Mark Cuban on Click Fraud

Mark Cuban has a good piece on search engine click fraud, and I think he's definitely got a better understanding of the problem that many so-called experts in the field. So many of them seem to still be focusing on clicks from competitors or other small-time examples, and not dealing with the problems of botnets, or the human clickbots involved in the PTR industry.

Of course in the comments there are some of the usual arguments -- there's no such thing as clickfraud as long as the click is done by a human, since there's always some slight possibility that they'll end up buying something. Yeah, sure. Another one used the 'Robin Hood defense'. It's OK to steal from all these big corporate advertisers who prey on the weaknesses of consumers. Uh huh. That's right. Only big companies use PPC advertising. So it's OK to rip them off. They deserve it. Bloody hell, who comes up with this crap?

Also came across a link to a site called ClickFraudIndex.com Not only do they provide info about what's happening in the wonderful world of PPC clickfraud (this week they're estimating 14% Hight Threat Level clicks), they also provide a free click fraud monitoring and reporting service to help you find out how much clickfraud is affecting your PPC campaigns.

Free Web Analytics -- SlimStat

I've been lucky enough to have reasonably decent statistics available through my host for most of my sites. But last week I set up a site at a new host, and the stats package they offer totally sucks.

My first thought was to use a free 3rd party stats provider, but why give them access to my stats info if I don't have to? I don't need 'em if I just install my own stats package on my server. But I wasn't really sure how to go about it. Then I found SlimStat.

I downloaded the software, uploaded it to my server, and followed the fairly simple instructions to get it installed. Took about 5 minutes to create a database, set a few variables, and then another 5 minutes to add a line of code to each webpage on the site. And that was it! I was done!

Hawesome Blogging Tool: Ecto for Windows

I've been listening and reading soooooo many Mac-using bloggers (including Wil Wheaton and Darren at Problogger) brag about a seriously hawesome desktop blogging client for MacOSX called ecto.

For anybody with multiple blogs, particularly if they're on multiple platforms (like mine) then this is just the thing you need. It'll post to Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Moveable Type, Drupal and others. It's got a spell-checker. A preview window. Customized HTML tag shortcuts. You can even get it to automatically generate Amazon Associate links for you. And you can save different settings for each of the blogs you post to using ecto.

Don't be a tool and waste time logging into each blog Admin area to write and submit your posts. Do it the easy way with ecto. It rocks.

DIY Gaming PC for $800 or Less

ExtremeTech also have another of their Build It features, this time putting together a very nice Gaming PC for around $800. Considering that some people are spending 3 or 4 times that much for their high-end gaming machines, I think that's an excellent compromise between price and power.

For that kind of money, you get an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU on an eVGA nForce4 SLI motherboard, 1Gb of DDR400 RAM, a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card, an eVGA GeForce 7600 GT CO graphics card, a 160Gb hard drive, and even a DVD burner. Plus a few other bits and pieces, although the $800 price tag doesn't include speakers or a monitor.

If I were to build it, I'd probably go with a regular DVD player instead of the burner, on-board sound, and I'm pretty sure I could dig up some speakers, a monitor, a case, and a keyboard and mouse that would do the job. So even paying in Aussie dollars, I might be able to build the thing for under $1000.

One thing that I thought was really interesting was comparing this $800 Gaming PC to the one they built last year. Not only does this year's model have a lot more bang for the buck, but I wondered if I were to try to build the one they recommended last year, would prices have dropped enough to do it for around US$500 or so. And from what I can tell, the answer is....probably not. It seems that, for whatever reasons, prices for some of this older gear just don't drop that quickly.

To be honest, I'm not into computer games enough to want to build a Gaming PC. But with the kids getting older, I can see that it won't be long before our home computers are going to have to run a lot more than Office apps and a web browser.

Music Recommendation Services

There's a good round-up of online music recommendation services at ExtremeTech. Some of them, like Last.fm and Pandora, Yahoo LaunchCast and LivePlasma, I've known about for a while now. A few of them, like Audiri and Mercora, are new to me.

If you're always on the lookout for new music, either just to listen to while your on your computer, or to buy, I recommend Pandora.

