Buy Julian Dibbell's Book 'Play Money' With Linden Dollars

I've occasionally blogged about making money doing things like creating objects in Second Life or mining gold in games like Everquest, but Julian Dibbell has written an entire book about his experiences doing it. The book is called Play Money and it's available through Amazon.com.

I would've probably blogged about the book anyway, but the part that really got me excited is that Julian is also selling a virtual edition of his book in Second Life. That's right. A virtual edition of the book (not the same as an e-book, this is only readable in-game) that you pay for with virtual money (Linden dollars) to read in a virtual world. That's cool.

More info at New World Notes.

Get Paid to be a Gaming Coach

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Want to Get Good At Videogames? Hire a Kid Online, pro gamers and other highly-skilled fragmasters are now making money coaching other players. At sites like Gaming-Lessons.com and the E-Sports Entertainment Association they're offering their services for anywhere from $15 to $65 an hour. I can see where this kind of thing could really take off as the gaming industry continues to grow.

ShareAdSpace Loses Database

This message was recently posted by Rod Baker, the owner of ShareAdSpace, at several forums:

It comes with heavy heart to make this announcement but after 5 days of battling my hosting account (ev1servers.net), I have to sadly say that the backup drive lost all data.
Julie and I tried in vain for the service technicians to setup the server properly again after the outage but what we felt was an adequate backup system, prove to be our achille’s heal.

The server had 2 large hard drives. One drive operated the sites. The other drive served only one purpose: accepting the backup files from the cron job that ran twice per day. We had to do this setup instead of the original “email me the db backup file” because the backup size had grown too large for the email server to send it.

Besides, the direct hard drive to hard drive data transfer was ultra fast and require little processor power and zero bandwidth for the transfer.

Now, how did the backup drive lose IT’S data?

Here is the final comment from the service technician:

7/24/2006 10:33:09 PM
DataCenter
Dear Rodney Baker,

After further investigation, we have found that the original raid array may have been mishandled by technicians and reformatted. We have two drives from the original set but they do not seem to have data on them. We apologize deeply for the error and would like to know what what we can do to compensate for this mistake.

Rodney M.
EV1servers
Webhosting Support Services

What that means is, after they removed the bad drive (the one that ran the site) and replaced it with a brand new drive, the service tech reformatted BOTH drives after install. Why? I have no idea. Suffice it to say, all data, member info, earnings, forum posts, approved sites list...EVERYTHING…was wiped clean without my consent.

So, now, the question is, how do I/we move forward from here? (If I should even move forward at all in this industry). I have always prided myself on not being another statistic in this industry but here I am, explaining just that to all of you.

After long discussions with a few trusted friends, some things CAN’T happen:

1. Take everyone’s word for it as to what was owed. Although SAS had about 6,200 members at the time of the crash, I fear we will have 15,000 people claiming they were owed $50 or $100 each.

2. Reconstruct the site with what little info we have from each person that sends in their info. Again, although this would benefit THAT member, what about the thousands of others that never bothered to take a screen shot or keep close tabs on their referrals, etc.

Some options I am debating on is IF I restart SAS, offering double earnings for a certain period of time, elite memberships for everyone for 3 months or … some other form of payback yet to be determined.

I do know one thing though, if SAS comes back, since it will be an entirely new membership, some major changes will take place before the relaunch. These are things I have been debating on for quite some time because the PTP industry is just getting too saturated and beat down and I am having a hard time living with the fact that I am perpetuating some of the virus/Trojan problems that are occurring. Therefore, SAS would be minimize back to a traffic exchange (no ptp pages) but improve the traffic exchange and present some entertainment (games) within the surfer,

Of course, the main issue of this post is to inform everyone of the bad news: the data loss. If I/we rise out of this disaster, we can then think of the future.

I am deeply sorry for this mess and am here to take the lumps from all posters (I should have known better, etc). I felt it was important that I came here personally to deliver this news and I must ask everyone to NOT fault any of my assistants with this mess. They knew no more about any of this than you did.

