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Remember all that stuff that appeared here a few years ago promoting the get paid to surf concept?
Remember all those great rates and promises of good income just by surfing the web? Well, throw it all away. Back when I initially started this get paid to surf page, there were only a handful of companies, and the future looked awfully bright for those companies and those of us who signed up in their programs. It was going to be possible to make thousands of dollars a month just by surfing the web for 50 hours a month. Companies were going to "rent" adspace from us, on our browser windows, and in turn, sublease that adspace to companies wanting our attention. It was based on the premise that the ads would be targeted ads, meaning the companies would get premium prices ($35 per thousand impressions and up), and would, in turn, distribute a portion of that money (up to $5.60 per thousand impressions) to us, the people actually viewing the ads. At one point in time there were upwards of 60 or more companies promoting get paid to surf. But the premise of $35 per thousand exposures evaporated faster than the get paid to surf companies could release their viewbars to the public. CPM rates plummeted, mainly due to a glut of "advertising real estate" available on the web (everyone who had a website was trying to sell banner ads), and because the effectiveness of banner ads had declined dramatically. In the early days, banner ads would achieve clickthrough rates of 2-5%. Within just a few short years, we websurfers learned to "tune out" banner ads, and clickthrough rates dropped to 0.1% or less. Ad rates, likewise declined dramatically. By November of 1999, several of the active get paid to surf companies were reporting that instead of getting CPMs (Cost per thousands) of $35 as expected (or even $12 which would have been barely sustainable), the CPMs they were getting were in the $6-$8 range. Virtually overnight, the promised pay rates plummeted. GoToWorld still advertised 50 cents per hour, but were, instead, only paying out 6 cents per hour. Disaster had struck, even before the companies had turned a profit. Just two years later, CPMs had fallen even further, down to under a dollar per thousand. Currently, bulk ad wholesalers are selling adspace of dubious quality for 10 cents per thousand -- less than one-quarter of one percent of the rates when the get paid to surf first started rolling. The second problem was that of "targeting ads" just never caught on with advertisers. The get paid to surf companies asked members details about their preferences and their demographics, and, the companies who had good programmers, kept track of which websites you visited, in order to better determine which subjects you were interested in, and in turn, sell ads targeted to those interests. Well, the advertisers didn't buy the idea. They knew that people who were running the adbars or surfwindows, or whatever you wanted to call them, wouldn't be paying attention to the ads flashing at the bottom of their screens. They were only doing it for the money. So, targeted ads would end up getting the same level of response as non-targeted ads -- nearly zero. Thus we're left in the situation where there are too many companies with too much ad inventory chasing too few advertisers with far too little interest in the ad campaigns suggested. Companies started slashing pay rates and maximum number of hours to try and stop the hemorrhaging. Red ink flowed freely on financial reports and venture capitalists started cancelling promises of additional funding. So, now, get paid to surf is dead. A small handful of companies are still out there, but they don't seem to mention their payrates. Instead, they try to get you to sign up for "instant offers" where they get paid fees for everyone they get to sign up, and, in turn, distribute "some" of the money to the people who have signed up. Get paid to surf was going to provide people with an easy way of making a lot of money. People who had built up downlines of 6,000 people or more would've stood to earn $30,000 a month or more. It was a great dream. Shame it had to end. |
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