Advertising as Content

I was reading an article at Techdirt about advertising that got me thinking about the way most PTRs operate. Among other things, it talks about the idea of ads as content -- in other words, ads that people actually want to see instead of just putting up with to get the content they really want. PTRs and other forms of incentivized advertising programs are pretty much the untimate extension of the concept of "advertising as content", so why don't more PTR owners try to make things more fun and interesting?

I was reading somewhere (can't remember where, but if I do, I'll post a link) about some of the new social networking sites that are making a nice chunk of change by not only serving ads to their members, but getting them to participate in sign-ups and surveys as well. In a way, they're incentivizing the advertising as well, but in a much more traditional way -- by providing content and other benefits to being a member of the site, but usually not directly paying the members (at least not in cash) for participating.

The main difference between these types of sites and PTR programs is that, as I mentioned before, in most cases the only thing a PTR site has to offer is the incentives members earn from viewing ads. Without that, there's no reason for anybody to join, much less participate. Which explains why so many PTR sites struggle to get more than one or two thousand members, while these other sorts of sites like MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, etc. can attract members by the millions.

Freebies from iTunes

Looking for free videos and music from iTunes? No? Well, maybe you should start. If you do, there's a blog called Free iTunes Downloads that'll help you find all the freebies. Some of it's good, some of it...not so much. But hey, the price is right, it doesn't take a lot of work to move the junk to the recycle bin, so why not give it a try?

Paypal Agrees to Make Changes

Paypal has signed an agreement with the Attorneys General of 28 states which will hopefully provide members with more rights and better customer service. As explained by Maryland Attorney Genereal J. Joseph Curran, "The consumer has rights, and PayPal must explain those rights" According to the agreement PayPal must better explain the terms of their service and apprise the consumer of their various payment options.

According to the terms of the settlement, Paypal will:

• clearly disclose important terms and conditions at the time users enroll in PayPal and when users perform transactions using PayPal;
  
  
• disclose to the user at the time of purchase which funding source (for example, bank account or credit card) will be used and how the user can select an alternative funding source;
  
  
• give members a clear choice regarding what form of payment to use when making a purchase;
  
  
• provide explanations of the differences between its in-house PayPal dispute resolution programs and chargeback rights granted by federal law to consumers who use electronic banking, debit cards and credit cards to make payments and purchases;
  
  
• establish a conspicuous “Contact Us” link on all of its Webpages, provide a customer support number which is operational at least 18 hours each day during the week (14 on weekend days) and answer calls promptly (defined as within 5 minutes).

And according to Texas State Attorney General Greg Abbott:

The agreement also spells out new requirements for freezing customer accounts, including limiting access to funds only in such amounts as are deemed reasonably necessary to protect against risk. Prior to this agreement, PayPal would simply freeze the entire account.

It will be interesting to see what changes are made to Paypal's User Agreement, and if any changes will be made to the Acceptable Use Policy as well. It will also be interesting to see if new phone access will make it easier for customers to get their complaints dealt with in a reasonable manner.

And finally, part of the agreement says that the States will give Paypal 14 days written notice of any violations so that Paypal can deal with them before facing the possibility of being hauled into court again. So if you're in the U.S., it might be a good idea to download and save a copy of the agreement [PDF, 736kb], and if you have any problems with Paypal in the future, be sure and contact your state attorney general's office and let them know about it.

The Impact of Cheaters on PTR Programs

AnI4anI has a good post at GPTOutreach talking about the responsibilities of GPT program owners to minimize the impact of cheaters on their programs. After the lack of legitimate advertisers, the impact of cheaters is probably the most-used excuse used by owners whose programs are in trouble.

And there's no doubt that cheaters are a problem. Any time there's something to gain, there are going to be people who are happy to lie, cheat and steal to get it. And unfortunately, often the same things that make a program attractive to honest people also tend to make it attractive to the cheaters. This is, I think, one of the fundamental problems of GPT/PTR programs -- if all, or most, of the emphasis is on how much members can earn, then nobody should be surprised that the bulk of the members are people who only care about the money. And nobody should be surprised that some of those people are going to be willing to cheat to get that money.