With deep regrets,
Rod

PTR Cheat Software

I suspect cheat scripts or programs for ripping off online earning programs were first created about 5 minutes after the launch of the first "Get Paid" site. But it's not often you see one being openly advertised. Which is why I was so surprised to see an ad for GPTCB (the CB stands for Cheat Bot).

It claims to decode Turing numbers, detect and avoid cheat links, and works with 75 different GPT scripts. I can't imagine these things work very well, and with earnings for PTRs so low I can't believe it's worth spending $25 on cheat software, but I have no doubt there are fools out there who are happy to hand over the money.

http://666.amidal.com/gptcbv.htm

Cheap Hosting at NTK Hosting

I'm always on the lookout for cheap, reliable hosting and I just came across NTK Hosting. I don't know anything about them, other than they offer a package for small, low-traffic sites (like this one) for $5.88 per year.

For that price, you get 50MB of space, 1Gb traffic per month, 5 subdomains, 5 email accounts, Cpanel, 1 MySQL database, 1 PostgreSQL database, PHP, CGI, Perl, SSI, Flash and Shockwave support and more.

In addition, they offer discounts on domain names ($6.95 for a .com, .net, .biz, .name, .us or $2.95 for a .org or .info) with the purchase of any hosting plan.

They've also got another value package for $11.88/year that offers 100Mb storage, 2Gb transfer, 10 subdomains, etc.

I might give them a try the next time I need a bit of cheap hosting.

Got Paid for eJury Duty

Sweet! Last week I finally got picked for eJury duty! It was fun, took about 15 minutes to read the details of the case and then answer a series of questions. And yesterday eJury sent $5 to my Paypal account. Gotta be happy with that!

RewardsDB.com Helps Shoppers Find Rewards

Back in February I blogged about evreward, the site that helps you find the best reward program when you're shopping online. Now I've found another site, RewardsDB. RewardsDB works a lot like evreward, but includes ways to earn rewards (cash rebates, airline miles, merchandise, etc.)while shopping offline. The rewards for offline shopping are for U.S. shoppers, but the online shopping rewards programs include programs in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Europe, and South Africa.

With online/offline reward programs like UPromise and Greenpoints, not to mention all the credit cards offering rewards and various other loyalty cards, it's possible U.S.-based shoppers could be earning rewards for nearly every purchase they make!

Clickfraud in PTR Getting Worse

Terry at The Affiliate Marketing Blog has written an absolutely brilliant post exposing the rampant PPC clickfraud that's going on in PTR.

Found: Click Fraud Paid Clickers - Chat With Them If You’d Like

PPC clickfraud within the paid-to-read "industry" is a problem that just keeps getting worse. The truth is, 95% of "paid to read" should be renamed "paid to search." Even in the programs where owners don't demand, beg, or otherwise try to convince members that it's their job to sit there doing search after search, most members know what's required if they want to keep the gravy train rolling along. Advertisers who pay more for an ad than they earn from the searches don't come back and buy more ads.

But too many members wanted a 'free ride' -- they clicked the paid link, they visited the advertiser's website until the timer expired, but they didn't search!!! *gasp* Why not??? Maybe because a lot of people just don't need to do hundreds of searches a day. Every day. Or maybe because so many of these bottom-of-the-food-chain "search engines" aren't worth using. With a lot of them, it seems like no matter what you search for, the result is a ton of links offering to sell you Viagra!

Of course that was a problem for the search engine affiliates, and for the PTR owners, so 'solutions' were found. Like using tracking scripts to see which members are actually making 'valid searches', and either deleting members that weren't meeting their quota, or simply drastically cutting down the number of emails they receive ("good searchers" might get 100 emails, giving them the chance to earn $60 a month, while the "bad searchers" might get 2 emails a week, giving them the chance to earn $0.16 a month).

Some decided the best way to get plenty of 'valid searches' was to automate the process. So they use scripts hidden in invisible i-frames that automatically run dozens, and in some cases over a hundred searches every time somebody clicks a link and waits for the page to load (if the strain doesn't freeze or crash their browser).