Mercora is like a P2P internet radio, where instead of sharing downloads, you share streaming music with over 1 million other users.

Audiri is also based on music sharing, but instead of using a P2P model, it's the artists themselves doing the sharing. Independent artists are given 200Mb of space to upload their music files, and then you can listen to streams and in some cases, download the file for free.

Most of the time I just listen to this music while I'm on the computer, but occasionally I come across a song, an artist, or a band that I like so much I end up buying a CD or two.

OLPC -- One Laptop Per Child

Normally I'm always looking for bargains -- paying less than regular price for things, but today I signed a pledge to pay more for something I want. I signed a pledge at Pledgebank agreeing to pay $300 for a OLPC $100 Laptop. The extra $200 will be used to pay for 2 additional laptops to go to a couple of kids whose parents, or their governments, couldn't afford to buy them. So it's more generosity than lunacy. Plus it might be my only chance to get my hands on one of these little buggers.

I've been following this story for a long time and thought I'd blogged about it before, but if I have, I can't find the post now. Basically, the idea is that the One Laptop Per Child organisation, headed by Nicolas Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab, is working hard to develop a laptop that they can sell them to various governments for $100 per unit. These $100 laptops would then be distributed through the schools to their students at no charge.

I think it's an awesome idea, and I'd also like to have one for myself because they seem like pretty neat little machines. They'll most likely have 500Mhz AMD processors, 128Mb RAM, and a 500Mb flash drive instead of a hard drive. But it will have 4 USB ports, so adding an external hard drive, either a 'keychain' drive or a full-sized USB drive, won't be a problem. It'll also have built-in wireless connectivity, including the ability to connect to other nearby OLPC laptops to form an ad hoc Local Area Network. Sweet!

The OLPC project isn't the only idea for getting cheap computers into the hands of people in developing countries at prices that might be a little more attainable than regular machines.

A Chinese company called YellowSheepRiver is developing a Lixux-based desktop computer that it says it will sell for around US$150. That's without a monitor, but in addition to having a VGA output it'll have one for S-Video as well, so any TV set with an S-Video connection could be used as a monitor.

And an Indian company called PicoPeta has something that's more a PDA than a typical computer called an Amida Simputer. As best I can tell, their cheapest model sells for around US$130, but so far they haven't had much success.

I accept that there are some serious questions about whether poor people in developing countries even want computers, and also whether or not, given their other needs, giving them a laptop should be considered a priority. But whether or not any of these projects work out for them, I think they're proving that the technology needed to build extremely useful computers doesn't have to cost a lot. And I think that's A Good Thing.

Campus111.com -- Cheap Computer Gear

Looking for cheap "Made in China" consumer electronics or computer gear? A $30 MP3 player maybe? An $8 USB 'keychain' drive? Or how about a $4 USB SD/MMC card reader?

If so, head on over to Campus111.com, where you'll find all that and more?

Is any of it any good? I haven't bought anything from this particular store yet, but my guess is, it's not that bad. This is the same kind of gear being manufactured in China and sold in all sorts of discount stores. It's not exactly cutting-edge technology, but in most cases, it gets the job done. The reason this site can offer even bigger discounts is that it's owned by the Chinese manufacturers themselves. Cut out the middle man and offer even lower prices than the dollar discount stores.

They're big eBay sellers as well, with 99.6% positive feedback and a feedback score of 38370.

Free Skype-Out to US and Canada

Skype users have always been able to call each other for free. But now, they can call any non-Skype user, anywhere in the US or Canada, for free as well.

That's right. Join Skype and you can call anybody in the US or Canada, on their old-fashions landline telephone, for free.

How freaking cool is that?

PayPal Fee Calculator

Because I've been involved with online rewards programs, I've had a Paypal account for a long time. Back before they were bought out by eBay. Other than payments from those reward programs, I haven't done a lot with it. But now that my wife and I are doing a fair bit of selling on eBay, Paypal is playing a bigger part in my life.

Paypal isn't as big in Australia as it is in the US. Not even on the Australain eBay site. Most people seem to prefer doing direct bank transfers, which is cool because there are no fees. But it often takes up to 3 days for the payments to show up in our account. With Paypal, it's practically instantaneous, but we pay a fee.

