But online submissions are worse than lottery tickets, because you buy a lottery ticket, and then check it from time to time. No, they're seductive because there seems to be some pattern behind it, because they're so easy to test, and before you know it, those 30 seconds have turned into 30 hours of testing and reading into the material for a parsley 600 views.

Technically, working at Costco's and spending your earnings on AdWords would have brought you more exposure with the added upside that those are more qualified leads (for business sites), or on Facebook, where that money could buy you thousands of impressions (I found some numbers putting average CPM for a sponsored check in story at 6$ with a CTR of 3.2%, so spending your 192$ from Costco will get you ~960 clicks @ 30k impressions, if you're doing a mediocre job).

So yeah, if it were 30 seconds it'd be a great deal. But unless you have the self control of a buddhist monk, it's not going to be 30 seconds. Never.

This way you do it once, and since you don't have to revisit it every time it posts, you can remove the element of self control.