Redgage - paid social bookmarking

Redgage makes money by allowing users to upload content and bookmarks. It then shares a proportion of the advertising revenue with users. There are good and bad sides to this e.g. it is simple to use, but automatic uploading does not work. However depending on what you want in a site, it can be useful for backlinks and traffic as well as earnings.

One of Redgage's promoted features in auto-uploading, where you can link a blog or your youtube account and automatically pull content across. This doesn't work, and has only worked briefly since I started using the site. However, you can upload your videos and blog posts manually, which does allow you to tweak them to better fit Redgage's format. It also lets you add a link back to the source, which the site did not create on the automatic versions.

The most useful part for social networking and backlinks is Redgage's ability to store "bookmarks". Bookmarks are simply links, with a title, tags and a short description added by the user. Redgage will give you a choice of images to use as thumbnails.

They have a good page rank, which means that a link from redgage can boost other content you link to, as well as directing viewers to it. Providing free traffic and a boost for search engines, you can understand why this option is popular among affiliate marketers and article writers.

This is the downside to Redgage. They only pay out using Visa Giftcards in dollars. While US-based users can use these, they are of limited use outside the states.

Activation online is not possible for some UK addresses, requiring an expensive (more than the card was worth!) phone call to make the card useable. As they do not work in chip-and-pin devices they are useless in most UK shops, and very few sites online will take them.

Redgage, like any site, has a balance of good and bad. The ease of making funds is offset by the difficulties with getting paid if you are outside the US. The ease of uploading links is offset by the broken automatic upload.

However, in my opinion, what it does offer are backlinks, an easy place to catalogue all your content, and a way to upload oddments - leftover images etc. - that will promote your other content.

Using redgage for making money outside the US is difficult. Using it to promote your other content, or aggregate it, on the other hand works very well. So, in conclusion, while I can't endorse Redgage for making money, it is definitely a useful method of promotion.