We don't pass the Paypal fees directly to the customer, but we do take them into consideration when setting our prices. One thing we notice is that with Paypal, the time it takes to get the product to the customer is a lot faster, because we're not waiting for the funds to show up in our bank account, and the one thing our customers seem to love more than anything is fast delivery.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to point people to a site called PPCalc, a Paypal fee calculator. It looks like it be a pretty handy site for anybody that accepts Paypal as a payment option.

Tara's Blogging Tips at HorsePigCow

I know there are about a bazillion 'How to Blog a Bloggy Good Blog' type posts out there, but I read Tara's advice at HorsePigCow and I thought she had some really good points.

Write like you have an audience of 2 ... pick the two. I picked my mom and Chris. Anyone else who enjoys it is a bonus.

This one's always been easy for me, because I always figured I actually had an audience of two! Even though the numbers have picked up a bit since I started this thing, I still go with that feeling.

Read lots of stuff and comment everywhere you have something to say. Yes, you can leave your blog URL, but that's not the point. Interaction is good. I also like Elisa's rule that if a comment goes beyond 2 paragraphs, then it becomes a blog post.

This is one I think a lot of people, especially new bloggers, miss. Even if you blog like you have an audience of two, you still shouldn't try to do all the talking. Stop writing and start reading what other people have to say. Leave comments. Link to other blogs instead of just repeating what was posted there. Try to become part of a conversation.

Shut Up and Click!!!

One of my PTR programs recently changed owners, and so far the new owner hasn't been very impressive. Then the other day, she sent out an Admin email that said, among other things:

I did not get this site into the debt situation it has, but I have assumed it and I will and already have paid members, as to how I get the money to pay you is none of anyones business but mine and my husbands. If I rob banks to pay you all your concern shoud be is that you are paid, not how I got that money to pay you. Maybe I won the lottery, it is no ones business, do you go to every site you belong to and ask every owner just how they intend to pay you? NO! you don't ! So you have only the right to be paid here not ask how I got the money or will get the money to pay you. I defy anyone to show me a single ptr site that take in enough money on its own to pay all the members at any single given time.

There's a bit of disagreement about whether the program really had a lot of debt when it was given to her (obviously, with a sale price of $0, it must've had some debt) but the big issue for me is her attitude that members aren't supposed to question where the money comes from, just 'do their job' and click the links in the ads.

Maybe she's not doing anything shady to get the money to pay members, but why would I want to hang around and find out? As soon as I read the Admin email, I posted it in several public PTR-related forums, which is strictly against the program's revamped Terms of Service. To be fair, at least the new owner paid me before she deleted my account. I feel better already!

The name of the program was TheKeroseneCucumber (if you don't know, don't ask LOL!)and the owner is Genelle Voss. Apparently she owns a whole pile of other PTRs (usually another bad sign) so I'll try to put together a list of them and post them here as programs best avoided.

Frugal Living: Dinner and a Movie

After reading Nicole's Bugeting Babe post about going to the movies it got me to thinking about whether it's worth the cost to go to the movies or out to dinner.

I can cook a delicious dinner for my wife and I, or for the whole family, and enjoy eating it at home. Or we can go out and eat at a restaurant. If the quality of the food is more or less the same (I'm no Jamie Oliver, but I'm a reasonably good cook), what am I paying for? Having it prepared and served to me? Yep. Eating it in a nice setting? Yep (On the rare occasions when I do eat out, the ambience of the restaurant is just as important to me as the quality of the food.) Doing something that feels special and a bit decadent. Absolutely. For me, that doesn't necessarily mean getting dressed up in an uncomfortable suit and eating in a fancy restaurant where everybody acts snooty.

And I guess it's the same with going to the movies. We don't do it often, but when we do go to the cinema, we try to make a special occasion out of it. Luckily there are some reasonably nice cinemas around here so at least we're not dealing with uncomfortable seats or untidy theaters. And thanks to the Net (and the fact that movies are usually released in Australia after they've been released elsewhere) we can read lots of reviews beforehand, so we have less chance of getting stuck watching a dud.

