Tom's $500 Gaming PC

Tom's Hardware Guide has a great 'How-to' article on building your own gaming PC for around $500. Like Pete, the author, I'm a big fan of buying behind the techno-curve as well. Not just with PCs but with lots of other products -- TVs, DVD players, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, and of course cars. Buying a model that's about to be, or has already been, replaced with a newer model can save you a lot of money and still get good value.

Pete ended up with a PC sporting an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU, 512Mb RAM, 256Mb Geforce 6600 video card, an 80Gb HDD, a DVD-ROM and a 330W power supply. Not cutting-edge, but a respectable game system that fit within his budget.

Link: Tom's $500 Gaming PC

Blogging With Flock -- Flockblogging???

I've just downloaded a new Firefox-based browser called Flock and among it's many cool features (including social bookmarking, easy RSS subscription and a lot more) it has a blog editor that lets you blog directly from the browser to your Blogger, Wordpress, MoveableType, or Typepad blogs.

So that's exactly what I'm doing. Sweet!

A Few Payments

I guess actually ASKING for a bit of money has already started to pay off. Imagine that. Doh!

After requesting a grand total of $3.49, I've actually been paid:

AK-Mail $0.88
GainSeek $0.90
DestinysDollars $2.50
Random-PTCs $1.26

Total $5.54
Monthly Total $7.12

So even though I'm still waiting for one payment, the random payment I got from Destiny's has already given me more than I asked for. Don't ya just love when that happens.

$7.12! Seven dollars. And twelve cents. I might just treat myself to a cup of coffee. And a donut. Woot!

GPT Outreach

Believe it or not, mine isn't the only blog about 'Get Paid' stuff. A friend of mine has one called GPTOutreach and it has a lot of great advice about how NOT to get ripped off, and what you can do about it if you DO.

It can get a bit intense sometimes, but given the focus of the blog, it's not hard to see why. As I might have mentioned once or A THOUSAND TIMES, there's more than just a little shady business going on in the 'Get Paid' world. Heh.

But the latest post is a bit different. It's funny. Sometimes you just gotta stop and have a laugh, and 'The Top Ten Reasons You Might Want to Unsubscribe from a Paid-to-Read Program' was just what I needed.

I think my favorites were:

#6 -- Their domain registration address leads to an abandoned vehicle.

and #9 -- The flashing neon lights on the homepage causes your children to go into epileptic seizures.

To read the other eight, pop over to GPTOutreach and check it out for yourself.

The Future of PTR?

There was an interesting discussion at the GetPaidForum today, that started out arguing about whether it was ethical for program owners to delete the accounts of other program owners who have ripped off their members. I hadn't really thought about this happening, but apparently it does. The owner sends out lots of ads for other programs, builds great downlines, then closes down their own program (wouldn't want to have to pay for all those ads they sent), and then continue to make money from the efforts of the very members they screwed over. Wow, being a conniving, heartless scumbag must be fun sometimes.

But gradually the discussion changed, and ended up being about all sorts of things, from the difficulties with membership upgrades, the sustainability of point systems, the need for some sort of escrow service to hold money for paying members should a program collapse. The need for some sort of Industry Association and/or self-regulation. As usual, it ended up everywhere covering a lot of ground. And then the thread quieted down, and nobody will do anything and in a month or two, we'll do it all again. And then the next time there's a crisis, we'll do it again. And again. And again. But nobody ever actually does anything.

So I keep tossing up whether I should do something. I'm thinking about buying a new domain and starting a forum that is specifically for discussing the problems facing the PTR industry, and possible ways to fix, or at least minimize, some of those problems.

I'd also like it to include ideas for how to help more PTR members become PTR advertisers. By providing them with ideas, and probably step-by-step instructions for how to set up a small business online, build a website, etc. I can't understand why more PTR owners don't help their members. Maybe they know something I don't. Maybe they already know it's a waste of time. I hope not.

The Hacker's Diet

I've only read the first few pages, but so far The Hacker's Diet has been an interesting read. Available online or as a PDF file, it's basically a diet book for engineers and other geeks.

