The Building Wealth “About Page” says that this site is about building financial independence and “is dedicated to helping you build and protect wealth through work, intelligence and prudent investment of time, money and energy.” Sometimes financial independence comes a dollar here and a dollar there and sometimes prudent investment of time and energy means letting loose and having a little fun to recharge. In that spirit, I wanted to introduce you to a fun little moneymaker that you can spend a few minutes a day with, relax and pick up a few bucks a month with the possibility of more. This has been around a while, but the glitches are finally getting worked out and while it may be well known around the tech community, I don’t think it’s as well known around the business world. The product is a site called Moola. [Referral link - please click this link to join Moola, to help me make a little Moola, too. 
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Moola is a free to play game where you can win real cash, but there is plenty more to it. The top prize, if you can win 30 matches in a row, is over $10,000,000. No one has come close yet. Most of the games are games of chance like “Hi-Lo” with a nominal 50% chance of winning. (There are some strategies that can improve your odds, though, and I’ll get to them in a moment.) According to Moola:
By playing double or nothing, player account balances multiply extremely quickly, producing exponential gains as high as $1000 by level 17, $10,000 by level 20, or $10,000,000 by level 30. However, players may also choose to compete on any lower levels which they can afford, thereby reducing their risk and reward. And, new players or anyone losing their entire balance at any time may start over for free, and get their first penny from Moola and/or its sponsors once again.
This alone would be worth taking the time to register and play a bit - you can play with no investment other than your time. Everyone, even the hardest working entrepreneur, needs some downtime and it’s fun to play a game with even the potential of payouts in the thousands or millions of dollars. This is Vegas without leaving home or losing a penny of your own money.
But there’s more. You can earn money by referring other players and you’ll earn money off the players they refer, too. In fact, you earn referral money 4 levels deep. You get 4% of your first level referrals cash outs and “Booster Zone” payouts (more on this later), 3% for 2nd level, 2% for 3rd level and 1% for 4th level:
And you still haven’t spent any money. And we’re still not through.
You can earn bonus money by using the Moola search. You may be thinking “But I love Google.” Well, you’re in luck. The Moola search is actually powered by Google. You’ll get the same results in a slightly different (actually cleaner) format. Do a couple of searches a day on Moola and periodically you’ll get to spin the prize wheel with the possibility of winning up to $36,000/day. My typical win has been 5 to 10 cents, but that’s for a couple of seconds of my time to do a search I was doing anyway and the possibility of more is there.
And you still haven’t spent any money. And there’s still more.
Now comes the part where you could spend a little money. The “Booster Zone” consists of offers from a variety of Moola’s partners, all legitimate businesses offering legitimate products or services. Buy through one of the links and you can get cash back into your Moola account - often more than the purchase amount. Some of these only require you to sign up for a free trial. Others include taking surveys or installing internet monitoriing software on your computer. You can do what your comfortable with and spend money or not. The cashback available now is nearly $300. And if your referrals do any of these, you get credited a percentage of their cashback bonuses when they do. Here’s one example (available 9/20/07):
$51.95 cash back playing poker:
This is poker with a twist to make it legal in most U.S. jurisdictions. Play Texas Hold’em. Play for Free or Play for Cash. Get $25 Free for First Time Users…
Deposit and play a minimum of $20* worth of games within 30 days. You cannot join if you are located in: Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Connecticut, Florida, Montana, South Carolina and Illinois. Limit 1 booster/ person.
So now, you may have spent some money or you may not. And if you did, you may have gotten more back than you spent. And we’re still not done.
Because there’s a Booster Mall. Currently there are 108 merchants in the Booster Mall including names you already know and trust like Priceline.com, Skype, Best Western and Payless Shoe Source. You can earn up to 32% cash back from purchases through the Booster Mall. And a percent of your referrals purchases.
Well, now we’re done, but what about those strategies? Simply learning the basic strategy for Hi-Lo, for example, can boost your odds from 50% to about 80% when playing against a seat-of-the-pants type player. And, unlike Vegas, the advantage is actually to the players overall, since ultimately the Moola site is about advertising and the money all comes from the advertisers.
Since the Hi-Lo games is based on a virtual 52-card deck and the cards are discarded once used, card counting can give a slight further advantage over the other players.
One site offers a calculator to help do this, but notes that using outside calculators may violate the Moola terms of use. Another site offers Moola strategy guide e-books. A good blog for more information is Everything Moola and you’ll also want to check out the Club Moola forums.
If you do decide to play, please click here to sign up for Moola.