Probably the biggest let-down in the whole experience (at least for me) is the quality of the snacks. I mean honestly, for what they're charging at the snack bar, I'd like be able to buy something GOOD! Is it just me, or does movie popcorn just not taste as good as it used to? In a lot of cinemas, it's not even freshly popped. I dunno, maybe I'm just getting old. I remember when I was a kid my mom used to say the same thing about the popcorn then.

At the end of the day, the point of going out is to enjoy the whole experience. To me, that's what I'm paying for. Saving money becomes secondary. Sure, if I can save a few bucks and still get the experience I'm after, that's great. But I don't want to lower the quality of the experience because I'm too cheap. Sure, it's cheaper to go to the discount cinema where the seats aren't comfy, the air conditioner doesn't work, the sound is crap, and they only clean the theaters every other Tuesday. But what's the point? The whole experience will SUCK, and I could've saved even MORE money by just staying at home and renting a DVD. I'm happy to spend more to get more. If that means we only go out to the movies once or twice a year, then that works for me.

PopURLs.com -- Instant Web Buzz

Want (or need) to know what people are talking about on the web? A new way to do it is to check out PopURLs.com that scrapes and aggregates contents from sites like Digg.com, del.icio.us, Flickr, NewsVine, YouTube and many more.

Not only do I think it's a very useful site, I think it's another good example of a 'why didn't I think of that' kind of site. For those of us who build websites and put in a lot of hours trying to help people find and visit them, PopURLs' traffic numbers are pretty impressive. Within a month of launching, it was getting 40,000 unique visitors a day. And that was nearly two months ago, so I'm guessing it's traffic has jumped a lot since then. Checking Alexa, it looks like the traffic has at least doubled since then. And it's traffic rating is now 11,082 jumping well over a million in the last 3 months. Not too shabby.

Peer-to-Peer Banking -- Will it work?

I've been following this idea for a while now, but I don't think I've blogged about it here. The idea is that you can get a group of people together on a website and let them borrow and lend money to each other. Sort of an online bank where anybody can be a banker. Or maybe more accurately like a kind of virtual credit union.

The idea's not particularly revolutionary. That's the way credit unions have worked for years. Members put their money together, and then use it to provide banking services. I guess the difference here is that 1) it's online; 2) members have a more direct role in deciding how their money will be used.

Two sites that are doing include Prosper (US-based) and Zopa (UK-based but expanding to the US).

Potential borrowers may be people who can't get a loan at a traditional bank, or people who'd simply prefer to try a more 'community-based' approach rather than deal with a corporate lending institution. Lenders, I suspect, are people who are interested in helping others, or who are just curious about how it all works.

P2P banking isn't the same as microlending, where people are loaned small amounts (maybe just a few hundred dollars) of money, but it's similar. The loan amounts are generally for several thousand dollars. But that can be split up between a lot of different lenders, who may be lending as little as $50. In other words, if I want to borrow $3,000 the money could come from 1 person willing to lend me the whole amount, or it could come from 60 different people all loaning me $50 each.

There's a lot of discussion about it over at SlashDot with some people sounding very interested and enthusiastic, and others pointing out the risks. Are these sorts of organisations being too optimistic and trusting? Or is it possible that 'the wisdom of crowds' can minimize the risk and not only help people who really need it, but who can pay the money back to keep the whole thing going?

Shopping Blogs: Outblush -- for girls who love to shop

Online affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. I'm not 100% positive Amazon.com started the first online affiliate program, but if not they were one of the first when they launched Amazon Associates in 1996. Since there, affiliates have found all sorts of ways to market and sell products, but one of the newer strategies involves blogging.

A good shopping blog is a great resource for the shoppers, the sellers, and the affiliates. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad shopping blogs out there. But there are also some really great ones. I think Outblush is one of the great ones. Since it markets itself as 'the online shopping magazine for women', it's clear that I am not their target audience. But while I might not be doing a lot of shopping there, I can still admire the site as a fellow affiliate marketer.

I think the site design is great! Not my style personally, but as I said, I'm not their target audience of hip young 20-something women with money (or at least credit) to burn. the style of the site, and the choice of products, fits that demographic to a tee.

