(Update 07-28-2023) Perry v. Schnuck Markets, Inc.
(Original) It seems soooooooo hard for me to earn the $100 check from google Adsense nowadays. A lot people said blogs are dead nowadays. That’s probably true, as I learn from homejianshuo (noticed his blog starting date of Sept 2002, now I recall I was probably influenced by him when I start blogging :-), and likely some other famous bloggers too. The blogging world has moved beyond, into medium.com, and now into substack?
I don’t know for sure. I think I still need to figure that one out. My general assessment is the world has moved into newer platforms, from podcast, to social media, and so on. Two people I am aware of: Daniel Vassallo (he quit Amazon/AWS job and went solo), and Ruan Yifeng (he has a popular wechat 公众号 and a good weekly journal).
Okay, back to lunch money. Here they are:
IKEA: background, file claim website, Chinese
Meta/Facebook: background, and file claim website
Now I suspect my lunch money from the above may come earlier than the $100 check from Google Adsense 🙂
PS:
Now I gave it more thought, I think Amex Gold (official link, no kickback for me here. I do have a referral link if you are interested. Please let me know via email: minjie dot xu at gmail dot com ) can give a lot more free lunch money too. With $250 annual fees, it gives $10 per month Uber Cash (can be used for car ride as well as Uber Eats), as well as $10 from GrubHub (seamless.com, I use the latter as I pick up my own food), and a few other restaurants such as Cheese Cake Factory and Shake Shack. It has many other benefits too: I usually converts the Amex membership rewards points to the HHonors points when there is a favorite conversion term. Below is copied from Amex website.
“$120 Uber Cash on Gold
Enjoy up to $120 in Uber Cash annually with your Gold Card. Just add your Card to your Uber account and you’ll automatically get $10 in Uber Cash each month for Uber Eats orders or Uber rides in the U.S.‡ Plus, you’ll earn 4X Membership Rewards® points for each Uber Eats purchase on your Card.‡
$120 Dining Credit
Satisfy your cravings, sweet or savory, with the $120 Dining Credit. Earn up to $10 in statement credits monthly when you pay with the American Express® Gold Card at Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, Milk Bar and select Shake Shack locations. Enrollment required.‡”
PS 2:
From time to time, Panera Bread will send me emails re: $30 Gift Card (GC) for tasting test, this is the most recent one. I think you can try it. I have done that in the past, for a few times, and they always honor the GC. It will take some time to get there (their Fenton, MO tasting room).