One thing I've learned already is that you have to burn around 3500 calories to get rid of a pound of fat. I don't know why, but every time I think in those terms I get an image of bacon frying in a pan. Is it just me?

And I never would've found the Hacker's Diet if CoolTools hadn't pointed the way in this entry. Thanks CT!

For some reason, The Hacker's Diet reminded me of The Physics Diet. Surely between the two of them they ought to be able to help any overweight geeks become slim and buff geeks in no time. OK, maybe not in no time, but in some variable amount of time that they will no doubt measure down to 1/10000th of a second!

Mark Cuban on Investing

I still think it's funny that I enjoy reading Mark Cuban's blog so much. I even read some of the basketball stuff, and I don't think I've watched an entire NBL game in my entire life!

But it's the non-basketball stuff that I really enjoy. Like one from a couple weeks ago called What's an Investor?.

A couple of my favorite parts are:

The difference between the two [speculation and investment]is very simple. If you spend the money and the only way you can earn a return on that money is by selling whatever it is you have purchased. You are speculating.

If you give your money to a person or company, and that money is used directly to create commerce or to create an asset that will be used in commerce and if there are profits from that commerce that can be returned to you as a result, that is an investment.

I'm cool with investment. Speculation, not so much. And yet speculation is everywhere these days! All my friends watch their investment portfolios constantly, and all they care about is if they'll be able to sell for more than they bought. Or worse, if they can sell for a high enough price to pay back the money they borrowed to buy the shares and still make a profit. They could care less what the companies do or anything other than making money from the transactions. The same with their houses. They don't buy a house because they love it, because they want a nice home. All they're thinking about is resale value I swear, some of them would live in a cardboard box if they thought they could sell it for twice what they paid within 5 years!

The way Cuban explains the benefits of investment explain exactly why I like this approach:

When money goes to create commerce, that’s capitalism at its best. Money going to smart people to do smart things. If it has good results, everyone makes money. The economy grows. Expectations are based on the prosperity of the company, typically over a longer term. New ideas create new wealth. It’s not a zero sum game. It can be an everyone wins game.

Like I said in a previous entry, I'm a win-win kind of guy.

He also does a pretty good job of explaining why I don't like speculation, either on a small-scale personal level, or even less on a large-scale level:

When most of the money being ingested into our public markets is speculative, then the competition for returns increases. When the majority of speculative money is deployed by funds, who must compete with each other, and within which fund managers must compete to keep their jobs, the amount of risk acceptable for any given level of return increases.

This only works as long as new money continues to come in. As long as people keep streaming part of their paychecks every payday to mutual funds. When the money stops flowing in, there is no one for the speculators to sell to and the prices start falling and everyone starts freaking out.

It's that part about how, if the money ever stops flowing in, everything falls apart that I'm not too keen on. But so many people are willing to take the risk and bet that they'll get in, make a butt-load of money, and get out before it all hits the fan. And then when they do get caught out and lose their asses, they all start crying and moaning about how they got screwed.

I see this stuff on a small scale all the time. It's bad enough at that level. But when it gets to the point where stockmarkets crash, banks and investment companies go under, etc. it ain't pretty.

Applied for Google Adsense

Tonight when I logged in at Blogger, for some reason instead of immediately clicking on 'New Post' my eye was drawn to the note about signing up for Google Adsense. So I decided to give it a shot. Wow, it was really easy!

I filled in the form, read the Terms & Conditions (Hey Blogger people, you need to make that text box bigger if you really want people to read all that fine print! You do want 'em to read it all, don't you???

As soon as I finished that, there's a new link under my 'Template' tab for adding an Adsense banner to my blog. And it even tries to automatically match the colors of your template so it fits in!

I did a little tweaking to try to position the link box a little better, and now I have to wait a couple days to see if my application gets approved.

Show Me the Money!

I realised I hadn't had a payment in several weeks, so I started checking my records and it turns out that, apart from a couple of long-overdue requests, I haven't actually requested any money in a while. I guess they aren't just going to throw money at me if I don't ask for it, so I've put in 3 or 4 payment requests. I don't think any of them were for over $1, so I'm not planning any computer upgrades with the money or anything.