I agree that owners need to put together a good business plan before launching their program. I agree that they need to learn as much about cheating as they can, and try to make changes to their programs to reduce the potential impacts of cheaters. A few years ago a lot of the talk about cheaters involved people who'd sign up for the same program, sometimes dozens or even hundreds of times. Then they'd click links, either manually or using automated software, for all the accounts, earning extra money because all the accounts were linked together in the same downline. You don't hear about this so much these days because most PTR programs no longer use elaborate multi-level referral structures with ridiculously high earnings possible from downlines. The weird thing is, these changes didn't happen as an attempt to reduce that particular kind of cheating, but because Paypal was freezing the accounts of owners because it felt their programs were some sort of MLM scheme that violated Paypal's Acceptable Use Policy.

One thing I don't agree with in AnI's post are her ideas that PTR owners collect more personal information about their members. I can see where she's coming from, and I agree that more careful screening of potential members could be helpful, but after seeing how so many of these people (as well as many large, mainstream companies) routinely violate their members' privacy I don't think giving them even more opportunity is a good idea.

Omgili -- A Search Engine for Forums

Reading MetaFilter today I came across a post about Omgili

Omgili is a search engine specifically designed to index forums. There's soooooo much great information posted in forums but it's not always easy to find it. Sometimes Google provides useful results from forums, but sometimes it doesn't. One area I've found them extremely helpful for is tech-related issues, including computer problems. When reading the help and the FAQ doesn't help, and visiting support section of the manufacturer's website doesn't get the job done, sometimes forums are a great way to get the help you need. And of course the best thing about forums is that if your specific question hasn't already been asked and answered, you can sign up and ask it yourself!

Another cool think about Omgili is that you can add it as a search option to your Firefox Search Bar. I've just added it and I'll give it a shot to see how it works out.

More Click Fraud Discussion

Josh has a great post at Hunc Tu Caveto, The Dark Side Strikes Back, that raises a lot of great points about the problem of fraud associated with PTR.

I agree with him when he says CPM ads have no place in PTR or any other kind of incentivized site. As he says, "Paying people to view ads, day after day, month after month, when the advertiser is paying you for nothing more than their view just doesn’t work." Yet that's exactly what's happening on lots of PTR sites, especially those that run PTP (Paid to Promote) pages.

I think his comments about pay-per-lead ads, or paid sign ups, are spot-on as well. As long as the advertiser specifically allows incentivization, then there's no problem in theory. But if the reality is that members are signing up for free trials just for the incentive, then there's a problem.

The companies that allow incentivized sign-ups are aware that a certain percentage of people who sign up for free trials will never become paying customers. Some of them deal with that by being a bit sneaky in their fine print, others just hope that people forget to quit. The smarter and more ethical ones simply do the math and set their prices and pay-per-lead offers accordingly.

But none of that takes away from the fact that signing up for free trials just for the incentive is no better than doing incentivized searches. All of these activities need to be done in good faith. If not, the whole thing will eventually fall apart. Either the incentives will disappear, or the companies that offer them will disappear. Anybody who was around in the early days of online rewards programs (1999-2000) has seen it happen.

Click Fraud or Cat Food?

It seems there's more media interest in Paid to Read programs. Or more specifically, Paid to Search programs, if in fact there's really any difference. The way I see it, in the vast majority of cases, there isn't. But Verne Kopytoff, from the San Francisco Chronicle, is posting over at GetPaidForum hoping to get some inside info about what's going on.

Of course the first response is from Sini Martonen, a co-owner of PolarPTR. Now don't get me wrong, as far as PTRs go, PolarPTR is just about as good as they get, and Sini is a great owner who's done more good for the PTR industry than just about anybody. But PolarPTR sends out loads of ads for search portals. Of course there's absolutely no kind of coersion or encouragement for members to search. Polar is just one of the many programs that has attracted a large enough group of members who either a) choose to do dozens of searches a day using third-rate search engines, with absolutely no regard for the money they're being paid to visit the portals in the first place; or b) know what they need to do to keep the click fraud gravy train rolling and perform "valid searches" accordingly.

