Karlonia.com

One of my older programs that I joined nearly two years ago, a company called World Limited Partnership Program (WLPP), is still chugging along, but overall returns have been much slower than I had hoped. So far the overall dividends that I have received over the past two years add up to about five percent per annum, similar to what I am earning with my savings account at the bank. On the other hand, the company is gradually establishing a track record of investing in “real world” businesses with actual profit potential, and thus far have not shown any signs of scamming activity. They have also been honest in allowing members to sell back their units to the company if they want to get out of the program or simply need to recover their funds for some reason.

Their business model reminds of the old joint stock companies that were formed in order to finance colonial expeditions back in the early 17th century. Everyone who has venture capital to invest in the program pools their money together to finance the expedition, and any profits that are made are paid out to the investors on a share basis according to the proportion of the total pool that was contributed by each investor. In the case of WLPP, each share is called a PV (pool volume) unit and we are paid returns on these each month, with a variable amount depending on the most recent revenues of the company. Currently, each PV unit is $50 although some of the first units sold under the old Vivamin venture were priced at $40.

The most recent offline venture is the establishment of IT (Information Technology) call centers in Romania, where the company is hoping to cash in on the recent outsourcing trend while also taking advantage of the relatively low cost of leasing or purchasing office space in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, WLPP has been steadily expanding its online acquisitions, having recently taken over Bidhire.com and opening up a portal for advertising revenues at Taketheinternetback.com. Here is the latest update that arrived in my inbox this afternoon. Hopefully these returns will improve over the next few months:
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The Hit Harvester traffic exchange has come under new management recently. The program has been steadily making improvements over the past few days, including a total redesign of the website. They offer traffic through manual surfing, with the possibility of earning small amounts of cash (up to $1.25 per 1000 page views) depending upon the surfing ratio that you choose.

Although I have not been surfing here very frequently, I gave them another try earlier today and discovered that the surfbar seems to be working very smoothly. Their timer is still set at 25 seconds, however, which is a little long for my tastes. Meanwhile, the new Admin team sent out a rather extensive email update today in the form of a changelog journal that details the day-to-day improvements that are being made to the site:

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Work has been quietly underway on the site now for nearly 2 weeks, and Steve of Clicksmatrix and Cashclicking fame is doing a great little job of getting everything organized, with a new members area, checking scripts, images, links, and a huge amount work getting the site into tip top shape.He has even found time to change the surfbar a little, but I think you will find it is the little things, like a new logo, live links, new menu systems that will make you impressed. It is like having a new site without changing anything that would make the site a different site. Each site that grows and becomes very popular has it’s own unique flavour, I love the logo starting off with a windblown Hitharvester logo which moves so fast once loaded into a bronze effect that one wonders if one was seeing things.

Our first new moving banner for years, with more on the way with the ease with which Steve churns out this stuff, and our top menu items now flash across the screen.

Basically when your surfing none of this really matters of course, we have seen the advent of a lot of fancy paid for graphics on many sites this year, but nothing basically changes.

Well Hitharvester fans are in for a big treat, as we also haven’t changed, we still have a 1:1 surf ratio for ALL members. We have no paid membership. If you want to speed up your advertising simply buy credits, fair and square, it helps support the site, and gives you faster exposure too.

With no referrals income to worry about our other 2 surfbars do a split with the choice of either a 1:0.5 surf ratio and a small reward for surfing or a larger surfing rewards.

Without giving away to much of what our long term plans are, I do gather that Steve is looking at adding a ticket support system in September and an online payout and records system to replace our current email request payout style.

I will let Steve’s own log (which he hasn’t had time to add to his Blog I gather this week - busy boy tell you what has actually taken place so far.

Come on down and take a look and see why your “Old” favorite will soon join your NOW favorites once more.

