The sharing of files and information has become critical not only for business professionals, but also for individuals. Web-based email programs typically limit the size of attachments and sending files over instant messenger can be quite a tedious process, not to mention that both of you have to be online at the same time.
You’ve probably seen services similar to Speedy Share in the past, but this could be the first that actually pays you to refer new users a Premium account. Yes, you can make money online by sharing files, maybe even more than writing paid reviews like this one.
Speedy Share For Speedy Sharing
The user interface at Speedy Share file sharing is about as clean as it gets. No messy advertising. No useless widgets. Hitting up the main page, all you’ll see is a single “browse” field to select the file you want to upload and a series of text links at the bottom for navigation.
The look and feel of the site, in this respect, is very similar to Google. You want simple? You want white space? You want Web 2.0? Speedy Share delivers and, if the name of the site is to be believed, they deliver it quickly. Upload and download speeds will obviously vary with the speed of your Internet connection, but it took me 15 minutes to upload a 22MB file. And yes, you can upload more than one file at a time (by clicking on the link just below the browse field).
Basic and Premium Accounts
Like most other file distribution websites, Speedy Share offers two kinds of accounts: basic and premium. There are several advantages to subscribing to a Speedy Share premium account, the most notable of which is the ability to upload much larger files.
With a basic account, you’re restricted to files no larger than 30 megabytes. That’s nowhere near enough to send a movie file or a full album of music. If you’ve got an extra beefy PDF or PhotoShop file, that’s a no-go as well. With a premium account, your file size limit gets upgraded to 1.5GB. In addition to larger file sizes, other niceties include:
- Instant downloads. Basic accounts have waiting periods.
- No intrusive advertising whatsoever.
- Account history.
- Files stay online forever, even if nobody downloads them.
- Search through all files hosted at SpeedyShare.
- Affiliate program
The search tool is interesting, because it grants you access to all files hosted at Speedy Share, including those uploaded by other users. This could lead to the sharing of pirated content and stolen information, so I wouldn’t upload anything too personal. I’m personally not a fan of this feature, because I value my privacy. It would be useful to make it not possible to search through other user’s files or, even better, make it possible to tag any files as private.
The non-expiry of uploads means that you can use Speedy Share as a remote backup solution. Just upload a zipped backup file every month or so. Again, privacy is an issue and until that is established, I’d avoid uploading any personal files. Backup your financial information elsewhere.
A premium account costs $5.95 per month and this can be done with automatic subscriptions through Paypal.
Make Money Online with Speedy Share
Looking at the feature set listed above, I have a hard time recommending Speedy Share unless you opt for the premium account. With expired uploads and a maximum file size of 30MB, the basic account isn’t all that useful for most people.
Thankfully, there is a very easy way that you can recoup that $5.95 monthly fee. The affiliate program represents a 50% commission. Every subscriber that you refer results in a $3 payout into your account. This isn’t a one-time payout either, because “you will get paid for every month your referred friend stays subscribed.”
In this way, if you refer two people and they stay subscribed to SpeedyShare as long as you do, you can basically make use of the premium account for free. More precisely, two referrals will result in a $0.05 profit each month. Anything more than two sign-ups and you’ve scored some more profit.
When do you get paid? Here’s another nice feature. There is no minimum payout level. You can cash out your account at any time, whether you have $3 or $3,000 sitting in your balance. There is an advantage to saving, however, because if you cash out $300 or more to your Paypal account, you receive a 3.5% bonus payment to cover your Paypal fees (and then some).
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