I also like the fact that Outblush lists products they think their readers will be interested in, regardless of whether or not there's an affiliate link or paid placement involved. A lot of affiliate marketers won't put a link on their site if they can't make money from it, but I think placing unpaid links shows that you really care about providing valuable information to your readers, and it helps build trust.

Thanks to Angie McKaig for the link.

From Second Life to Real Life

I've blogged before about some of the crossover between the real word and virtual worlds, particularly in terms of making real money by doing work or selling things in online game worlds. Two recent events have caught my attention, and I thought I'd share.

First, Lawyer Marc Bragg is suing Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, after they cancelled his account and he lost money in a virtual real estate deal. From what I can work out, Bragg was taking advantage of a glitch in the property auction system. Virtual property that is abandoned by its owner is auctioned by Linder Labs. Bragg figured out a way to buy these properties for next to nothing, and then quickly sell them for a profit. When LL caught him, they deleted his account. So of course he decided to take them to court.

I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing, and I'm fascinated by the whole thing. How will our societies, including our legal systems, adapt to deal wtih these virtual worlds and their 'real world' consequences?

A lot of the stories that come out about virtual world/real world crossover are kinda scary. Like the Bragg lawsuit. Or some kid murdering another kid for killing his player in-game. But this one is actually a positive story.

A guy named Kermitt Quirk created a Tetris clone called Tringo that people could play in the world of Second Life. People liked it so much, he made over $4000 in real money selling them virtual copies of the game. And now it's being brought from the virtual world to the real world and released as a game for Nintendo Gameboy Advance. How cool is that?

Is a virtual Tetris clone worth shelling out $15 from Amazon? Play Tringo for free to decide for yourself.

Search Engine Sponsored Listings Could be Dangerous

I blogged about SiteAdvisor nearly six months ago (link: SiteAdvisor: Testing the Web), and I've really found it helpful. Paticularly when viewing search engine results.

And it turns out there's a reason why it's good to know if the links in search engine results are safe or not -- because a lot of them aren't safe at all! According to a recent study done by SiteAdvisor, about 3% of organic result links lead to a page that may have some nasties (spyware, spam, scams, etc.) on it. That shoots up to 8.5% of sponsored links. And for search terms like 'free screensaver', 'kazaa', 'free games' and others, over 70% of the sponsored links are considered unsafe.

And it's happening at all the major search engines, with Ask.com having the most unsafe links (6.1%), followed by AOL (5.3%), then Google (5.3%), Yahoo (4.3%), and finally MSN (3.9%). If this worries you, and you use IE or Firefox, and you regularly search at Google, Yahoo or MSN, you might want to check out SiteAdvisor. Download and install the plug-in, and you'll start seeing little graphics next to your search results, indicating whether the site is safe or not.

Paypal Problems for PolarPTR

One of my favorite PTR programs has been struck a massive blow. PolarPTR's Paypal account has been frozen, which means they can no long accept payments for ads or make payments to members using Paypal. That bites!

As best anybody can tell (Paypal isn't always clear about these things), the reason their account was frozen was because they were using a multi-level referral system. Paypal considers this a form of Multi-level Marketing, which is a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy. PolarPTR previously offered 5 referral levels (meaning you could earn money not only by referring new members, but also people who those members referred, and who those members referred, on down through 5 levels). Now they've changed it to a single level, but it may already be too late.

Paypal isn't particularly consistent in the way they enforce their rules, but one thing that's become clear over the last few years is that they aren't particularly interested in doing business with PTR programs. To some extent, I guess I don't blame them. But for many PTR members, particularly those based in the US, if a program doesn't pay through Paypal, it isn't worth joining. There are other payment systems available, but they often have high fees for getting money out of their system and into a bank account, which means PTR members end up reading a lot of ads (like maybe 1000!!!) just to cover the fees.

I hope the owners of PolarPTR are able to work things out with Paypal. But I'm not holding my breath. Paypal is often uncooperative, and in any case, it may well be that that Polar was violating Paypal's AUP.