With My Best Regards,

Nelson Encarnacio.
Vice President.
Hitharvester.com
Nelson.Encarnacio(at)Hitharvester.com

Changelog journal listed below:
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I can now confirm that I have found another legitimate paid for offer site: Creations Rewards. Approximately six hours ago, I received the following confirmation report from PayPal:

Dear Karl Erfurt,

CreationsRewards.Net just sent you money with PayPal.

CreationsRewards.Net is a Verified buyer.

Payment Details
Amount: $10.00 USD
Transaction ID: x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x
Subject: CreationsRewards

View the details of this transaction online at: https://www.paypal.com/us/vst/id=x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

This is actually the second time that I have been paid by this program. A few months ago, I requested payment by check for $25 and it arrived after about two weeks. The PayPal payment cited above took about four days to complete starting from the time of the initial request.

The main thing that I like about Creations Rewards is that they seem to be fairly liberal in the way that they credit the paid offers. Unlike many of the other “paid for offer” sites, I have noticed that they usually credit the points to our accounts within 24 hours or so, and they do not try to block or reverse the signups.

When attempting to write good website content, it is easy for us to get so caught up in the SEO game that we sometimes forget about the fact that we need to write for actual human visitors as well as the search engine spiders. However, with a good website content strategy, it is possible to create content that is appealing to people while also optimizing it for better search engine rankings. The following tips should provide a good overview of how to accomplish this.

1. You should always strive to write content that is relevant to your site. Avoid posting too much irrelevant material because this can turn off some of our visitors and make it more difficult to build up a regular readership over time.

2. The language of your content should be easy to understand and not too difficult to read for the average visitor. Things to avoid in this area include the use of bureaucratic or businesslike gobbledygook, repetition of the exact same words too many times in one sentence or paragraph, and overuse of obscure or highly technical terms in an attempt to appear smarter than your audience.

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It is tempting for many of us to decry the phenomenon of rampant consumerism in America, especially when we see so many people buying products of questionable necessity. However, this incessant desire for more “stuff” is a large part of what fuels the demand for things like paid surveys. The sheer volume of sales revenues that can be gained by selling various goods to the American consumer markets has become so large that many manufacturers can afford to outsource much of their product testing to specialized market research companies, who then use some of their money to pay people like us to test the products and take surveys about them.

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Michael Kelly, the current “King” of the Royal Surf traffic exchange, has announced some special deals on advertising credits and has also temporarily reduced the price of the new Royal Mage membership from $97 to $79. Both promotions are scheduled to run through August 31st.

Meanwhile, after logging in and surfing earlier today, I noticed that the tweaks for increasing the potential credit awards to the top five kingdoms seem to have been implemented, as the number of points being tallied on the Kingdom Stats page definitely seems higher than it what it was a few weeks ago. Also, the previously large gap between the #1 kingdom and the other four seems to have narrowed significantly, meaning that it is now possible to win more significant amounts of credits at the end of the week even if we do not place in the top kingdom (this equates to the top 20 individual surfers). The details of the special promotion are explained below:

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A person going by the moniker of “Queen Storm” (not to be confused with Stormspotter aka Bonnie Davis) has won the most recent Top Builder award at Medieval Hits. She is the owner of a relatively new PTR program called Castles Gold. I have tentatively joined her program because she is offering a very good advertising deal in a bid to gain new members and get her program off the ground. For only one dollar, you can get 100,000 banner impressions, 10,000 traffic exchange hits, one featured (front page) ad for two months, 10,000 featured banner rotations, and 500 clicks in the PTC section of the site. There is also a drawing for various cash prizes that will be held after 150 ad packages are sold.

