"A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream."
Remember back in 2000 when Oprah told the world how cool 3com's Audrey internet appliance was, and within a year nearly every family in America had one? Man, those things were sweet! Oh, wait...nevermind.
Still, given the success of her book club, I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah did good things for Kindle sales.
The agreement stipulates that calls have to be answered promptly, defined as within 5 minutes. Of course there's a buttload of fine print to cover things like the time callers spend working their way through the automated menu trying to get to talk to a real person, and all the usual things beyond their control...acts of god, acts of war, acts of terrorism (didn't mention acts of war on terrorism), strikes, riots, floods, fires, etc.
Make up your mind. The article seems a little confused about the subject matter. Domain parking is slimy, but assuming you're not paying kids from India to click your ads its perfectly legit.
That's pretty much what the article is talking about. Except its not necessarily kids from India, but housewives from Indiana. Tens of thousands of people, all over the world (although many of these Paid-to-Read sites only allow people from countries most targeted by advertisers -- the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) clicking ads for a few bucks a day.
In some cases, their activities are monitored and they don't get paid unless the owner is making money from their "searches" while in others there's no monitoring or any other form of coersion, but members know what they need to do to keep their gravy train rolling.
Again looking at The-Owl-Post.com it says that there are 4 referral levels, which means those at the top of their own pyramids of recruits can earn substantially more than those at the bottom. If they're involved in promoting enough sites (that Parrish woman said she was in 50), maybe a few thousand bucks a month, at least until the pyramid collapses.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SUPPLEMENT DISABILITY by making up to $85/month, why would you work at a $2 per day job in order to make your $60? Why not work at a $2/hour job, like dog sitting, or a $10/hour job, like babysitting kids for the nieghbors? That way, you could work for one week, make the maximum $85 allowed, and then spend the rest of the month reading or hanging out with your mom. WHY DO THE EXTRA WORK IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Because apparently she enjoys her $2 a day "job" and either can't or won't do things that would allow her to earn more money.
As to the question of whether she's making a thousand a month or not, did you even read the first half of the article talking about the Hungarian guy, "Kiss"? He's claiming to make thousands. Do you really think that this American woman is working night and day, and just (for instance) giving the rest away to the poor? Is she just not collecting any invoices past the first $60?
I don't know--maybe you're right. Maybe she IS a complete retard, incapable of figuring out that she's working in a thousands-per-month business but only making $60, and unable to either bring her earnings up to a reasonable level (for the time she spends on it) or quit it and find another job that will pay her the same income for a fraction of the work. WTF?
Read the article carefully, check out some of the sites mentioned, and you'll see they aren't really in the same business. The income available to those who own the networks of parked domains is much higher than that available to the owners of the Paid-to-Read sites. Check out the advertising rates for The-Owl-Post.com -- for $4.00 you can send an ad to all 2,200 members. If even half of them click on the link, they earn a total of $5.50. Maybe Ms. Ballard "works night and day" clicking ads herself to earn the $1.50 she needs to break even on every ad she sells.
There are tens of thousands of people from all over the world -- not just kids in India -- who are willing to sit at their computers clicking ads for fractions of pennies. On the surface, it all seems reasonably legit. They "opt in" to receive ads based on their demographics and interests, and they earn a small reward for reading the ad and visiting the advertisers website. And at some of the sites, members can play games, post in forums, chat and generally "hang out" together. In other words, they form a little community. But as the article points out, there's a dark side to it all.
Don't be so sure that all these "online sweatshop" workers are in third-world countries. There are large numbers of people in many countries, including the US, Canada, UK, etc. who are happy to "work" for 60 cents an hour, or even less, no matter how boring and repetitive the tasks required. And many of them aren't concerned about issues like ethics or legality.
A lot of it happens in a cottage industry created around what are often referred to as "Paid to Read Email" sites. It's also referred to as the "Get Paid To" or GPT industry. It started with "Paid to Surf" companies like AllAdvantage, and still continues on a much smaller scale today. To get an idea of how many of these sites are out there, a database at GPTInfo contains over 700 different sites.
There was an article about this industry published at Associated Content called The World of Paid to Read E-Mail Sites that offers a basic description of how things work. But it doesn't really look at how these sites can be used to pull off scams like this CAPTCHA data-entry thing and search engine click fraud. SearchEngineWatch describes them as Click Pirates, and in a lot of cases, that's exactly what they are. And they're most definitely not limited to third-world countries.