Then there's PTRHost's response.

As to why people join these sites that are search only...........my guess is that for members who join these sites................they do so to make pocket change to be able to afford things they can not afford offline due to living on fixed or limited incomes and have no ability to bring in that extra cash.

I'm assuming the majority of those who join search sites are not in the position to calculate in the moral or legal debate of whether or not a site that requires searches is doing the morally and legally correct thing.

I believe that those who live on fixed and limited incomes are lured to the search required sites because it allows them to earn money to pay for medicines, food and/or the so called unnecessary items in life that others................who are able to make the distinction between joining moral and legally correct sites..............because they belong to paid to read programs for the original purpose of them in the first place..................which is to view advertising of interest...........and possibly finding a bargain on physical wares.

-- snip --

The problem I think is that for now this assumed click fraud issue is not a matter of those members of those programs really intending to commit fraud.............I do believe that many do what is required at these search sites so that they can survive in real life when no other options are available to them to live in such a fashion that they do not have to decide is it tunafish I eat today or cat food.

So PTRHost thinks a lot of the human clickbots involved in click fraud do it because they're too poor to concern themselves with ethics, morality and the law. They shouldn't be held responsible for their actions (and they need take no responsibility themselves) because playing their part in ripping off advertisers may well mean the difference in being able to afford vital medication or doing without, or eating regular canned tuna instead of cat food.

I accept that there are many people all over the world who find themselves in positions where they feel they have to do whatever it takes to survive. People in these situations often involve themselves in activities which may not be very ethical, moral or legal. In some cases, they know what they're doing is wrong, but since they don't know what else to do, they feel that they have no choice. In other cases, they rationalize their actions, blame others, or whatever it takes so that they don't feel guilty.

But how many people involved in PTR are really in such desperate circumstances? Are they really going to have to eat cat food if they stop participating in click fraud? Considering that with a few possible exceptions, they all own computers and pay for Internet access, I seriously doubt that's the case. I think the money going to the ISP would be more than enough to pay for the upgrade to tuna that's fit for human consumption. Is there really no honest/ethical/moral/legal way for them to make the money?

I find it hard to believe that so many desperately poor people have no other way to support themselves except through what basically amounts to petty theft. I don't think these people would feel their situations were desperate enough to justify mugging people, shoplifting or picking pockets. But participating in click fraud doesn't seem to worry them. Is it the nature of their actions -- sitting in front of a computer clicking links? Is it that they really don't see how every penny they earn has to come out of somebody else's pocket? Is it that they believe all the bullshit that's being constantly being spread about how they aren't really doing anything wrong?

Or is it that performing the functions of a human clickbot is just too damned easy? I mean, I've written about all sorts of ways to earn money online, but I don't think any of them are as easy (and mind-numbingly boring) as clicking paid links for hours and hours every day.

Amazon aStore Update Coming Soon

Amazon has announced that it will be offering a new version of aStores for its Associates some time in late November. Some of the new features will include:

• Multiple aStores with a single Associate ID
  
• Better control over the layout and design
  
• Longer custom product descriptions
  
• Up to 54 featured products on the main page instead of 9

Sounds good to me! I've had fun playing around with my aStore, and I can definitely see where having a different store for each blog could be a very sweet deal. I hope Amazon gets the new aStores going in plenty of time for Christmas.

PTR on the Dark Side of Online Advertising

Click fraud has made the cover of BusinessWeek magazine and the main story, Click Fraud: the dark side of online advertising, written by Ben Elgin and Brian Grow, is available on their website now. It's already stirred up a bit of interest at SearchEngineWatch and SlashDot, and at various points in the blogosphere -- Affiliate Marketing Journal, MicroPersuasion, Hunc Tu Caveto, GPTOutreach, YouKnowYouWantToKnow , and of course the blog that may well have started the whole ball rolling, The Affiliate Marketing Blog (original PTR-Click Fraud post). You can even Digg it, if you want to.