Of course, the obvious disadvantage to all of this is the fact that because the PTR in question is a relatively new one, the advertising credits will have a rather limited audience in the early stages of the program. However, for such a low price, the credits can be bought in advance and saved up for a time when the program has more members, at which point the advertising will be worth far more than its initial cost. In the past, I have used this strategy quite effectively with PTR text link ads; if you can get in at the beginning when the advertising is still very cheap, it is possible to gain a substantial influx of traffic and referrals after the program really takes off. Here is the full text of the Medieval Hits update. Queen Storm’s piece begins after the third paragraph:
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Earlier today, after about five days of waiting, I was accepted into the affiliate program at MySurvey.com. MySurvey is one of the better paid survey companies out there and is completely free to join. For those of you who have been searching on the keyword “mysurvey scam”, I can assure you that they are legitimate and are definitely not a scam. In fact, I have been a member since 2004 and have already been paid several times from them. However, if you are actually searching for some scams, you can always check out my Spam and Scam section where you can find several opportunities to waste your time or money.

One of the things that I like about MySurvey is that unlike most other companies in this genre, they always pay you a small amount for every survey even if you do not fit into the targeted interest group that is allowed to continue for the remainder of the survey and earn greater rewards. Most other survey companies don’t quite work like this; usually they will send you a bunch of surveys and when you click on one, you have to run the gauntlet of screening questions and hope that you are able to qualify. If you fail one of the screening checks, you’ll get booted and sent to a “screen out” page. Most of the time there is no reward for this, other than perhaps some lame sweepstakes entries that seldom result in any real cash.

With MySurvey, every time you log into your account, all of the available surveys are displayed on the first page with their minimum point values clearly marked. As you take the surveys, occasionally you will qualify for a somewhat longer questionnaire with a greater reward value attached, at which point you will be given the choice of whether to accept or decline it. If you accept, you will always get the greater number of points as long as you complete the full survey, regardless of the answers given. Sometimes they will also send you free products for testing in addition to the point rewards. Finally, you can also opt in to take surveys by regular postal mail. After you complete these and send them back to MySurvey, they will credit your account with additional points under the “Special Awards” category. The points that you receive as rewards are readily convertible to cash at the rate of $10 for every 1000 points.

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The AdBux pay-per-click program, recently incorporated under the name Incentrum, is now offering a new type of upgrade service that promises to increase the number of active referrals in a member’s account over a 30-day period. Dubbed the “AutoLine”, it allows active members to automatically receive referrals from the program’s pool of members who have signed up without a referrer. It is being sold as a subscription service at the cost of $10 per month, although there does not appear to be any recurring billing involved. Members who reach the end of the 30 days and want to continue the service can make another payment through PayPal from the AdBux site.

Whether this new option will be worth it or not in terms of the referral earnings remains to be seen. The AutoLine is slated to become active at the beginning of September, but members who want to reserve their spots can sign up and pay for the first month starting from today. The latest email update from Zack explains the details:

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AdBux AutoLine is now accepting subscribers. Adbux AutoLine was created because we wanted to offer our members a better way to increase their referrals and build their downlines. This new program makes that affordable and easy for ALL of our members to do! Anyone with an AdBux account can purchase a 30 day subscription to the AutoLine for only $10.00.Ad Alert

The long-awaited Ad Alert feature was launched for premium users. If you are premium, you will see “Launch Ad Alert” on your browse ads page.

AdBux AutoLine Explained

Adbux AutoLine is a 30-day subscription service from Adbux that automatically places un-referred users in your downline as they become available. Beginning today, spots in the Adbux AutoLine will be sold until we reach our predetermined maximum. To ensure that everyone enrolling in the program benefits substantially, we have to keep the number of spots strictly limited. AAL will become active on September 1, 2007. The program is open to all users, not just premium, so that everyone has a chance to maximize their earning potential. Premium members who enroll in AAL will have several benefits, such as earning $1.00 every time one of their referrals joins the AutoLine. Also, we have reserved a number of spots so that Premium members who are interested will be guaranteed acceptance into the program, even if the regular slots are sold out! Check out the link for AAL on your My AdBux page for even more details.

Referral Sales

Referral sales will still be offered, because not everyone can sign up for the AAL. A small percentage of the un-referred users will be available for sale in referral packages which are now offered at 10 refs for $14.95. The days and frequencies referrals will be sold is still being determined, but the current schedule will continue for the remainder of August.