In some cases, the PTR members honestly don't understand what the problem is. After all, they're nice people. They're just trying to earn a little extra money. They don't mean to hurt anybody. And anyway, if it was wrong, the government would put a stop to it, wouldn't they? Others just don't care. They want the money and they really don't care where it comes from. As one forum member put it:

Poor Yahoo and Google. Google stock is only selling for $400 a share. Isn’t that just a crying shame

As I said in my comment at SuperAff, everybody who uses PPC advertising needs to be aware that this stuff is going on, and try to make sure they aren't paying for useless clicks made by these people. My wife and I have a little Adwords campaign going right now, and I check the traffic logs every day and exclude any undesirable domains, especially any of these parked domains, from our campaign. Easy enough with one campaign for one site, but I'd hate to think of the nightmare involved in trying to keep the 'plague of locusts' away if I had to watch dozens or hundreds of campaigns and sites.

Bournemouth Breeze Boycotted!

I was very happy to read yesterday that Bournemouth Breeze has been officially boycotted by GPTBoycott.com

I know that getting added to the Boycott List doesn't really have much of an impact on a program, but it's better than nothing. There are some PTR owners who refuse ads for programs on the list, and there are still people who won't join or advertise a program on the list, so that's A Good Thing.

Also, this is the first time a program has been added to the Boycott List based on the past actions of the owner in relation to other PTR programs. In other words, the problems are with the owners, not necessarily with the way they ran Bournemouth Breeze. I think this could be a real step forward for GPTBoycott, particularly if they can speed up the boycott process. Of course none of it means much unless people participate in the boycotts.

No Google Checkout at eBay

With Paypal and the fairness of it's policies the talk of the PTR world lately, I thought it was interesting that eBay, Paypal's parent company, has changed its rules yet again. But not to make the lives of PTR owners, advertisers and members even more miserable. Not this time. This time they're trying to stick it to Google.

eBay has banned Google Checkout as a valid form of payment. It says so right there in their Accepted Payments Policy. So Google Checkout joins the illustrious group of banned payment systems, including AlertPay, e-Gold, GreenZap, Stormpay and many others.

eBay's story is that they don't allow a new payment system to become an option for eBay members until it's proven itself with a good track-record. The thing is, Google Checkout isn't really a payment system. It's just a credit card gateway and a sort of payment aggregator that lets you do quick and easy purchases from anybody who has Google Checkout as an option, and that lets you keep track of all your purchases in one place.

Clearly eBay is trying to protect Paypal from as much competition as possible and I suppose when you think about it, who can blame them? Still, I'm sure if eBay users really want to use Google Checkout, they can raise enough hell about it to get eBay to change their mind. I don't know that it'll happen, but as both an eBay buyer and seller, and as both an Adsense publisher and Adwords advertiser, I sure hope it does. Having Google Checkout as another payment option for eBay transactions would be good for both buyers and sellers.

I wonder if this means Google will strike back at eBay by putting a stop to eBay's absolutely ridiculous Adwords ads. You know the ones where no matter what you type in as a search term at Google, there's always an eBay ad for that particular word -- for example, "Great deals on everything Acrylic themed at eBay.com."

Doubtful.

PayPerPost.com is NOT Evil

The blogosphere continues to go nuts about the launch of PayPerPost.com, a new site that makes it easy for advertisers to pay bloggers to blog about their products. There are a lot of bloggers ranting that the very notion is evil, that it'll destroy any credibility bloggers have managed to gain over the last few years, and on and on. And on.

Roland Piquepaille can't decide if PayPerPost is evil or just stupid. He doesn't like the fact that PayPerPost doesn't require bloggers to include any sort of disclaimer or anything. He thinks blogging for money will destroy the blogger's credibility, and although he hasn't signed up so that he can see how much the advertisers are offering, he's pretty sure it won't be enough to interest him.