The main problem is that there are very few advertisers these days. Most of the 'ads' are for 'search engines' and that whole thing is just nasty. I'm not going to do searches for money. It's just wrong.

More and more, PTR is turning into an industry of scams. Not just the programs themselves, but almost everything that's being advertised is just a bunch of bullshit -- get rich quick schemes, other PTRs that are nothing but sweatshops for human click-bots. Yeah, you can make a few bucks a month doing it, but unless you build big downlines and click links 24/7, that's about it. Even then, it would be worth it if you were seeing ads for something worth buying. Who cares about getting paid 1/4 cent to look at an ad when you can save $10 on a purchase? But it just doesn't work that way any more. I think I'm going to have to look for other ways to make money online.

Dr. Phil Where Are You? Are You Getting Paid to Read Your Email?

Wow, it's been a wild week or so in the 'Get Paid World' the last week or so. I won't go into a huge amount of detail because if you're involved in PTR stuff, then you probably already know, and if you're not, you're not likely to give a damn.

First came a new PTR called Spare-Dollars (Google it if you care, I don't want to link to 'em). New PTRs open up all the time, and there's nothing particularly special about this one, except the owner. A while back, she was indirectly involved in one of the biggest PTR scams ever. The original owner of April Gold's gave the whole PTR away to some schmuck, and walked away without paying her members over $700,000 they'd earned.

Not that April ran off with the $700,000. It was all 'monopoly money'. It was never real. She'd sell ads to people for next to nothing, then send them to her members promising them 2 or 3 cents each, and in the end there was NO FREAKING WAY she could pay up! What a surprise, huh? So she dumped the program and moved on. Last I heard she was a check-out chick at Walgreens or something.

But it doesn't end there. She had a whole posse of 'helpers' and 'assistants' and forum moderators who were all part of her Team, and when she ran off, a lot of the old team kept in contact, with her and with each other. And eventually, their personal relationships became business relationships as well. They began to open their own PTRs. And to get positions as forum moderators at some of the bigger PTR-related forums.

So I see this new PTR and I'm thinking to myself, 'Hang on, you were either in on the scam with April, or you were dumb enough to let her use you to keep her scam going as long as she did. Either way, I'm not so sure people ought to trust you and join your PTR.' So I started taking a closer look at it, asking some questions, and lemme tell ya, all HELL broke loose!

And the second big bombshell this week has to do with the collapse of a program called YourPTR. Now, this should've come as no surprise to anybody, but there always seem to be people who just don't get it. Sadly, it happens far too often. Turns out the woman running it didn't really know what she was doing, had all kinds of personal issues, and probably would've been better on the set of Jerry Springer than she was trying to run a PTR.

So anyway, the program website disappears, nobody can get in touch with the owner, her PayPal account is frozen, blah blah blah when after a couple days of people starting to get the idea that Lisa has flown the coop, somebody spots her putting money into a bubble game. So it becomes clear that while Lisa has run off owing her members a heap of money, she's more interested in playing bubble games with it. So that gets posted at GetPaidForum and then a message is posted, supposedly by her dear friend, to say that she is the one using Lisa's E-Gold account to 'invest' in the bubble games in hopes of making more cash to use to pay for Lisa's funeral!

Yes, the story is that Lisa, totally distraught over the fact that her PTR is in the toilet and she's let all her members down, has taken her own life, leaving behind a husband and four kids living in a travel trailer somewhere in Oregon.

So the PTR amateur detectives went into action! They called the only funeral home in the town where Lisa had allegedly lived. Nope, no funeral. They called the local police. No, no reported suicides. Yes, she had been evicted from her house, but they had no address for her and didn't have any idea where this travel trailer might be located. And on and on. People were outraged! Heartbroken! Some had to share their 'You think that's depression? Lemme tell you how depressed I was after my 3rd divorce!' stories. It was like an episode of Springer, Oprah and Dr. Phil all rolled into one!

Payment Requests

I realised I hadn't had a payment in several weeks, so I started checking my records and it turns out that, apart from a couple of long-overdue requests, I haven't actually requested any money in a while. I guess they aren't just going to throw money at me if I don't ask for it, so I've put in 3 or 4 payment requests. I don't think any of them were for over $1, so I'm not planning any computer upgrades with the money or anything.

