of money for surfing the web. Unlike those banner advertisements, NSI's work is actually useful.

Here's how it goes: NSI gets a work order from another company, NSI designs a computer program as a tool to get the job done, then NSI gives the program to its members, and the members do the work.

There are several NSI programs in operation. The largest, and the only one out of beta, is the "Internet Explorers Society" (IES). The IES is a corporate organization made up of zillions of ordinary websurfers, designed to rate and categorize URLs, which will eventually be used as part of filtering programs on search engines, I imagine.

You load up the IES program, called the Member's Journal, which is a heavily modified shell for Internet Explorer. You log in, go to the "Expeditions" page, and select a category of websites you would like to rate. The list of sites varies occasionally, depending on the projects NSI's been contracted to complete. Usually, these categories include "Computers," "Entertainment," "Politics," and "Adult," among others.

Yes, "Adult." You must be 18 or over to join the IES, since the IES operates with a raw feed of URLs from search engines, and there are adult sites that sometimes pop-up. You can avoid seeing most of that type of site by staying out of the Adult category, but as you know, the search engines are loaded with porn. That's just an unavoidable part of the Net, though hopefully one that the IES will help change. The "Computers" category has the least porn, containing instead incredibly boring technical specs for incredibly boring computer products.

The IES provides a list of things to look for, and "switches" to input your observations. It takes, on average, seven seconds to rate a webpage using the IES guidelines.

What you care about.
The money. The IES pays three cents per webpage rated, and one cent per error message logged (like, "404"). If you use the Member's Journal while multitasking, you can make about three bucks/hour. If you devote yourself to it, you can make minimum wage. There's no limit on what you can make. Some people make about $20/month, some literally make hundreds.

Payments can be done by direct deposit, or by mailed check in US funds. Yes, they do pay. Regularly. They're meticulous about payments--enough to get a cynic like me to trust them.

They also offer community features (those that are so popular online, lately), except that the IES actually cares about your input, since their livelihood depends on your satisfaction with the service. They have a 10 person 24 hour support team, and you can even talk to their honchos regularly. They sent out Christmas cards, and keychains, and other trinkets this year. I felt loved and tingly.

The best thing about the IES is being paid for something you would do anyway. I normally go to search engines to type in something like "tomato" to see where it will lead me. The IES does roughly the same thing, except it helps my bank account grow. I swear, thanks to them, I have one of the most useful bookmark collections on the planet.

My only warning about them is minimal: They're always testing the software. They upgrade, release and ask for feedback about once every three months. But hey, would you want to join with a company that didn't upgrade its service?

All in all, this is the single best money making program on the internet. Their sign up site is http://netexplorers.com , and no, I'm not getting any referral commissions for this.



Recommended: Yes