I can understand where Roland is coming from. If I were an A-list blogger (or even a B-, C-, or D-list blogger) I doubt I'd pay any attention to PayPerPost, except maybe to roll my eyes a bit, turn up my nose and try to do one of those superior snickers that would let them know that they could never dream of being in my league. But I'm not an A-list blogger, ten bucks is ten bucks, so I'm in. If I somehow manage to destroy the credibility of every blogger who's ever blogged, I apologize.

Scoble says he'll never use PayPerPost, but if he ever does, he'll disclose. Fair enough. I will use/have used/am using PayPerPost, and I will/have/am disclosing. In fact, I'll disclose right now. I'm going to submit this to PayPerPost, and they're going to pay me $10. I'm not going to do what Scoble suggests and put "PAID ADVERTISEMENT" at the top of the post because I don't feel like that's what this is. This is the same blog post I'd write about PayPerPost whether they paid me for it or not. Believe me or don't, it's up to you.

I agree with what Scoble says about disclosure. It is important. But I put that responsibility on the blogger, not on PayPerPost. Throughout his blog post, Robert talks about how companies give him products because he's an A-lister. They're hoping he'll love the product and blog about how great it is and how much he loves it. But the whole thing makes him feel uncomfortable, so now he's started giving the products away. Not a bad way to do things. Get the free stuff, play with it for a while, give it away and then blog about it (with full disclosure) with a free conscience. If that works for Scoble, that's cool. Personally I don't see how giving it away makes that much difference. If he's going to be seduced by the freebies, there's no reason why that can't happen while he's playing with the stuff, and it's not like it all gets cancelled out when he gives it away. But again, if it works for him, then it's cool.

Amit Varna at India Uncut says writing for PayPerPost without disclosure is deception. I agree. He says "your content has been paid for, the quality of it will invariably suffer, and it won't be as good as that of someone who writes with honesty and integrity and passion and so on." I don't agree with that. For one thing, the content isn't being paid for. The advertiser is paying the blogger to write about their product, but they're not supplying or dictating the content.

I'm looking at the PayPerPost website right now and there are 16 "opportunities" available. Of those, 2 are asking for positive, "blatant advertising-type" posts. The others have no requirement for the "tone" of the post. The blogger can write whatever they want -- good or bad -- about the product, and they still get paid. Some advertisers specify that the blogger has to use a particular word or phrase, but otherwise the requirements generally consist of a minimum word count.

Mark Evans says that "PayPerPost isn't evil, unethical or positive" but that it's "just a business launched by an entrepreneur who sees an opportunity to make some money." His only issue with PPP is that they don't require bloggers to include a disclosure. I can understand why people think it would be better if they did. But how are they going to enforce it?

John Walkenbach thinks PayPerPost is "another scumbag company trying to capitalize off of blogs" and that it's "a sleazy way for a blogger to make money." But in the end he decided to see for himself, so he signed up and wrote a post about PayPerPost, which he'll be paid for. Each opportunity also has a time requirement -- you can't just blog about something, get paid, and then delete the post. The ones I've seen require that the post stays up for at least 30 days. Then they'll transfer the money to your Paypal account. He's not confident that he'll get the money. I hope he's wrong.

Terry (disclosure: Terry is one of my online buddies) at The Affiliate Marketing Blog sees PayPerPost in a much more positive light. She thinks it could be another way for bloggers to make money blogging, no different from having affiliate links, Adsense banners, sidebar advertising or any other way that bloggers try to get make money with their blog. I couldn't agree more if she paid me! No, dammit, Terry's not paying me, but PayPerPost is! You got a problem with that?

OK, that's enough about what everybody else is saying about this whole thing. Here's the way I see it after joining and actually learning enough to see how the whole thing works.

There are currently 16 available paid blogging opportunities listed right now. Plus I've done the one about advertising on public transportation that's no longer available. And I'm doing this one about PayPerPost. The one about ads on buses was a bit of a test, but it was something that I felt I could write about reasonably well and that fit in with the content and concept of this blog. Same with this post about PPP. Ever since I started FCS, I've blogged about things like advertising, blogging, and making money online. PayPerPost is about all those things, so of course I was going to blog about it! Did anything change because they're paying me $10 for posting? I don't think so.

