its fairly easy actually, and comes through a stroke of luck.

There are many out there that love what are called MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) such as Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online etc. Games like Everquest have hundreds of thousands of players that pay a monthly fee to enter a virtual world.

Well, there are also many up and coming games in the pipe, some come with a lot of hype and fanfare, expectations, etc. Nice thing is these companies send out beta invitations, if you go to their website and apply for one. Sometimes you get invites to games that are not very good, that most are not interested in playing for one reason or another.

Every once in a while though you get an invite to one that has so much hype and praise from other testers, or because of a developers reputation, that so many people want to play and test, landing an invite is like Wonka's golden ticket.

There was once a time I had a lot of time to play these kinds of games, and last year I applied to many gaming companies hoping to get a beta invite to at least one of them. Sadly now, my time is limited, and as a beta tester, I do not have the time to invest in reporting bugs, issues, or concerns like I should. Besides, I am having more fun buying payware and reviewing the ones I get for you all which only takes a few hours to write and set up, unlike beta testing which takes months of play!

This might sound bad, as the invites were free, but there are people out there willing to pay for them, some a lot of money just to get involved before the game goes gold, often months before its release.

In 1 month I have sold 2 invites on Ebay because I have not the time to play to a grand total of $700 minus about $25.00 for Ebay fees which amounts to a LOT of Payware for my FS9 hobby. The developers do not seem to mind this at all. If it were against their ToS, I would not do it, but after careful reading word for word, there was no mention of what I can do with the beta invite once I received it.

So I just wanted you all to know there are ways of making money out there, some of the money not very hard earned

---Stephen