Power Searching with Yahoo Mindset and MSN Results Ranking

Just in case I'm not the last to know about this, I thought I'd share. Apparently about a year ago Yahoo started testing a new feature for their search engine called Mindset. It's a slider that lets you customize your results depending on whether you want results geared more towards shopping or towards research. Slide it to the left and the search results are skewed towards shopping sites, slide it to the right and you get sites that provide more info. I've tried it with about a half dozen searches, and so far I have to say I'm impressed.

Doing a little more research I've discoved MSN Search also uses advanced slider technology to customize your search results. Of course being Microsoft, they weren't satisfied with just one meazly slider. They use three. The first slider is for freshness, so you can choose sites that have been updated recently or are more static. The second slider is for popularity, although I have no idea how they measure it. And the third slider is for relevancy, so you can choose whether the results are exact matches for your terms or just in the ballpark. To find the sliders, look under the text box and click on 'search builder' then 'results ranking' in the box that appears.

If you're usually happy with the results you get from your favorite search engine, then you probably don't need to worry about sliders or other advanced search features. But if you're a power-searcher, or you're not getting the results you're looking for, you might want to give these a try.

Quick Links -- Rapleaf IndieKarma SecretPrices

Three sites that I want to blog about in more detail later, but I'm also going to blog about them now so I don't forget.

SecretPrices.com -- a new comparison shopping site that integrates deals and coupons into the results. I'm a big fan of comparison shopping sites, and if this one can get more useful information in front of my eyeballs and help me find better bargains, I'm all for it.

IndieKarma -- a micropayments system for blogs. When you sign up, they give you $1. You can add more money to your account with Paypal. Every time you visit a blog that's part of the IndieKarma network, you automatically pay 1 cent out of your account. Bloggers can join the IndieKarma network, add a bit of code to their blog, and start getting paid to blog. I've joined as a user, but haven't added a blog to the network yet.

Rapleaf -- a portable reputation system. It works a lot like the eBay feedback system, but isn't limited to a single website. It helps establish trust between potential buyers and sellers, and provides both with an incentive to be honest.

Using a Proxy to Acess USA-only Content

After blogging about USA-only web content (link: Not-So-World-Wide Web) Kevin H. sent me a link to an entry at gHacks called How To Watch ABC TV Streams Outside the USA.

The 'hack' involves finding and using an anonymous proxy to convince ABC's servers that you're in the US. I haven't tried it yet, but reading the comments at gHacks, it sounds like it works...for some people, sometimes. Those open proxies aren't terribly reliable, and the ones that are used a lot tend to get blocked.

I don't know if it's worth it just to get access to free streams of TV episodes, but the thing is, there seem to be more ecommerce sites that block non-US IP addresses. Which means that I can't shop there. Even though I have a US credit card, a US shipping address, etc. Here I am ready to give them my money, and they don't want it. That doesn't seem very smart. I can understand (kinda) that not every online store wants to ship overseas. Fine. Their choice. But to completely block non-US-based shoppers from the site? Come on, people!

Sometimes I'm happy to buy something, have it shipped to a US address and then forwarded to me in Australia. Sometimes I want to buy a gift for somebody in the US. And I know I'm not the only one. Please take our money and let us shop, dammit!

Emily Robbins' Huge List of Free WordPress Themes

Even though I use Blogger for the FreeCashSpace Blog, most of my other blogs use WordPress. So I'm always on the lookout for good WordPress Themes. Well, as of today I no longer have to spend hours searching for them, because Emily Robbins has done that part for me. Now all I have to do is pop over to How to Blog and start looking through her Comprehensive List of Free Wordpress 1.5 and 2.0 Themes. When she first published the list, it included 615 themes. Soon it grew to over 700, and right now she's got over 800 in her list. How long will it take to crack 1000?

If you're looking for a new Wordpress theme, I can't think of a better place to start.

Now if only somebody would make a similar list of Blogger templates!

Zunafish - Trade Your Stuff for Somebody Else's Stuff

I just came across another cool site that offers a great service that is unfortunately only available for US residents. At least this time it pretty much makes sense, since Zunafish is all about trading real stuff -- DVDs, CDs, books, video games, etc. I suppose if it takes off, it might migrate to other countries, but I suppose it makes sense to trade things with people who are close to you.