Ads

The amount of available Ads is performing at much higher rates than the Old-NAS, and we are developing several features to increase this number

We want everyone to know that we greatly appreciate the suggestions, emails, and continued support of our members.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, be sure to visit the forums or email us directly by using the contact form on the site.

Regards,
Zack

Incentrum, LLC
665 East Main Street
Lake Butler, Florida 32054

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The Royal Surf traffic exchange has taken steps to crack down on cheaters in an effort to increase the quality of the traffic to its members’ sites. The program has also added a new membership level called “Royal Mage” which is rather expensive at $97 but offers lots of advertising benefits including “personalized service” where the mundane tasks of managing one’s account can be handled by the Admin. Right now, this level is being limited to only 10 members, probably because that is the number of special advertising slots available to these members on the login page:

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Hello Karl;

I want to pass on some important information.

While RoyalSurf promises unlimited traffic that’s fast, fun and free, make no mistake we are very serious about making sure that traffic remains high quality too.

One of our recent moves toward fulfilling this goal was to implement Admin verification of all sites for our Free members. We feel that the trade off in a smoother surfing experience makes it well worth the inconvenience. More importantly, this action seriously impedes those who would waste the hard-earned (or paid for) credits of our honest members.

We’ve also implemented many new script changes which include checking banners against our banned sites lists, checking login IP addresses against our banned IP address lists, and a few other checks that help keep in check dishonest people.

As a result of these changes you may notice some slowdown in traffic delivery. However, the net result will be an overall increase in the quality of delivered traffic you receive.

Some of you may have noticed that the Joust does not start the week with as large a pool of credits as it previously did. This is because we are doing a better job of shutting down cheaters than ever before, and because we’ve adjusted the tournament to potentially provide better prizes to all five of the top kingdoms.

The end result of these changes is that the overall credits given out to all 5 kingdoms have been increased, and it is more competitive too. The top kingdom will still earn a significant amount of credits more than the other 4 kingdoms, but the amount received by the remaining 4 kingdoms can now grow significantly more than before.

If you found yourself among the top 5 kingdoms in the past, but not in the top kingdom, you may have felt it wasn’t as rewarding as you had hoped it would be. Those with the competitive spirit will now find those rewards to be more satisfying now.

Beware my jousting knights… the changes to come in the near future may shake many a knight from their comfy heights. The challenges you’ll face will be worthy of a great knight and I expect many a new knight will arise to the challenge.

On a slightly different note, I want to make sure everyone knows that every membership level now earns redisual traffic from their direct referrals. The more members you refer, who remain active at RoyalSurf, the more traffic you will earn to your sites.

Okay, the primary reason for this email is to introduce the serious advertiser’s membership:

* The Royal Mage *
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Today I had the chance to complete the interactive online survey that I mentioned last week. This time, instead of the usual method where I finish the whole survey and then write up a summary about it later based on my memory of the events, I did this one in a kind of “live blogging” format. In other words, while I was taking the survey, I had this blog open in another browser window and transcribed each topic and question into this post in real time as it was displayed on our interactive survey screen.

This was an interesting little multitasking challenge because I had to keep going back and forth between the two windows, first by clicking on buttons or typing in answers to the survey questions, then typing the questions and topics into this post, and then going back to the survey again to field the next question. While this may seem hectic, I was actually able to pull it off because the survey questions that appeared in the right half of the screen scrolled by rather slowly, with pauses in between each question while the system waited for participants to respond. Fortunately, we were also able to use the sidebar to scroll back up and answer questions that we did not complete right away when they first appeared at the bottom of the screen.

I used quick dashes to mark off each question or statement that appeared on the screen, putting a blank line between each topic. Other than cleaning up obvious typos, I have left the text pretty much the same as what I typed out when we were “live”. Hopefully this will give you a more detailed example of what to expect should you ever get the chance to do one of these.
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