Of course most of the mainstream emphasis will be on how this will effect big PPC players like Google and Yahoo, which is perfectly understandable. But I think the various reactions from within the "Get Paid" community are much more interesting. But definitely not unpredictable.

Just like 12DailyPro members cried and raised all manner of hell when their cash cow was busted, many Paid to Read program owners, and the members and promoters who've been profiting from the status quo, are crying foul. When Charis Johnson's little Ponzi scam was first exposed, the members harassed and abused Brent Huntsaker, the ABC4 reporter in Utah who broke the story. Before it was over, they'd created a huge conspiracy theory involving the FBI and the SEC deliberately going after Johnson to put an end to an "honest business" that made it possible for "the little guy" to make "easy money" just like the folks at the big end of town. Now some of the Paid to Read people are doing the same thing with Ben Elgin, BusinessWeek, and the "traitors" who talked to him and aired their little cottage industry's dirty laundry in public.

One member at GetPaidForum, ptrhost, started the ball rolling by accusing the authors of the article of not doing enough research and not reporting alternative views:

I'm sorry to be the naysayer here, but while some may believe a lot of forethought was put into this article, I disagree.

It was done in haste out of strong convictions that their beliefs were the only beliefs that were correct when it comes to click fraud...............leaving no thought as to how this could impact the entire PTR industry on a whole.

Then there's another familiar tactic -- trying to convince everybody that their own involvement in the "industry" will get them into trouble with the government if they don't keep their head down and their mouth shut.

As a final thought, I don't know that those who told of how they were committing click fraud within PTR are thinking that the government will give them immunity or not, but I think it was as well not given much thought on how it could ultimately impact their own lives should the government decide to act hastily in this matter. I also, am not impressed by it because I feel that it shows a certain mentality of either "I'm the Mother Theresa for PTR" or great ignorance in thinking placing themselves in the open will circumvent either jail time, restitution to those supposedly hurt by this so called click fraud or whatever else may have been circulating within as to rationalize to justify the actions for this article.

I do not mean to be negative and put anyone down for their efforts, although, I wish people would think as some say outside the box and consider the ramifications these types of actions have for everyone and not use it as a way to in essence be somewhat seeking vengeful retribuition to those sites and or people that they dislike, should that be the case.

No, of course she doesn't mean to be negative or put anyone down for their efforts. She just thinks that the article was a load of crap and that anybody who helped this reporter is a traitor to all the good people of the PTR industry who either did it as a way to attack people they don't like, or to try to cover their own asses when them nasty revenuers and G-men start kicking down doors and hauling folks off to the hoosegow!

When it comes to money, it brings out the worst in many people. Why share the wealth so to speak by advertisers offering to pay PTR members say 2 cents or 5 cents per click as well as giving them a cash rebate on purchases when they can pay a pay per click search engine less and keep 100% of the profit???? I'm not saying they are not entitled to it, however, I think people would find that sometimes giving a little returns more in the long run.

See, it's not fair to blame all the human clickbots! It's the advertisers who are being greedy! They don't want to "share the wealth" and give the clickers a bit of money so they can buy their kids a Happy Meal or something!

PTRHost then goes on to point out some other ways PTR members can rip off advertisers, like getting paid to sign up for free or nearly-free trials and then cancelling just before the trial period ends. Doing these sorts of "sign-ups" can pay a lot better than doing hundreds of paid searches a day, that's for sure.

How many people do you think signup for a one month trial for the extra money at Inbox Dollars along with the little perks offered by the companies............do people really believe they are signing up because they truely want to try the trial membership? (I doubt it......if I recall correctly one of the so called advertisers who frequents forums and has made posts on how to make money......actually gave out tips on how to use your credit card to sign up for trial offers to get the kick backs and then cancel before the trial ends so they do not incur a monthly fee........now that is another thing that gets my goat............while they do not wish people to click on their paid for search link listing..........they have no problem signing up for this or that then cancelling memberships..............if thats not the pot calling the kettle black) I would imagine there are more people signing up for those free trials and then canceling the accounts before time is up just to receive those $5, 8, 10, etc bonuses................ The sole intent being to reap the monetary reward which is a far cry from a penny search reward.........and no intention of ever keeping a companies membership past the trial period....... Call me what you will...........but I find it wrong to focus on one area of click fraud when larger areas of click fraud prevail which cost companies much more than paying for non interested clicks on a search engine.