So how does Zunafish work? Simple, you sign up, list some of the stuff you want to get rid of, and other people who want what you've got offer to make a trade. You have to swap like items -- a book for a book, a DVD for a DVD, etc. And the only money involved is the postage and a $1 fee to Zunafish.

How easy is that?

Living Well in the U.S.A.

Forbes.com has an article about how much money you need to 'live well' in various US cities (link: What It Costs to Live Well in the US). No surprise that New York City, Boston, and L.A. are rated the most expensive, but where in the U.S. can a family live an upper middle class lifestyle on an income of less than $200,000 a year? Try Wichita, Kansas, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or Des Moines, Iowa.

Keep in mind that by 'living well' they mean making enough money to comfortably afford "a four-bedroom house in an upscale neighborhood; a vacation home in an upscale resort area; a BMW 325i sedan and a Lexus RX 330; eating out at a pricey restaurant once a week; taking three luxury trips a year; and sending one child to a local private school and one to private college."

If that sounds like the kind of lifestyle you could go for, then you might want to consider a move to one of the cities on Forbes' 'Least Expensive' list. Oh, and don't forget to figure out how you're going to pull down the $200,000 a year you'll need to make it all happen.

HYIPs and other Ponzi Scams

It looks like thr growth of online Ponzi schemes is getting a bit more interest amongst more 'mainstream' netizens, if this discussion about HYIPs at MetaFilter is anything to go by. I was a bit worried when I first started reading the comments, but was relieved to see that most people see these things for the scams that they are. Which kinda makes it even more depressing that, for whatever reasons, people in the "Get Paid" industry either don't see them as scams, or don't care as long as they're one of the lucky ones making money.

Also, one of the commenters included a link to an article in Wired way back in Sept. 2000 discussing online pyramid scams. It's called Money for Nothing and it discusses an old scam called StockGeneration, and it's a helluva story, believe me! If you paid much attention to the more recent 12DailyPro debacle, then you may be surprised how many similarities it had with the shut-down of StockGeneration. Right down to the die-hard supporters crying about Nazi-style abuse from the government for daring to interfere with the scam and 'persecuting' those who ran it. I guess some things never change.

Get Paid Playing Online Games

A few months ago I blogged about how people make money from mining gold and other activities in various online games (The Hard Life of a Virtual Gold Farmer), and now I'm posting again after reading an article about taking it to the next level.

BBC News has an article called Cash Card Taps Virtual Game Funds that's about an ATM card that let's them access their virtual cash from a game called Project Entropia.

As I said in my earlier blog post, I don't play these online games, but the description of the virtual economy in this game sounds more developed than anything I've heard about before. Not only are people making money by buying and selling virtual real estate (one guy bought an island for over $25,000 and another bought a space station for $100,000 -- and I'm talking about real US dollars!), but they're also collecting taxes from other players who want access that virtual real estate for their own money-making enterprises.

For example, one way to make money is by hunting animals for their pelts. Then the hunter sells the furs to another player who uses them to make clothes, which are then sold to other players. But as I understand it, the hunter may have to pay the land-owner a fee (or tax) to hunt on their land. To make things even more interesting, game objects don't last forever. Clothes, tools, and weapons wear out or get broken and need repair. So that provides yet another opportunity for other players, and the game company, to make money.

And now with this ATM card, players can not only top up their online accounts when they need to, they can withdraw their PEDs (Project Entropia Dollars) in real money. So a hard-working an resourceful gamer could make money in the game and then use it to buy things out here in the real world. And I think that's totally freakin' cool!

Remembering Online Business Failures

The Wall Street Journal Online had a great article the other day called "The Best of the Worst" remembering some spectacular failures from back during the dot-come bubble. I remember several of the sites mentioned, and it reminded me that bad ideas for online businesses have been around for a long time, and often involved some very smart people and very large sums of money.

CyberRebate was clearly a bad idea. Their whole business plan consisted of selling stuff at ridiculously high prices, then giving people their money back if they jumped through all the hoops required to get the rebate. The company planned to make money thanks to the poor suckers who didn't jump through all the hoops correctly. Hard to believe it didn't work out for them.

