Learn from your mistakes

I'm sorry, this is going to seem really harsh, but truth is, I feel no sympathy for some people that have been caught up in the whole 12DailyPro scheme.

This is really taking its toll on me in every way. I'm trying so hard to be patient and supportive, but no matter what I do, I feel so helpless, desperate and let down. Cry I know I am not alone in feeling frustrated, we are all going through various emotions....What can we do to reclaim our funds? Nothing. We cannot issue chargebacks or do anything to get back part of what we lost. We just basically lost it all. This is one of the worse feelings that I have ever had. The ones that are responsible for doing this to all of us, obviously don't care and have been using our money on things that are not as important like the medicine that my mentally challenged son or I need, or groceries, or in our case, christmas presents because we didn't get a christmas this past year because of this. It was so depressing. Have you ever had to tell your child that there are no presents to open on christmas? I felt so low at that point, but not nearly as low as I am feeling now. I'm just feeling so bogged down with the realization that I was taken advantage of and I trusted the wrong people.

^{12DailyPro forum post}

There are several simple rules in business. All of which should never, and I do mean never, be ignored. But the 2 most important of which I'll repeat here for everyone to take notice of.

1. If its too good to be true, it probably is.
2. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

I'm sorry, but that lady moaning and groaning because her child missed Christmas and they can't afford medications.... So Sad, Too Bad. If you couldn't afford to lose the money you invested, why did you invest it in the first place instead of spending it on the things you actually NEEDED?

This might seem cold hearted, and chances are I'd probably have to wear my asbestos suit for a while if people actually read this blog, but the fact of the matter is, she made a mistake and she has to pay for the consequences of it.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to those that have gotten caught out by the StormPay vs GPT programs. The dream was wonderful while it lasted. You were turning about a 100% profit each month. Great. Now why didn't you take that profit out?

Its easy, very easy, to get scammed by companies like this. The lure of quick and easy money is exceptionally difficult to resist. Even I fell for it. But I refused to spend more than the very minimum I could until such time as I had 100% of my money back. I'm glad that I did that. In hindsight, it saved me from a massive fall. More importantly, I dind't invest more than I was willing or able to loose.

Yes, I still use these kinds of sites. But I don't treat them as investments or a way to make money. I see them as advertising expenditure. If you want to make money in this world, you've got to have a service or a product that people are willing to pay for. Its that simple.

One of the things I spent a long time looking for was affiliate programs and services that I could on sell that would generate a legitimate and legal income stream, both short and long term. There are not many that I can use in New Zealand, but there are a lot for people in the US and Canada.

So given most of the people that visit this site are from the US/Canada regions, I'm going to start going through a list of the sites I visited looking for ways to make money. Even more importantly, I'm not affliated or a member of most of them, so there will be no referrer link for many of them.

You cannot make money without putting in effort and time. That is the jewel of the autosurf scam. It appears you are putting in a little effort and time and getting paid in return. Whether this is true or not, you only have to look at the fallout from 12DailyPro to find out. Consider that nearly every autosurf program has now set up their own escrow service.

As I have with SKC Hosting, you need to make an effort and market your services/products. But anyone and everyone can do that. AdWords is a good start.

Auto-Surf "investments" == Ponzi scheme

In light of the recent StormPay events, there is a lot of discussion going on about the validity of the GPT programs around the web. Much of the problem with StormPay started out with StormPay basically telling 12DailyPro that they weren't allowed to use other payment processors and then it did nothing but escalate from there.

At first my opinion was really simple. StormPay were making it difficult for people to get the money they "earned" by autosurfing. But the problem goes deeper than that also. A lot of the PTR programs have also been cut off by StormPay.

So whats all the big fuss over? Well, in the case of the PTR programs, I'm not sure I can follow the argument there. But in the case of the autosurf programs I have finally come to a conclusion and am now fully aware of how these programs make their money.

Its called a Ponzi Scheme and its been around since 1903 in various forms.

Read the full post for my take on it all.

Now, let me make it clear, these only become a Ponzi scheme the instant you give them money. Up to that point, its purely a Traffic Exchange. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a traffic exchange, but there is everything wrong with a Ponzi scheme.

My purpose in this post is 2 fold. One, to make you aware of what is actually going on behind the scenes. Secondly to try to help you avoid falling in to the pit many millions of others have. In my case, my skepticism kept me from making a massive mistake and the whole thing costing me a significant amount of money. All up, its only cost me the equivelent of a pack of smokes. I think I can handle that loss.

However, I was lucky in that regard. The truth is, the idea of auto-surfs is so enticing that I would've easily spent more money on them. Quite simply, the idea of such massive returns is just too good to be true. In my case, the one I'm using the most returns %1 daily. Thats 365% in a single year. Thats absolutely massive. And thats nothing compared to other programs out there that offer 5% daily, 6% daily, 12% daily. In some cases, I've even seen up to 20% daily with a payout in 6 days.