And then it's people who try to manipulate paid surveys:

What galls me to no end is the fact that click fraud is taking place by some of those involved if we should chose to twist it that way.................how many survey sites do people belong to that fill out presurvey questions designated to give the questioneer the impression that they fit the criteria just so they can collect the money involved in the survey?

Talk about digging the hole deeper! The same woman who's so upset that PTR is being named as one of the sources of PPC click fraud is more than happy to point out the same human clickbots are also more than happy to participate in paid sign-up scams and rip off online survey companies as well! Anything for a buck!

Of course, the simple fact is that in the vast majority of cases, she's absolutely right. The very same people who will happy click on PPC search results for a fraction of a cent are most likely more than happy to get paid $6.00 to sign up for a free trial at Netflix or whatever. And if they can convince some survey company that they're a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom with 4 kids under the age of five and the regional manager of a multinational company with direct responsibility for an annual IT budget of $1,000,000 or more, then they'll do it! And in all of these cases, the bottom line is that they do all these things because they want the money, and they will lie, cheat and steal to get it. Because doing it that way is much more profitable than participating honestly, accepting the incentives provided by the advertisers and responding in good faith.

In the vast majority of cases, that's the way it is. But not in all cases. The Paid to Read "cottage industry" also has lots of honest people who are involved at every level. As owners, advertisers, and as members. And in many cases, as all three. While the most fundamental nature of the business - the incentives themselves -- may make it difficult to be done honestly, it's not completely impossible. That's why I'm still involved in it, and I know that's why others are as well. Because we hope that one day when all the people who are looking for "easy money" have gone to look somewhere else, those of us who are left can be involved in a small, but essentially honest, form of e-commerce and online advertising.

Can PTR Choose to Survive as an Honest Viable Industry?

I was reading something the other day in Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive that reminded me a lot of what's going on in the Get Paid industry.

The third stop on the road map to failure is the most frequent, the most surprising, and requires the longest discussion because it assumes such a wide variety of forms. Contrary to what Joseph Tainter and almost anyone else would have expected, it turns out that societies often fail even to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived.

Many of the reasons for such failure fall under the heading of what economists and other social scientists term "rational behavior", arising from the clashes of interest between people. That is, some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people. Scientists term such behavior "rational" precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible. The perpetrators know that they will often get away with their bad behavior especially if there is no law against it or if the law isn't effectvely enforced. They feel safe because the perpetrators are typically concentrated (few in number) and highly motivated by the prospect of reaping big, certain, and immediate profits, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals. That gives the losers little motivation to go to the hassle of fighting back, because each loser loses only a little and would receive only small, uncertain, distant profits even from successfully undoing the minority's grab.

Diamond goes on to identify a few variations on this theme, such as "good for me, bad for you and for everybody else" which I think is a good way to describe a lot of the selfishness that goes on in PTR, and the well-known "tragedy of the commons" which also has some relevance to PTR, even though it might be hard for a lot of people to understand the "shared resource" that's being depleted.

When he discusses ways to solve the problems, it's easy to see why it isn't likely to happen in PTR any time soon:

The remaining solution to tragedy of the commons is for the consumers to recognize their common interests and to design, obey and enforce prudent harvesting quotas themselves That is likely to happen only if a whole series of conditions is met: the consumers form a homogeneous group; they have learned to trust and communicate with each other; they expect to share a common future and to pass on the resource to their heirs; they are capable of and permitted to organize and police themselves; and the boundaries of the resource and of its pool of consumers are well defined.