There are other "opportunities" to get paid for blogging about some kind of loan comparison site, about a company that sells colored bubble wrap, amd about a website that break up with somebody with a customized song. I'm not going to be blogging about any of those things, no matter how much money they offer. It wouldn't be hard to do. The break up song people are only asking for a minimum of 40 words, and they're paying $5. Ain't gonna happen.

My gut feeling is that PayPerPost probably isn't going to last very long. I hope I'm wrong. But my guess is that advertisers are going to find that a 40-word blog entry about their website isn't worth $5 on most blogs (mine included). But I'm more than willing to give them a chance and see what happens. One thing I'm sure of is that they won't destroy the blogosphere as more than a few have predicted.


http://www.payperpost.com

Disclaimer: I would've written this post whether I was paid or not, but as it turns out, PayPerPost will pay me $10 for letting them know that I wrote it, and for including their link and image. I'll admit that while I would've linked to the site anyway, I probably wouldn't have included the image if they weren't paying me to do so. If you think this means I've sold my soul, I totally understand. Thanks for caring. Really.

Forget the da Vinci Code, Learn About Culture Codes

Culture Codes. This is the kind of stuff about advertising and marketing that fascinates me and scares the hell out of me at the same time. The way they study us deep down, past all the purchasing data and survey responses and focus groups. Figuring out how we feel, why we do things, how our beliefs are formed and how they change...and then they use it to sell us stuff.

To sell more Jeeps in America, where the Code for Jeep is "horse", they create ads that reinforce this unconscious connection. But in Europe where there's no Wild West to explore and conquer, the Code for Jeep isn't "horse", it's "liberation", because Europeans associate Jeeps with World War II. So in Europe, Jeep ads are all about freedom.

This is why companies spend millions upon millions building a brand. Because if they can build it well enough and strong enough, they can get their brand so intertwined with our experiences and memories, both at a cultural and individual level, that we create connections without realising it. That doesn't mean we'll be totally loyal to that particular brand for our entire life, but it might mean that if there's ever something inside us telling us that life would be better if we just had a "horse", we'll head down to the Chrysler-Jeep dealership to get one.

You can read more about Culture Codes in Clotaire Rapaille's ChangeThis manifesto, Know the Codes: Why We Act, Buy and Love As We Do.

Get Yourself a SugarMama -- Free Talktime from Virgin Mobile

This one's only for people in the U.S., and only if they're using, or are willing to use, Virgin Mobile as their cellphone service. Virgin have launched a new (well, it's new to me anyway) service called SugarMama that lets you earn free talktime in exchange for viewing ads, doing surveys, answer questions via SMS, etc. SugarMama will reward members with up to 75 free minutes per month. Apparently they've already signed up Microsoft XBox and Pepsi as advertisers.

As one pointed out to the NY Times, it may well turn out that this sort of thing doesn't really work well for advertisers. In many cases, people who will watch ads to earn free minutes probably aren't the most likely candidates to shell out for the latest Xbox. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Get Paid to Create Stuff

With Lulu, you can make money by creating and selling your own books, calendars, CDs and DVDs. Apart from, you know, the sit down and write a book part, it's really pretty simple. After you write the book, you upload it as a PDF document, choose the format (6" x9", 8 1/2" x 11", etc.), the binding (perfect, saddle stitch, PlastiCoil, etc.), upload any artwork (cover art, illustrations, etc.), and name your price.

Then there's LuluTV, where you get paid for uploading video (like YouTube or Google Video). The only catch with LuluTV is that, if you want a share of the revenue, you have to pay to join. For $14.95 you become a shareholder. Then every month, each shareholder gets paid a percentage of the money earned by the site. How much you earn is based on how many times your video is viewed, as a percentage of the total views for all the videos on the site.