Slashdot Mirror
"A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream."
Remember back in 2000 when Oprah told the world how cool 3com's Audrey internet appliance was, and within a year nearly every family in America had one? Man, those things were sweet! Oh, wait...nevermind.
Still, given the success of her book club, I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah did good things for Kindle sales.
The agreement stipulates that calls have to be answered promptly, defined as within 5 minutes. Of course there's a buttload of fine print to cover things like the time callers spend working their way through the automated menu trying to get to talk to a real person, and all the usual things beyond their control...acts of god, acts of war, acts of terrorism (didn't mention acts of war on terrorism), strikes, riots, floods, fires, etc.
Make up your mind. The article seems a little confused about the subject matter. Domain parking is slimy, but assuming you're not paying kids from India to click your ads its perfectly legit.
That's pretty much what the article is talking about. Except its not necessarily kids from India, but housewives from Indiana. Tens of thousands of people, all over the world (although many of these Paid-to-Read sites only allow people from countries most targeted by advertisers -- the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) clicking ads for a few bucks a day.
In some cases, their activities are monitored and they don't get paid unless the owner is making money from their "searches" while in others there's no monitoring or any other form of coersion, but members know what they need to do to keep their gravy train rolling.
Again looking at The-Owl-Post.com it says that there are 4 referral levels, which means those at the top of their own pyramids of recruits can earn substantially more than those at the bottom. If they're involved in promoting enough sites (that Parrish woman said she was in 50), maybe a few thousand bucks a month, at least until the pyramid collapses.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SUPPLEMENT DISABILITY by making up to $85/month, why would you work at a $2 per day job in order to make your $60? Why not work at a $2/hour job, like dog sitting, or a $10/hour job, like babysitting kids for the nieghbors? That way, you could work for one week, make the maximum $85 allowed, and then spend the rest of the month reading or hanging out with your mom. WHY DO THE EXTRA WORK IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Because apparently she enjoys her $2 a day "job" and either can't or won't do things that would allow her to earn more money.
As to the question of whether she's making a thousand a month or not, did you even read the first half of the article talking about the Hungarian guy, "Kiss"? He's claiming to make thousands. Do you really think that this American woman is working night and day, and just (for instance) giving the rest away to the poor? Is she just not collecting any invoices past the first $60?
I don't know--maybe you're right. Maybe she IS a complete retard, incapable of figuring out that she's working in a thousands-per-month business but only making $60, and unable to either bring her earnings up to a reasonable level (for the time she spends on it) or quit it and find another job that will pay her the same income for a fraction of the work. WTF?
Read the article carefully, check out some of the sites mentioned, and you'll see they aren't really in the same business. The income available to those who own the networks of parked domains is much higher than that available to the owners of the Paid-to-Read sites. Check out the advertising rates for The-Owl-Post.com -- for $4.00 you can send an ad to all 2,200 members. If even half of them click on the link, they earn a total of $5.50. Maybe Ms. Ballard "works night and day" clicking ads herself to earn the $1.50 she needs to break even on every ad she sells.
There are tens of thousands of people from all over the world -- not just kids in India -- who are willing to sit at their computers clicking ads for fractions of pennies. On the surface, it all seems reasonably legit. They "opt in" to receive ads based on their demographics and interests, and they earn a small reward for reading the ad and visiting the advertisers website. And at some of the sites, members can play games, post in forums, chat and generally "hang out" together. In other words, they form a little community. But as the article points out, there's a dark side to it all.
Don't be so sure that all these "online sweatshop" workers are in third-world countries. There are large numbers of people in many countries, including the US, Canada, UK, etc. who are happy to "work" for 60 cents an hour, or even less, no matter how boring and repetitive the tasks required. And many of them aren't concerned about issues like ethics or legality.
A lot of it happens in a cottage industry created around what are often referred to as "Paid to Read Email" sites. It's also referred to as the "Get Paid To" or GPT industry. It started with "Paid to Surf" companies like AllAdvantage, and still continues on a much smaller scale today. To get an idea of how many of these sites are out there, a database at GPTInfo contains over 700 different sites.
There was an article about this industry published at Associated Content called The World of Paid to Read E-Mail Sites that offers a basic description of how things work. But it doesn't really look at how these sites can be used to pull off scams like this CAPTCHA data-entry thing and search engine click fraud. SearchEngineWatch describes them as Click Pirates, and in a lot of cases, that's exactly what they are. And they're most definitely not limited to third-world countries.