PTR fails in nearly every case. The group of people involved is far from homogeneous. In fact, it's damned near impossible to find anything we all have in common. If anything we're learning to trust and communicate with each other less, not more. And in many cases, for very good reasons. It's difficult to trust and communicate with people who constantly lie and manipulate people for their own personal gain. S

It's possible that we could organize and police ourselves to a certain extent, but highly unlikely. I think this is due to the lack of trust, creating a sort of prisoner's dilemma, and also because of stubbornness and selfishness that pervades the industry.

The boundaries of the resource are totally undefined, and in many cases the consumers are completely unaware that there are boundaries or limits. In fact, I think they have very little awareness of the resources they are consuming because they don't fully understand the nature of their business.

And they're certainly not interested in sharing a common future. Most of them seem to be in the business for short-term gains, which is why their collective actions tend towards what I call the "plague of locusts" effect. They find a resource (a source of revenue) and devour it completely, and then they move on to the next one.

Can these many obstacles be overcome? Of course. Will they? I doubt it. For all the reasons I've already mentioned, plus one recently mentioned by Rod Baker -- it's more profitable to cheat than to do things honestly and properly in this industry. And I guess he would know.

Blogging for Money A - Z

Steve Rubel has a new post called Making Money With Your Blog From A to Z. He's got most of the big ones covered -- Adsense, Amazon, Commission Junction, etc. and he's also included some I hadn't heard of before (thanks, Steve!). None of them are going to work for everybody, but I think it's a pretty good way to get an idea of the possibilities.

Some of the comments are also worth reading. The one that got me to thinking was one about how hard it is to make money through affiliate sales on a blog. Personally, I think making money though affiliate sales is hard anyway, but I agree it can be especially hard on a blog, if for no other reason than most people aren't reading blogs with their credit card in hand ready to buy stuff.

But I think most people have a pretty narrow idea of what a blog is, or how it can be used. I think if it's used cleverly, either on its own or as part of a larger site, a blog can be used to help increase affiliate sales. I wish I could provide some examples of what I mean, but I don't have access to my bookmarks at the moment (another good reason for using online bookmarks) but they're out there.

Fun With Veggies

OK, I really don't mean for this blog to turn into the Home Shopping Network or something, but I saw this today and I just gotta blog about it.



They're called Vegiforms®. They're little plastic moulds that you put growing vegetables in so that as they grow, they're formed into the shape of the mould. So you get pumpkins and squash with faces, and heart-shaped cucumbers and zucchini. And unlike the ape-art (which I still think is totally hawesome!), these Vegiforms® are very reasonably priced -- $9.95 each.

I think my kids will totally love these things, especially when they grow their first garden elf watermelon!

CAPTCHA Data-Entry Scam

Slashdot has a post about another captcha-entering scam similar to Look2Earn, the one I blogged about back in April. This time the scammer is just trying to hire a bunch of "data entry" people through one of the freelancer sites, but the result is the same.

There's so much focus on bot networks and zombie PCs and all sorts of automated ways to scam people, but not many people seem to realise that in the "Get Paid" industry and elsewhere, there are thousands of people who will do the same work the scripts and bots do, and some things that the bots can't do, at relatively minimal costs.

These armies of human click-bots are doing significant amounts of damage with by participating in search engine click fraud, this CAPTCHA stuff, providing misleading information in paid surveys, and any other online earning opportunities that they can find to manipulate.

Get Paid to Help Bloglines.com

Bloglines is looking for people in the San Francisco area to help them pick a new design for the site. This means showing up in person and giving them an hour of your time, and in return, they'll pay you $75 or $100. That's not bad for one hour of "work." I wonder if they provide free munchies as well?

They've got a screener survey set up here so if you're interested, do the survey and hope you get selected.

And try to pick a really good design, because Bloglines is one of my favourite sites!

Unique Gift: Ape-stract Painting by Cheeta

I loved watching Tarzan movies when I was a kid. Johnny Weissmuller was my favourite of course, but I'd happily watch Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, and even Ron Ely. Of course regardless who played The Lord of the Jungle, the real star of the show, at least for me, was Cheeta. So it blew me away when I found out that Cheeta is still alive and kicking, and is the world's oldest living chimpanzee!

