Products – Marilynn Dawson's Musings

March 26, 2019April 24, 2019 Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

Hashing Adspace and Target Markets. Newsletter-Turned-Blog-Post

Hey Team,

I haven’t sent out a weekly newsletter for awhile now, largely because my team is shrinking, not growing. I want to welcome a new member to InfinityMailerBoost since the weekend, don’t forget to confirm your email address and activate your account to get started. There is a little grey box up top in your dashboard and you need to check off as many of those tasks as you can to position yourself for maximum benefit from the system. You even get an additional 300 ad credits for crossing off all eight startup tasks. No reading emails necessary at that point. I’ve already been paid by IMB once so far, so I can tell you they do pay. