Karlonia.com

According to the latest email that I received from them, it seems that the World Limited Partnership Program (WLPP) will not be accepting any more new members. They don’t really go into specifics as to why this is the case, other than to simply state that they have a sufficient number of people to maintain their current programs.

However, the WLPP business itself is not closing. For current members, everything will remain the same, except that we will not have to worry about bringing in referrals anymore. The Romanian IT center seems to be doing fairly well and has posted profits again this month, although not as much as I would like. WLPP has also launched a new Internet advertising site called worldadgroup.com, and has decided to maintain bidhire.com as a free job posting site.

Meanwhile, Take the Internet Back (TIB), which WLPP partially owns, is still open to new members and is currently running a 50% off advertising special. Emails from TIB have been consistent and reliable so far, although I still need to get two referrals here to fully qualify for profit shares. Updates on a few other affiliated programs are included in the actual email release:

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Hi everyone. Conrad here with some updates. First - we are going to close WLPP and leave it as is. You will be able to login and keep track of everything, including updates, but no one will be able to join any more. We have enough members now to keep our programs going. And now on to other updates.

The IT Center is doing quite nicely and we will have a profit of 0.22 cents US for all of our IT unit holders. That will be added to your accounts within the next few days. We also still have some IT units available, and the info to buy them is down below. We will NOT sell any more after this so please do not ask. There are still 92 units available and they are being offered on a first come-first served basis. Also - do not forget that we offer a 10% finders fee for any work that you refer to our IT Center. A $5k contract could easily net you $500.!!!

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In case you are wondering about the funny title, I actually received a search query from Germany yesterday with the text, “post some owls”. The click came through to my last Owl Post update, which was in the #4 position at the time for this particular search term. I don’t know whether or not the searcher was ever really satisfied with this result, but for those of you who may have landed at this page while looking for information on owls and are confused by these program updates, here’s the scoop.

The-Owl-Post happens to be the name of a PTR (paid to read) program that was founded by Michele Ballard back in 2002. She seems to have borrowed the name from the postal system used in the Harry Potter novels. The program itself really doesn’t have much to do with owls, but it is still a good way to make a little bit of extra money if you don’t mind receiving a few emails and reading some of the members’ advertisements. Occasionally, these ads can be fairly interesting and may lead to other online money making opportunities. For me, the Owl Post (along with several other PTR programs that I joined approximately three years ago) has provided an important gateway into the online advertising and Internet marketing fields, and some of the lessons learned here eventually led to the creation of this blog.

The latest Owl Post program update brings some good news. As of October 29, PayPal payouts were finally caught up all the way through September, bringing them up to speed with the current month. Admin is also considering adding some entries to the cash paid-to-click section of the site by allowing members to redeem for these using their accumulated points or cash earnings. The actual email text has been reprinted below for your reading pleasure:

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The pay-per-click program AdBux, not to be confused with Bux.to and a myriad of other clone sites, has expanded the earning possibilities of members with their rollout of a new “Browse Offers” page earlier today. This is welcome news for me because overall earnings with this program have been quite slow lately. There have not been many ads available to click on, and the ones that do appear often expire quickly because there are so many other members to use up the advertiser’s allotted number of clicks.

However, the new paid-for-action offers, if they are approved and credited properly, will greatly increase the earnings potential and make it much easier to reach the $10 minimum payout within a reasonable amount of time. They are also offering a generous 50% commission on all offers completed by referrals, which may help me somewhat because of my previous subscription to the AdBux autoline.

I have already completed a few of the offers earlier tonight and submitted them for approval. Time will tell whether or not they get approved and eventually credited to the account (according to the site, it can take up to 32 days to actually credit the funds), but if all goes well, I might need to take this program off my “not worth it” list. Meanwhile, you can read the latest email from AdBux announcing the latest expansion:

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The-Owl-Post PTR has released a fairly comprehensive update today, covering topics such as recent payouts, mailer issues, and blog updates.

On an interesting side note, I recently discovered during a Google search on her name that Admin Michele Ballard was mentioned in a rather lengthy Business Week article from October of last year. The topic of the article is “Click Fraud” and the piece on Michele is buried pretty far down on the page. To find it, scroll down until you see the boldface subheading “Korean Clones” and look for the 13th paragraph below this. The next four paragraphs are about our intrepid webmistress. Business Week’s coverage of her was not entirely favorable because of the implication that her program may be enabling click fraud, but they did give her a chance to defend herself and the PTR industry.

Meanwhile, she has finally started to post some “ramblings” on her blog at http://theowlsblog.blogspot.com/ after a long dry spell. During this period, some questionable entries were made in which a few words, apparently from the Spanish language, were displayed as a title, but the posts were otherwise completely devoid of content. More recently, placed in between the entries for October 12th and 15th, a third mysterious Spanish language entry was made, this one containing about a paragraph of actual text for the body of the post. Amazingly, neither Michele nor any of the other contributors to the Owl Post blog have done anything about these illogical entries or have offered any sort of explanation for them. In my opinion, it is probably just some Spam that is being made to look like it is coming from one of the blog’s authors.

At any rate, you can read the program update below, complete with the usual complement of smiley faces and occasional English usage errors:

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World LPP, the investment partnership program that I had mentioned about a month ago, has posted its monthly profits from the IT call center in Romania. The overall returns are a little better than they were last month, and the company is also allowing a few members to sell back their units, thus opening up a few slots for new or current members to purchase shares. Moreover, the WLPP administrators are promising to release some kind of surprise in the form of free benefits to members, but they are not revealing any of the actual details at this time.

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The AdBux program has completed its round of August payouts today, sending out funds to members who had reached the $10 minimum threshold. They have also made some significant changes to the way that premium membership upgrades are handled, making it possible for members to subscribe to this feature one month at a time or pay in advance for 6 or 12 month blocks, thus receiving a discount on the monthly rate.

Meanwhile, subscriptions to the new autoline service have temporarily sold out for regular members, while premium members are still assured of gaining placements and receiving new referrals. My own autoline subscription is scheduled to expire in about four days, and so far its value has been rather questionable. I have obtained 12 referrals from it so far, some which have been semi-active, but the actual monetary gain has only amounted to about 50 cents. The main problem that we are having in making money with this service is not so much the idea of the autoline system itself or even the individual referrals, but the fact that there just aren’t enough ads for my referrals to click on in order to accumulate any significant earnings.

Fortunately, this latest update has brought some hope that there may be some relief from these pitifully low earnings on the horizon. Apparently, the AdBux staff is going to introduce some new options for earnings such as signup offers, paid surveys, contests, and bonus point opportunities. These new features are supposed to be implemented by October 1, and will hopefully increase overall participation as well as the commissions that I am receiving from the autoline referrals. You can check out the details from the program’s latest email below.

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The Owl Post program owner Michele Ballard has updated again today, bringing somewhat favorable news about the site’s financial status. E-gold payouts through July have been completed, while she is still trying to catch up with June payouts on the PayPal side.

Meanwhile, I have managed to build up a little over $25 in my account for this program and still need to formally request payout. Strangely, my internal account here is showing $11 in the “Payments” field, which would normally indicate that I have already been paid $11. However, I do not seem to have received any payments, and I cannot find my user ID number anywhere on the finance page (if I could find my ID there, it might mean that a payment is pending). Eventually, assuming that Michele does not read this blog and does not respond to my post here, I will need to email her and see if I can somehow reconcile this little discrepancy.

The actual update text is reprinted below. Michele didn’t do too badly this time; there is only one major grammatical error (yet another instance of “your” which should be written as “you’re” or “you are”, along with a few capitalization mistakes). Interestingly, she mentions that other members are having problems with some of the major email service providers such as Hotmail and MSN, and is now suggesting that we switch over to Gmail. Based on my own observations from this post about Robert Puddy’s experience with Hotmail, she should also add Excite to the list of unreliable, deceptive, and unfair email providers. And yes, I just switched my email address at The Owl Post over to Gmail earlier today!

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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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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.

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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Sporting four instances of “lol” and five smiley faces, the latest update from Owl Post admin Michele Ballard was sent out today, informing us that she has processed all outstanding advertising redemptions and is beginning to catch up in the payout department. She has also promised to update the finance page, which according to my account page was last updated on June 15.
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