So what makes a Traffic Exchange different to a Paid To Surf program?

For starters, you're paying for a service instead of investing. With a Traffic Exchange, there is no promise of return except traffic to your site. You do not receive a financial reward and nor should you expect any. If you don't want to pay for the traffic, then you can simply use their surf program (initially Manual, but more and more autosurfs are taking over) to earn credits which can be exchanged for traffic to your site.

A traffic exchange is a sustainable business. It offers a service, not an investment scheme. This is an important distinction.

On the other hand, many auto surf programs offer an investment scheme that allows you to invest $5-$10 (sometimes less or more) and in exchange, they'll give you a return of X% on that investment for every day you use their program.

These programs are often also Traffic Exchanges in that you can buy traffic credits or you can surf for them. However, the promise of a return of investment is what turns them in to a Ponzi scheme. We're talking massive amounts of return that cannot possibly be achieved through legitimate investment programs. 15-20% in a whole year is generally considered a fantastic return on the stock market. But its also very rare. With many of these programs, we're talking 365% or more in a year.

The instant you "invest" money in a traffic exchange with an expectation of some financial reward or return, you are losing your money to a Ponzi scheme.

Quite simply put, the only way you will ever get a profit from this scheme is to be first kid on the block. The likely hood of that happening? Almost 0.

What happens is quite simple. The first person puts in their coin with a promise that in X days/weeks/months they'll get a significant profit back. Say, 44% (in the case of 12DailyPro.) Then, the people running the scheme got and get 2 more people to invest money in to the scheme. They then take that new money and use it to pay the original invester. That person thinks things are going absolutely great and will often reinvest their money. This means that the person running the scheme doesn't have to pay out, just provide a "statement" of how much the person has and it goes on from there.

In the terms of autosurfs, this is known as compounding.

This is a classic trick of the scheme in that it gives the impression that people are earning more money than they really are. If you start to compound your investment, all you're doing is perpetuating the scheme longer. If you are able to, get your money out and run. Don't look back.

I have been fortunate in that I've only lost $10 cash to one of these schemes. However, the other side of the Traffic Exchange coin cost me significantly more than that.

If you are a Google AdSense member, you should not in anyway participate in a Traffic Exchange program. Banner exchange is fine for the most part, but a Traffic Exchange program will immediately breach the terms of the AdSense program and you will be removed rather quickly. This happened to me. I lost over $90 in earned income that was waiting to be sent to me, plus all future incomes beyond that.

This is particularly annoying because AdSense is the only program of its type that will accept New Zealand based and targetted websites. Yahoo! do not accept sites that do not have a US/Canada target audience. Neither does MSN, Kanoodle and the many others that are out there.

This means you have to rely on programs that might not be as successful and definitely not as profitable.

My advice to you is simple. If you are not a Google AdSense (or Yahoo!/MSN equiv) member, then you can use Traffic Exchanges as long as any advertising you do have does not explicitly disallow it. However, at absolutely no point should you invest any money in to the traffic exchanges in the expectation that you might earn that money back. Any money you invest should be seen solely as advertising expenditure. Not as a way to make money.

And this is how I see the $10 I spent. Its a way for me to advertise my sites. I use 3 traffic exchanges to advertise SKC Hosting. The traffic you get is pretty useless, but at the very least its getting your site in front of eyeballs and the more they see your site, the more it sticks in their mind. They might not buy, but they might remember and suggest it to others.

That is also partly why I still link to Traffic Exchanges. The more people using them as Traffic Exchanges, the more my sites advertising will be seen. This is on top of advertising such as the Google AdWords I pay for every month. But I would never recommend anyone spent any money on a Traffic Exchange site unless they were viewing it as an advertising expenditure. It really is that simple.

Good Work from Home article at MSN Money

I don't know how many of you might have seen this, but its definitely a good article and well worth the read. I'm even in the process of setting up one of the businesses suggested in the article, but tailored to a New Zealand specific market.

A couple years later, she's earning about $2,000 a month working 30 to 35 hours a week from her home in Columbia, Md. -- about what she was making as a counselor. Her shifts can be as short as 30 minutes, although she typically works five-hour blocks while her 5-year-old is in school, plus some nights and weekends when her husband, a CPA, can take over child care.

Opara, 44, said she still faces the challenges familiar to every working parent: How to work enough hours, spend enough quality time with her family "and still figure out how I'm going to clean my house, make dinner and do the grocery shopping." Not having to commute or pay for child care, however, are big bonuses.