The main problem is that there are very few advertisers these days. Most of the 'ads' are for 'search engines' and that whole thing is just nasty. I'm not going to do searches for money. It's just wrong.

More and more, PTR is turning into an industry of scams. Not just the programs themselves, but almost everything that's being advertised is just a bunch of bullshit -- get rich quick schemes, other PTRs that are nothing but sweatshops for human click-bots. Yeah, you can make a few bucks a month doing it, but unless you build big downlines and click links 24/7, that's about it. Even then, it would be worth it if you were seeing ads for something worth buying. Who cares about getting paid 1/4 cent to look at an ad when you can save $10 on a purchase? But it just doesn't work that way any more. I think I'm going to have to look for other ways to make money online.

HYIPFever -- Game Over

Well apparently the first game at HYIPFever has ended. I'm not sure why, because the site statistics say only 81.51% of deposits have been withdrawn, and the Game End Threshold is up to 96%. But then it looks like over $100,000 worth of deposits were made in the last few hours, so maybe that fried the game or something.

Anyway, my experience with the so-called 'sustainable Ponzi' game is that I ended up dead even. Put in $5.00, took out $5.00, and had $3.85 in earnings that I was still playing with. My upline, on the other hand, played a bit more agressively and says he put in $6.00 to start with and pulled out over $20.

It'll be interesting to see how Game 1 finishes up, and what kind of action Game 2 gets.

Edited to add: Looks like it was either a security issue or a glitch. The $100,000 that suddenly appeared is gone, withdrawals are back down to 64.86%, and my $3.85 is back in action! Woot!

Edited AGAIN to add: I guess that was enough to spook a lot of players, because the game ended sometime while I was asleep. If I'd been awake, I could've gotten another 45 cents out before the game ended, with another $3.85 in earnings locked in. So I'm back to breaking even. Still, it was interesting, and I might play again in Game 2 to see if I can do better next time.

'Get Paid' Forums -- Be Careful

For people who get involved in 'Get Paid' programs, one way to keep up with what's going on is to join a forum or two. A lot of programs have their own 'member support' forums, but there are also a couple of bigger forums for discussing the 'Get Paid industry' as a whole. These include GetPaidForum, GPTBoycott, and GPTForum.

All of them have good info. But keep in mind that these forums aren't run as generously-donated services to the 'Get Paid' public. There are other motives involved. Like $$$.

The owners, Administrators, and Moderators of these forums are often 'Get Paid' program owners or others with vested interests. The Forums give them a place to wield power, exert influence, make deals, etc. It's not just about sharing info and a bit of friendly chit-chat. So if you go to any of these forums for info, be careful and think twice before taking anybody's word for anything.

Except mine, of course. Heh.

HYIPFever Update

I woke up this morning and thought it might be a good idea to start moving money from my HYIPFever account back into my E-Gold account. So I withdrew the $3.45 available in my account. That means I only need to recover another $1.55 to get my initial $5 deposit back.

I'll admit I haven't tried to strategize much with this game. No doubt other players are. I've heard some are pouring thousands into the game, and I'm sure they've got plans to make money, not lost it.

And yet we all know some of us have to lose. More money [em]will[/em] go in than comes out. Initially the game was set to end when withdrawals reached 80% of deposits. As the game has progressed, that's changed to 82%, then 84%. But it's never going to be 100%, and it's never going to be more than 100%, so there's no way everybody can make a profit. It's just a Ponzi, after all.

The other little twist in the game is the special prize for whoever makes the last deposit. 15% of whatever's left in the deposit pool when the game ends. Right now, that prize is over $1000, so I'm sure there are plenty of people with a plan for that, too.

Sadly, my Master Strategy doesn't amount to much. At this point, it involves hoping I at least get that $1.55 out so that I've made my money back. What a plan! What a daring risk-taker! What's next, Russian Roulette? Ha!