If making money from your videos sounds cool, but paying to be a shareholder doesn't interest you, there's eefoof. The offer a similar profit-sharing system, but it doesn't cost you anything to get involved. You upload your content (a video, photo, audio file, etc.) and they pay you based on your share of the traffic. Easy! Well, except maybe for the make a really cool video part.

As the PTR World Turns

Generally speaking, the biggest news in PTR at the moment seems to be that their owners are having a harder time running their programs as more companies decide they don't want to have anything to do with PTR. Moneybookers has completely banned PTR-related payments, although the last time I checked they hadn't changed the Terms & Conditions published on their site. Paypal is freezing more Program Owners' accounts. Google has banned Adsense from PTR-related sites. And apparently quite a few of the 'parked domain' companies are banning PTR traffic as well. Which is really putting a lot of POs in a bit of a jam -- especially if their members expect 50 1-cent emails a day.

As for specific programs, the latest, as far as I know, includes:

Neonlights-Advertising is for sale. The current owner, Mike Laskey, had another Paypal account frozen, and he's given up playing games with them. He's apparently made an arrangement with a friend to do one final payment, and let everybody know ahead of time so that they can delete their accounts if they don't want their membership or payment info shared with anybody. Mike also owns HaulingCash, which has been in a lot of trouble for a long time. He was supposedly using some of the profits from Neon to make payments to long-suffering HaulingCash members, but the profits in PTR are so thin I don't think it was having much of an impact. I've been waiting for payment for over a year, and there are still hundreds of other people ahead of me in the payment queue.

Class-Act-Clicks has been sold. Moving from a pair of unscrupulous owners, Tiffany "Metiff" Stanton and Brian "bkoxefwo" Oxenreider, to a new owner, Tim "mitgib" Flavin, who also seems to be just as shady as they were. I've always avoided this program like the plague, given that Brian has a bad history with another failed program called YourPTR, and Tiffany was one of April Gold's gang back when she was pulling one of the biggest scams in PTR history. I don't think this change of ownership is going to have any sort of positive effect on my opinion of the program.

Be-Paid, another fairly popular PTR with nearly 2000 members, has had it's Paypal account frozen as well. People are really freaking out about the Paypal freezes. Strangely, they seem to directing most of their anger at the person or people who are reporting all these PTRs to Paypal, if that's how these sites are coming to Paypal's attention. You might think they'd be upset with the Program Owners who put their accounts in jeopardy by breaking or seriously bending Paypal's rules. But not in PTR. In PTR, if you discover somebody doing something dishonest, unethical, or even blatently illegal, you're supposed to either forget about it and keep on clicking, or if you're some kind of holier-than-thou, goodie-two-shoes types, you're supposed to just delete yourself from the program and leave it for those who aren't so picky about things like ethics and law.

And speaking of freaking out, the owner of TheClickersClub, Darryn 'Kotafides' Wilson, really went off the deep end after his site went down, his host disappeared, and he discovered that people (including me) were saying things about him and his program that he didn't like. When I say off the deep end, I mean waaaaaay off. Ranting, cussing, throwing tantrums like a two-year-old. Making threats (including several to me), telling people they didn't deserve to live and that he hoped they died horrible, painful deaths. It really has to be seen to be believed. Again, I'm not going to give them any link-love, but searching for posts made by 'Darryn' over at the Who-is-Who forum will show you the worst of it. The dude is a psycho. The really sad part is, despite his psychotic behaviour and apparent incompetence and negligence, over 40 people have already joined (or re-joined) his program. Some people are gluttons for punishment.

That's all for now, but I'm sure there'll be more news, gossip and drama soon.

Advertising Everywhere

I've been on the bus for about 20 minutes before I notice it. I guess I don't pay much attention to the ads on the bus, but this one catches my eye. I think it was because it took me a little while to figure out exactly what it was advertising. It's a picture of a couple, probably early-to-mid 40s, in a sorta cuddly, relaxed happy pose on the couch. The woman is attractive. Big smile. Lots of teetch. But the guy...well, he has a tiger head. The text of the ad is just three words. "Welcome back Tiger." I don't know why the guy has a tiger head. I don't know what the hell it's supposed to be selling. Then I see the tiny little Pfizer logo in the bottom corner, and I realise it's an ad for Viagra. My next thought is, does their market research indicate that men who use public transportation are good candidates for erectile dysfunction???

