Gee, Are You Ready to Buy? With GBuy?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google's about to test-launch it's new payment system, GBuy. When an Adwords ad shows up for a product offered by one of the merchants participating in the test, there'll be an extra GBuy icon to let everybody know that they can click that ad and buy the product using GBuy, with no hassles. The buyer gets a quick and easy purchase, the seller makes a sale, and Google gets 30 cents plus a 2.2% commission. Everybody's happy. Except for Paypal.

Maybe. If it goes according to Google's plan. But there are certainly no guarantees that it will.

Once it's launched and available to all us regular folk, I'll be interested in taking a look at it as a seller, as a buyer, as an Adwords advertiser and an Adsense publisher.

Sniping on eBay Works -- Here Comes the Science

As a person who's trying to make money as an eBay seller, this probably isn't the smartest thing to do. But hey, I'm also a guy who likes to score great bargains on eBay, and who likes to share info with all my readers (both of you!), so I couldn't resist passing this on.

Apparently, some really smart South Korean rocket scientists (OK, they were actually physicists, but they could probably be rocket scientists if they wanted to!) worked out the mathematical formula for eBay bargain-scoring success:

nk(t+1) — nk(t) = w(k-1)(t)*n(k-1)(t) — wk(t)*nk(t) + sigma(k,1)*u(t)

Got that? Good!

What's it mean? How the hell would I know? I'm no rocket scientist!

Actually, what it means is that after they crunched the numbers for over a half a million auctions, they discovered that "the winning strategy is to bid at the last moment as the first attempt rather than incremental bidding from the start." In other words, one bid at the last possible opportunity right before the auction closes. A good old-fashioned snipe! Pick your price, hold your nerve and then WHAM! Make your bid (or use software that'll do it for you) right before the hammer falls and then hope you scored the deal.

Good luck bargain-hunters!

Making Money With Google Video

Up until now, anybody that made a video and uploaded it to Google Video had two choices -- either sell it or give it away. Now Google's introducing a third option -- advertiser-subsidized videos. In other words, instead of paying for the video, a person can watch it for free, along with a 15- or 30-second ad at the end. Obviously Google gets a cut of the ad revenue, but so does the video producer. They're trialing the system now, but once they get everything worked out, Google plans to do it the same way they have with other forms of advertising -- by letting advertisers bid for the opportunity to get their ad connected with a particular video.

Will this mean there are opportunities for those among us who aren't likely to be the next Tarantino, Wachowski or even these two Chinese guys? Maybe. It's worth thinking about anyway. It's definitely got a few gears turning in the back of my brain.

Neo-Patronage -- Another Sky Press

Another Sky Press
says it wants people to read the books they publish, even if that means giving them away for free. So their plan is to put them online, so you can read them for nothing, or if you like the book, you can buy a paper copy for as little as $5.90. Or, if you really like the book, you can choose to pay more. How much more is entirely up to you. The $5.90 price ($6.39 if you pay with Paypal) covers the cost of the book, and anything extra you choose to pay (they call it a contribution or neo-patronage) goes to the author.

Their first book, Click, by Kristopher Young, is available now.

Paypal Strikes Again. And again. And again...

It looks like Paypal is on the warpath against PTR programs again. Quite a few Program Owners have had their accounts frozen, and while some have managed to convince Paypal to un-freeze them, others haven't had any luck.

As usual, Paypal is fairly vague about why they're doing it, but based on a number of discussions in various forums, it seems that the biggest complaint Paypal has is that a lot of PTRs are advertising things that Paypal doesn't allow -- like pyramid scams, gambling sites, etc.

As you can imagine, a lot of PTR owners are pretty pissed off about it all, but I don't think there's much they can do about it. Paypal doesn't want to do business with shady people, and a lot of PTR owners are into some pretty shady things.

And Paypal isn't the only online payment system that's turning its nose up at PTR customers. Earlier this year, Moneybookers decided they didn't want anything to do with any sort of incentive programs. Which is a shame really, but I can see why they've decided it's just not worth the hassle.

So far, the three "solutions" to the Paypal situation seem to be (1) cry and moan about it a lot and end up paying members late or not paying them at all; (2) use other online payment systems, which unfortunately often have high fees associated with them, either to receive a payment or to transfer money to the member's bank account; or (3) keep getting new Paypal accounts all the time, trying to make as many payments as possible before they catch you, then moving to the next account when they do.

In other words, none of the "solutions" are particularly good in the long-term, especially if it means PTR members spend hours reading ads just to cover the cost of fees that are charged for them to actually get paid.

Payments for May 2006

Again the earnings from PTR were fairly minimal. This month it wasn't as much from a lack of activity, as it was from a lack of earning potential. I've never had big downlines in any of the programs I'm a member of, but even the small number of referrals I've had has really dropped off. It seems people are quitting programs in droves. At least they're quitting the programs I'm a member of.

My hope is that they're quitting because they've moved on to better earning opportunities beyond PTR. My fear is that they've moved to things like ponzi autosurfs, and PTRs that are nothing more than click fraud schemes.

Just looking at the numbers below, it won't be hard to guess where the majority of my online time and energy is going. I earned $6 from various PTR programs, and nearly $150 from eBay. There's no competition, really. For now, eBay is my main focus, although I'm also working on my affiliate stuff as well.

Neonlights-Advertising $0.48
KeroseneCucumber $1.30
HeavenlyEmail $3.40
ItPaysToLearn $1.04
eBay $145.71

Total $151.93
Yearly Total $481.82

Adsense API for Revenue Sharing?

Rumour has it (here, here and here) that Google's about to release a new API that will let sites split their Adsense earnings as a sort of revenue-sharing system. This would mean that people who contribute to sites like YouTube, MySpace, RateItAll, etc. could earn a share of the Adsense money coming into the site.

Good idea?

Maybe. I'm sure that while a lot of contributors to those sites submit their content for things besides money, they wouldn't necessarily knock back a bit of cash if it were offered. On the other hand, it might result in the 'plague of locusts' effect that happens whenever the online leeches get wind of a chance for 'easy money.'