Classic Monopoly

Monopoly was one of my absolute favourite games when I was a kid, and I've been waiting patiently for my kids to get old enough to play it with them. And it seems every time we're in Toys-R-Us I see some new 'special edition' Monopoly game -- the Star Wars edition, The Lord of the Rings edition, the Batman edition, the Scooby Doo edition, etc.

But I'm thinking that when I introduce my kids to the joys of Monopoly (and then mercilessly reducing them to penniless losers), I'll do it Old School. So it's handy that one of the special editions Parker Bros. is going to release for the 70th anniversary is a re-make of the Classic 1957 Monopoly Game. I'm too young to remember this one -- my first game was either from the 70s or maybe I got a hand-me-down 60s version from one of my cousins -- but my kids won't figure that out for years!

HYIPFever Update

I've chewed off all my fingernails and pulled all my hair out as I wait to find out if I've hit the jackpot or lost my life savings (ok, not really -- just $5) at HYIPFever. So far, from my initial $5 deposit, I've 'earned' $3.45 -- but since I re-deposited the first $1.50, my account balance is currently just $1.95.

To recap, I deposited $5, 'earned' $1.50 the next day, re-deposited that, and earned $1.95 the second day. If the 'game' doesn't end in the next 4 days, and if I don't re-deposit any more of my 'earnings,' I should end up with $9.75.

At this point, my plan is to get my $5 back into my E-Gold account, and re-deposit the rest and see if I can turn it into another $10. If the game crashes and some time in the next 4 days, I lose my $5. That would be a bummer. Not only because, you know, I have to read like a bazillion email ads to earn $5, but also because I was thinking I might use any profits from this thing to 'invest' in some other programs -- and blog about my experiences 'on the inside.'

I've Got the Fever -- HYIPFever

OK, I'll admit it. I've done the unthinkable. I've "invested" in a Ponzi HYIP (High Yield Investment Plan) thing.

Well actually, it's not the first time I've put money into a Ponzi scheme. I once bought into a 'randomizer' too. If you're not familiar, basically it's a sort of 'free form' pyramid scheme. For example, you pay $3 to join. $1 goes to the person you joined under. Another $1 goes to 'Admin' (whoever's running the thing), and the final $1 goes to a member chosen at random.

I joined. I paid in extra money to buy more 'weight' (extra shares that increase your chances of getting a random payment), I promoted -- I didn't lie, but I encouraged as much unbridled optimism as possible. And before it collapsed (as all Ponzi shemes must eventually do), I made money. Thank you optimists.

But I'm not particularly keen on Ponzi schemes. I joined that randomizer to try to prove a point, more than anything. And because I believe in Sun Tsu's advice -- know your enemy, know yourself. And also whoever came up with 'Don't knock it till you've tried it.' I tried it. And I made money doing it. But I didn't like it. Because I knew that any money I made came from people who were [em]also[/em] hoping to make money, but didn't.

I'm more of a 'win-win' kinda guy.

But I've recently ventured once again into the somewhat sleazy world of Ponzi schemes. This time by putting money into a program called HYIPFever. Why this one, out of so many to choose from? Two reasons.

First, this program is honest and transparent about how it works. Yes, it's a Ponzi. Yes, you may very well lose some or all of the money you put in. Others will make money, and the money they will make will be your money.

And second, the program appears to be sustainable. It's set up from the start as a game that ends when the amount of money withdrawn equals 80% of the money put in. When that happens, the whole thing resets and the 'game' starts over again. That 80% is the key. While the program offers some individual 'players' or 'investors' or whatever the chance to take out 150% of what they put in, overall, the program will only pay out 83% of the money it takes in.

Will it work? I dunno. Will I make a profit, or lose part or all of the money I put in. I dunno. But whatever happens, I'll tell you about it here. Then you can make up your own minds.

October Payments -- Week 1

So far, October's off to a fairly predictable start. A couple of payments in the first week:

Random-PTCs $1.35
Mezmerizing-Mails $0.23
Total: $1.58

According to ThePaidHelp (the little program that helps me keep track of all my PTR info), I'm waiting on 3 payments. Two from GlobalAdsPro, one of which is going to be overdue in 3 days. And the other at HaulingCash, which is already about 100 days overdue, with 720 payment requests ahead of mine.

