Website Review: Moola.com

Lately I have been wasting--er, spending time playing games on a fairly new website called Moola. The concept behind Moola is fairly interesting. When you sign up, you get a free penny. Then you play a game against someone on the computer. There are three games from which to choose--Hi/Lo, Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu, and Gold Rush. If you win, you double your money, so you get two pennies. Then if you win you next match, it's four pennies, and so on, until (theoretically) you could win more than $10,000,000. Not that anyone has won that much, at least not yet. I have seen payouts of hundreds of dollars though, and heard of payouts in the thousands. You can cash out anytime your account has at least $10.00 in it. I have cashed out five times; each time they were just ten-dollar payments. Checks take about two weeks to arrive; at some time in the future they will allow cash-outs through Paypal. Also, you don't have to bet everything in your account each time you play; so if you don't want to possibly lose everything you've won, you can just play at a lower level. Anytime your account is empty, you can get another free penny, so you never have to risk any of your own money.

Moola has recently added other ways to boost the amount in your account. You can visit the booster zone and get extra cash in your account for trying certain products or signing up at certain survey sites. You can't expect the cash to be in your account right away though; it can take up to forty days and you have to make sure you follow all the instructions. I've signed up at a couple of the survey sites since those are free to try. Other sites require a purchase, so I don't do those. Another way to boost the amount in your Moola account is to do a Google search through the Moola site. I really like this as I do lots of Google searches, so instead of just going straight to the Google site I go to Moola and do a search through there. You can get a chance to get extra cash this way up to four times a day, but I've found that several hours have to pass between searches before Moola will actually allow you another chance to boost the amount in your account.

You may be wondering how Moola can pay for this. They pay for it through advertising. Each time you play a match, you first have to watch a commercial and then answer a question about what you just saw, just to be sure you were paying attention. Several companies advertise, including Chi-Chi's Salsa, Yellowpages.com, Zantac, Rolaids, and Google.

As I mentioned before, you have a choice of three games you can play. Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu is described on the site as Rock-Paper-Scissors, with a twist. You choose rock, paper, or scissors, but you get bonus points for not choosing one of these. For example, in one round you will get two bonus points for not choosing "rock", while in another round you will get two bonus points for not choosing "scissors." Hi-Lo is a card game. You get a card and have to guess whether the next card will be the same, higher, or lower. I love this game, but I suck at it. I rarely win. I guess according to the odds, but it still doesn't seem to work very well for me. I like Gold Rush the best. You and your opponent get a supply of gold, in increments from one to six pounds. You get "dealt" a gold nugget, also in an increment of one to six pounds. You try to win each nugget by risking your own gold. For example, if you put up a six-pound nugget and your opponent puts up a five-pound nugget, you win your own nugget back, plus your opponent's nugget and the one that was dealt. But you only have a limited supply, and whoever has the most at the end wins, so you need to be careful how much you put up each time.

I was skeptical when I first heard about this, but I researched it by doing a Google search (this was before Moola had the Google searches) and couldn't find anything bad about it, other than that you might waste your time by playing a lot and not winning anything. I don't know if it will last forever since it is entirely financed by advertising, but for now at least it seems to be solvent, and of course you don't have to put up any of your own money. I also felt better when I actually got my first check. If you like to play computer games, it is worth a try to win some extra cash. Participation is by invite only, so a Moola member needs to invite you, or you can request an invitation by visiting the Moola blog at http://moolablog.blogspot.com.