But this post isn't about Viagra. It's about the fact that the ad was in the bus. There were also ads on the outside of the bus. Some of our city buses are custom painted, entirely covered by whatever their sponsors want. My kids recognize the buses by the ads. There's the dinosaur bus. The beer bus. The donut bus. If Pfizer shells out a little more cash, will we have the tiger bus?

And it's not just the buses. There are more ads in more places than ever before. In more places that used to be ad-free public spaces. They're still public spaces, but instead of paying for them with our tax dollars, advertisers kick in some money as well. But somehow their contribution didn't make my share any less. I'm paying more tax, not less.

I admit it. I have a love/hate relationship with advertising. On the one hand, I read books like The Manipulators by Jeffrey Robinson, and I know they're messing with my head. Studying me, building up my profile, pigeonholing me. Creating demand where none existed. Convincing me that who I am is partly determined by what I buy. I read Culture, Inc. by Herbert Schiller and I agree that "the corporate arm has reached into every corner of daily life, and from the shopping mall to the art gallery, big business influence has brought about important changes to American cultural life." I know being constantly bombarded with advertising messages isn't good for us. I liked it better when buses didn't have ads. When everything didn't have a corporate sponsor.

But at the same time, I'm absolutely fascinated by advertising. I'm not an advertising or marketing guy, but my background is in communication and social science, including psychology and sociology. Looking at it from a detached, professional point of view, some of it's just unreal.

I'm fascinated by what I call 'spending zones' -- any area like a shopping mall, totally devoted to attracting consumers in large numbers and taking their money. Whether it's an individual shop, a mall, or an entire section of a city, it reminds me of those "gravity well" coin donation things where you put the coin in and watch as it moves around and around the hyperbolic funnel, faster and faster until it finally, inevitably, drops down the hole. I see the same thing happen with shoppers, going around and around on their predestined path, drawn inevitably to the center of the retail gravity well -- the cash register. It's fascinating. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic.

Now the bus -- possibly soon to be the tiger bus -- is part of the spending zone, too.

Disclaimer: While the thoughts and opinions expressed in this post were my own, I was paid to write this post.

Not a Good Idea to Break Paypal's Rules

After reading emails and forum posts made by a number of POs who've had their Paypal accounts frozen, one of the most frustrating things about it all seems to be that Paypal often isn't particularly clear about exactly what the account-holder has done wrong. With some sites, it seems to be the multiple referral levels, for others, its something else. One thing that seems to be a problem for Paypal is if the PO sells and publishes ads for sites that break Paypal's AUP.

It's an issue of concern to Paypal because in many cases, it seems that they assume (rightly or wrongly) that these ad sales are done using their payment system. Sure, it might be possible for the PO to give Paypal evidence to show that those particular ads were paid for another way, but at the end of the day, it's not worth Paypal's time to try to work it all out. And according to their User Agreement, they don't have to do business with anybody they don't want to.

It's also possible that some POs are doing other things that break various sections of Paypal's AUP.

For example, Paypal could (I have no idea if they do) consider it a violation if a PO is late making payments. Paypal has a rule against false, inaccurate, or misleading information. They also have a rule against violating any laws, regulations or contracts. Agreeing to pay somebody within X number of days after they request, then failing to do so, could be considered a violation of both those rules.

Paypal also has a rule against any sort of association with gambling or gaming activities. It's possible that PTR sites with raffles, bubble games, heads-or-tails or other games of chance violate this rule.

Paypal also has a rule against copyright and trademark infringements, something a few POs, either deliberately or through ignorance, have been known to do.

And the final possibility that I can think of is that Paypal has a rule against having anything to do with viruses, trojans, worms, and other various assorted internet nasties. This is something that can be a problem for some PTRs, especially those that have PTP pages.