The really cool bit is that Cheeta is an artist, and for $135.00, he'll do a custom painting for you. You can pick up to 3 colors from 11 choices, and he'll whip you up a masterpiece. Yeah, that's a fair chunk of change for something that's going to look like it was done by a 3-year-old kid, but hey, it's CHEETA! And the money goes to help the C.H.E.E.T.A. Primate Sanctuary, so it's all tax-deductable. And they take Paypal! Woohoo!



I'm thinking I'm going to have to buy one of these suckers, but the thing is, I'm going to have to be careful who I bestow with a gift of such erm, unique charm. My Dad's birthday is coming up, but I'm thinking he's not really the kind of guy who would appreciate something like this. Christmas is coming up. I'll have to look through the list and see who's worthy of some serious chimp art.

Get Paid to Play -- Moola.com

I got an invitation the other day to join a new site called Moola.com, and I'm having a blast playing games there.

The basic idea is pretty simple. You start with one cent. You play a game against another person with one cent and whoever wins keeps the money. So if you win, you've got two cents. Then you play somebody else for two cents, and if you win you've got four cents. Do it 30 times and you've got yourself...wait for it...over $10,000,000.

Math isn't my thing, but I think the odds on actually doing that are something around a billion to one. But still, it's fun trying, and with a bit of strategy and a lot of luck, you might get through nine rounds and turn your $0.01 into $5.

And did I mention that they even give you the first penny to get you started? Sweet!

Of course there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The pennies come from advertisers, so before each game, you watch a short (around 30 second) advertisement and then answer a question to prove you were paying attention. Some of the questions are really tricky, so you might end up watching the ad more than once. I think that's pretty clever, and it'll be interesting to see if they can make the business model work.

At this point it's still invitation-only. I've got a few invitations, so if you want to try it out, email me at moolanow at gmail dot com and I'll fix you up.

Payments for August 2006

PayPerPost $15.00
eBay $150.29
Total 165.29

Yearly Total 890.01

August had a few twists, but ended up a good month. First, none of my earnings came from PTR sites. No, I haven't quit them all. I just haven't been very active, and didn't earn enough to be bothered with requesting it. Maybe I could've had a buck or two added to this month's total instead of next month's, but I'm not too worried.

I was happy to receive two payments from PayPerPost. I think that's could be a nice way to earn a few extra bucks, and I plan to do more PPP posts in the future.

The rest of this month's earnings came from eBay sales. Sales were definitely up this month, despite a few hurdles. First, eBay increased a bunch of the fees for sellers with stores, so we're having to re-think the way we do things. And second, we had to initiate two disputes to deal with buyers who didn't pay. We've never had to do that before, and while I wouldn't say it was a pleasant experience, it was good for us to learn how to deal with it. In the end, we still managed to make a $150.29 profit on $501.35 in sales.

WordPress Plug-in: Adsense Revenue Sharing

Thanks to Empress at Building My Empire for blogging about a Wordpress plug-in that lets you set up an Adsense revenue-sharing system for your blog. I've been thinking about trying to start up a group blog and wondered if there were something like this available, so that everybody could earn from their own Adsense account rather than having a single account and having that person dole out portions of the earnings.

I haven't installed it yet to test it out, but it looks pretty sweet.

Google ESP

Last year I blogged about the ESP Game from Carnegie Mellon University. Now Google has licensed the technology behind the ESP Game to come up with the Google Image Labeler.

The main difference that I noticed is the lack of off-limit words. Otherwise, it's very similar to the original. It's fun, and I think it's cool that you earn points for playing. I think it would be cooler if you could do something with those points. Like maybe redeem them for cash to use for Adwords, or maybe buy stuff in the Google Store. You hear me, Google? I will gladly tag 10,000 images for you if you'll let me redeem my points for a Google 'O' alarm clock or a Google travel mug. Or a Google Frisbee Skyspinner set! How about a Google Blinkie Pin if I trade in 50,000 points? Or 150,000 points for a Google USB drive. Come on, Goog! Gimme some schwag!