^{MSN Money - 4 real jobs you can do from home}

Seriously worth the read if you're looking for a way to supplement your income, or just looking for a way to be able to work from home.

Mergers over, life goes on...

So now we have it. Auto-Surf has finally been merged in to eProfitSurf after the whole StormPay fiasco. The primary reason being that the company that created Auto-Surf and eProfitSurf has decided that given StormPay won't play ball, they'll just create their own escrow payment agency themselves.

I do have to admit that I like eProfitSurf better than I liked Auto-Surf. Mostly because the colour scheme is more something I can see/read. ;-) More blues and grays than greens and reds time time round. ;-)

Gosh its hard being colour blind ;-)

So now that has finished I can start earning some money there again. I'm not so sure I'll ever be able to get paid again. If StormPay did it, whats to stop PayPal doing it again? StormPay was considered the friendlier of the two.

Still, I do admit I like the idea that if I just keep compounding the initial $10 I invested, one day I might actually get a decent size cheque back. I don't expect it, but its there in the back of my mind.

My whole philosophy with auto surf programs has been different from the start. To see how they work, to find out what makes them tick and to figure out how they are profitable. The only part I have not been able to figure out yet is how they are profitable. And that part is starting to annoy me significantly.

Google is profitable because it sells ad space on high profile, high traffic sites. Including its own. Yahoo! is moving to a similar business model, on top of everything else it does. Microsoft's own MSN has never been profitable yet, but they're still making an effort and their advertising program should be around soon.

But how do PTC and Auto Surf programs make their money? There are so many of them now that saying they're selling advertising space is a bit of a joke. Most people don't even look at the sites they're surfing. They just leave an autosurf running while they go do something else, or they're watching the timer to see when they can click to the next page to earn their credits.

The advertising is solely on their own sites, and with the number of them out there, the market is fairly diluted at the moment. There are no networks of them as such that I can find, unless the various sites are owned and operated by the same people. This might allow them to spread their advertising across multiple sites, but if the experience of eProfitSurf is anything to go by, people tend to have accounts across all the sites anyway. So the ads are all hitting the same eyes on the various sites.

The trick then becomes to not rely on the GetPaidTo program itself to produce profits. Instead, use the GetPaidTo program to generate revenue on other sites and programs you have. For example, I'm using mine to generate traffic to skchosting.com. That is a seperate business unto itself that generates an income completely independant of anything else. All I have to do is get the traffic to the site.

So I do that in multiple ways. Yes, I use the autosurf programs that I am a part of. But I also advertise it with Google AdWords on selected keywords, targetting selected regions I want to sell to. In the case of skchosting.com, the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

That is completely independant of my efforts to sell it to companies and individuals within NZ. However, given the penny pinching nature of Kiwis as soon as they see that something is sold in US$, I don't market it here beyond my conversations with people or my own websites. Kiwis hate spending in US$.

So, simply put, I'm still trying to find the profitable business model for the auto surf programs. I will keep the $10 I have in eProfitSurf and keep letting it float around compounding over time. Eventually it might be worth something again. But I'm not holding my breath or expecting it to be.

Ultimately, for a normal surfer to be profitable, you'd have to spend at least $1000, and you'd still have to wait 100 days just to get your investment back. Any faster than that and I question the avility of the site itself to survive long term.

StormPay really has screwed things up for us all

I can fully understand why people are significantly pissed off with StormPay. It damages my business by proxy because now a lot of the services I use are pulling their heads in. They're setting up their own payment services instead of using services like StormPay, PayPal, eGold and so on.

They're well within their rights to do so, but I'm very cautious about who gets any sort of personal details when it comes to financial data. At the moment, only 3 online companies have my credit card details and through those three, I get by for the most part. One of those being Paypal, which is how I've gotten involved in and paid for most of the autosurf programs I'm using.

StormPay has gotten absolutely nasty. I don't use their service and I'm glad I don't. I went to check their ToS but I cannot see anything there that would make an auto/manual surf program against their ToS. They're just seriously extending their reach beyond their stated terms and if I were the companies that have lost the money, I'd seriously be calling the lawyers about now.

I am not going to sign up with a new escrow service. I use PayPal and as bad as its reputation among some people might be, it allows me to keep my credit card details private but still usable on the web. Its used by most of the places I have ever wanted to buy something from and it allows me to receive money online with minimum of fuss. I know it works, and I trust its security.

I don't trust eGold, I definitely don't trust StormPay. Why on earth would I now trust newer escrow agencies just to continue a business?

So the simple fact of the matter is, I'm going to consider that the money I have placed in to these business that won't use PayPal any longer, because of StormPay's actions, is a write off and no longer an "investment". For those services still alive, I'm just going to continue to compound the funds and see how things go.

Damn you StormPay!