If any or all of these things could put a POs account at risk, I think it's clear to see that this represents a serious problem for a lot of PTRs. Especially if it means that not only do they have to make sure their sites don't break any of these rules, but also that they don't allow advertising (particularly on-site advertising) for any other sites that break any of these rules.

Anyway, that's my thinking on the whole Paypal thing. They're not perfect, but I like Paypal. I've been using them for a long time. And if it gets to the point that most or all of the PTRs I'm in can't pay me with Paypal, then I'll most likely quit PTR altogether. I've looked at most of the other payment systems, and either I don't trust them (a lot have come and gone over the years) or their fees make them too expensive to be worth it given the small amounts involved.

What's Happening in PTR?

For the most part, I've tried to post things that were more-or-less informative, maybe even useful, and occasionally entertaining. I've tried to present a realistic picture of PTR, as opposed to the "MAKE EASY MONEY! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW" sort of posts that fill up other PTR-related blogs and websites. In doing so, I must admit I've left out a HUGE amount of drama. For that, you really have to go to the forums.

The main PTR-related forum is GetPaidForum. Others include the GPTBoycott Forum, GPTForum, and one of the newer ones, the Who-Is-Who-In-GPT Forum. I'm not going to give any of them any link-love, but they're not hard to find if you're interested.

Even though there is some useful information posted in many of these forums, I generally don't recommend them to people who aren't familiar with PTRs. Because unfortuntaly most of these types of forums are full of unscrupulous types that will feed newbies tons of bad advice, and then follow it up with their referral links. Basically, they don't care if you get screwed, as long as they make money.

But as I said, there is some good, useful info in these forums, as well as some really nice people. You can catch up on the latest news (and gossip) in the PTR world, learn a bit, occasionally laugh your ass off and/or be shocked at some of the nonsense that goes on.

For those who don't read the forums, I think I might start trying to supply a little more of that news (and gossip) here. Keep an eye out for it.

Payments for June 2006

Nothing earth-shattering to report this month. Just steady sailing and fairly typical earnings.

DestinysDollars $3.99
PolarPTR $1.80
ShareAdSpace $10.13
Neonlights-Advertising $2.11
eBay $119.62

Total $137.65
Yearly Total $619.47


The payment from DestinysDollars has taken ages to earn. Everything was pretty good up until the start of the year, and then it's taken me nearly 6 months to earn the last dollar (yes one measly dollar!) I needed to get paid.

The payment from PolarPTR was actually two payments this month. That's because I've been earning by promoting their PTP (paid to promote) page at MillionHitsLotto, as well as reading emails.

I had to wait for the payment from ShareAdSpace for well over a month, but it eventually arrive, with interest, so I've got no complaints. Most of it was money I 'earned' by putting my SAS credits in the bank and letting them earn interest, back before that 'feature' was removed, so it is, essentially, unearned 'bonus' money. I've still got another $20 sitting in my SAS account, so I think I might request another payment this month as well.

The payment from Neonlights was actually 9 "daily" payments for reading emails, plus another 2 "daily" payments that included PTP earnings, again from promoting them at MillionHitsLotto with credits I've won (I've hit 4 out of 5 numbers twice, for a total of 10,000 free credits, plus a lot of smaller wins).

That's my big strategy with PTR at the moment. Read a few paid emails a day (usually between 10 and 30 minutes a day), and promote Neon and Polar PTP pages at MHL. So a little effort brings in a little money.

Luckily the eBay sales have been pretty good again this month. Not that we'll be quitting our day jobs any time soon, but this month we made a profit of $119.62 from $417.00 in total sales. And once again that's will no jewelry for sale, and running only one auction this month. And the sales were a good mix of new and returning customers.

For my part, dealing with eBay involves anywhere from 2 minutes to 30 minutes a day, plus however long it takes to drop a few items in the letterbox. Normally the bulk of the time and effort is spent designing and making the jewelry, which is my wife's department, but it's been a while since she's done any of that. On that basis, the eBay thing is paying about $16 an hour. Not bad, all things considered.