I was briefly a member of Flooz, which was meant to become the online currency we all had to have. Except of course it turns out we didn't. Beenz was a similar service around at this time, which also didn't make it. A big part of their failure (apart from not really having a product that anybody actually needed) involved freeloaders and cheaters. To anybody involved in PTR reward programs, I'm sure these problems sound familiar.

Another dot bomb not mentioned in the WSJO article was FreeProductSamples.com -- one of those sites that offers freebies from various companies. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but at the time they launched they'd identified 21 competitors doing exactly the same thing. This didn't stop them from predicting they'd be earning $100 million in revenue within 5 years. Yeah, right!

There are heaps of other examples, and the amazing thing is, some of these 'businesses' were handed millions, and in some cases tens of millions of dollars, and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it. And it's still happening, although on a much smaller scale. We still see sites (in PTR, affiliate marketing, etc.) that are getting all sorts of hype, but that don't really have much substance when you take a good look at them. Of course that doesn't mean there's no money to be made, but there's no value being created.

Not-so-World-Wide Web

I wanted to write about Napster's new free music service. Not the old free music service that got them in a lot of trouble, since they were helping folks, you know, steal the music (by sharing it -- sharing = theft. HUH?). This is a new service that lets you listen to as many songs as you want, all for free. As you might suspect, they're only available as a web-stream, so you can't save them to your hard drive or put them on your MP3 player, and apparently you can't listen to any single song more than 5 times.

Of course I wanted to try out the new serive before I wrote about it, but it turns out that I can't. Because it's only available to people in the US. The same thing happened when I heard that several US television networks (ABC Full Episode Streaming, CBS Ondemand) were offering free episodes you could watch online. USA-only. And the same with some of the stuff for sale at Google Video. USA-only. Hey, I thought this was the WORLD WIDE web? So what's the deal???

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there are some reasonably logical reasons for it that the lawyers and the beancounters understand. International publishing and licensing deals and all that. But as a web-user, I just don't give a damn. If they're going to offer these services and put all this stuff on the web, then it ought to be there for everybody.

Are Splogs Crippling Google?

Just found a link at SlashDot for a Register article called "Full-up Google Choking on Web Spam?" that's an interesting read. Basically, it's about how the major search engines like Google and Yahoo are getting filled up with junk sites. One estimate is that at least 1/3 of webpages indexed by Google are nothing more than bogus crap like splogs or other auto-generated pages filled with a bunch of spam and other useless crap.

And is it any wonder, when people are selling software that will create up to 100 Blogger blogs on your own domain in less than half an hour? Yes, such software exists, and after you create your blog network, you can fill up those blogs with free articles, throw in some AdSense or affiliate ads, and off you go! The only problem of course, if you worry about such things, is that you're not creating anything of value. In fact, you're actually destroying the value of any search engine that includes your site in their index, and the value of the web in general.

The creator of this blog-generating software says his software isn't the problem as long as people use it responsibly. The same goes for the free articles -- some of them are quite good and can provide you with free content, the authors with a bit of exposure, and your readers with valuable information. Everybody's happy. But just like with so many other things, it's easy to abuse these things in the pursuit of "easy money."

Payments for April 2006

I'll be the first to admit I didn't put a lot of effort into my online earning ventures this month. I did a few paid surveys, a very small number of paid emails, and because my wife was sick, we had no new inventory in our eBay store. I don't think I requested a single payment this month, so the only money that came in was from eBay sales.

eBay $56.60
Total $56.60

Yearly Total $329.89

That's over 50 bucks profit on nearly $200 in sales, so we're happy enough with that, all things considered. We've bought some advertising on several of the major Australian craftwork forums, and since one of those forums is run by a company that publishes a lot of craft magazines here, we're planning to run some print ads soon.

As for PTR, I'm still involved, but only barely. I'm a member of only a few programs, and the earnings from those would be lucky to hit $1 a month. I keep saying if I'm going to continue my involvement, I need to join some new programs, but to be totally honest, I just can't be bothered. A single paid survey or an eBay sale brings in more cash.