This thing with HaulingCash is pretty bad, but the owner made some mistakes, lost a lot of money, had some other problems, yadda yadda, so I'm just kinda waiting to see if he ever gets around to paying me what I've earned.

Deleting PTR Accounts

I deleted myself from a PTR today, and may soon be deleting myself from others. The program was called TheMailClub, and while it's never been a program I recommended highly, it was OK. It was a no-minimum PTR, which means you could request payment every month, even if you only had 1 cent in your account. The thing about it was, I often didn't have much more than that. Not a big earner. Probably less than 20 cents a month. But it wasn't a hassle, so I never quit, and every 6 months or so I'd request payment and get my 60 or 70 cents.

But then came an annoucement that the program had been sold. To a guy named Peter Boer, who's a known scammer. He owns a number of programs, including one called Misty & Sams's Cash, a pathetic joke of a PTR that owes me, and many thousands of other members, money that we were supposed to be paid nearly a year ago.

Now, the first question that popped into my head was -- where did this chump get the money to buy another PTR when he doesn't have the money to pay me the money I requested in December 2004? The nextd thing that popped into my head was....well, I won't say. I think it could get me arrested.

But rather than get myself all bent out of shape about it, I just logged into my account at TheMailClub and hit the 'Delete Account' button. I only had around 13 cents in my account, and it just wasn't worth the hassle.

I also realised today that after deleting a few PTRs, being deleted from a few (mainly for inactivity -- they didn't send me any emails, so I wasn't active), a few that just disappeared, etc. it's only taking about 30 - 40 minutes to read my morning email ads. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to just slowly get out of PTR, or whether I should look for some new programs to join.

Decisions, decisions, decisions....

Avoiding 'Get Paid' Bullshit

Some recent happenings in the Wonderful World of PTR has reminded me that it's about time I posted another 'Watch out for assholes' type post. Because believe it or not, there are plenty of them around, if you get involved in this type of online earning.

You'd think the small amounts of money involved would automatically keep the Asshole Factor fairly low. But you'd be wrong. For three reasons. First, some people are assholes for free. Second, some people will become assholes over very small amounts of money. And third, some people actually put a lot of time, money, and effort into all this and make a fair amount of cash out of it all. Some of those people are seriously warped, and they play rough.

So please. be. careful. Trust no one (except me, of course!). Assume something's a scam until you figure out otherwise. Eat more veggies. When it starts to be more hassle than it's worth, move on.

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) might be wondering why I'm posting a rant right in the middle of my normally helpful and informative blog. To be honest, when I started this thing I meant to have more ranting. I feel like I really haven't included anywhere near enough ranting, and I'm afraid that failure could unintentionally paint too rosy a picture (yeah, reading email ads for $1 an hour is real rosy, ain't it?), and I wouldn't want that. So expect more ranting in the future.

And eat more veggies.

Recommended PTRs

Things change quickly in PTR, and I'm way behind in updating my list of recommended programs.

5StarPromotions
AdPaid
Avant-Cash - No longer recommended
BeehiveMail - No longer recommended
BGPaymail - No longer recommended
DestinysDollars - No longer recommended
GainSeek - No longer recommended
HeavenlyEmail - No longer recommended
ItPaysToLearn - No longer recommended
PolarPTR - No longer recommended
Random-PTCs - No longer recommended

Keep in mind that most of these PTRs are heavily dependent on ads for PPC search engines, and for that reason, there's little point in joining unless you're living in one of the following countries -- Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.


Last Updated 22 March, 2007

Payments for September

September turned out to be a pretty slow month -- I have friends and family in both Louisiana and SE Texas, so I've been more worried about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita than I have been about reading paid emails. But my September payments ended like this:

PolarPTR $1.32
Avant-Cash $2.10
GainSeek $1.19
SendMeCash $0.06
Total $4.67

Monthly Total $10.15

So not a great month, but as I said, other things are much more important.

I'm definitely not going to get rich from PTR any time soon, but on the other hand, I've found a couple of good bargains, and for less than an hour a day, I've made nearly $100 extra spending money in the last few months.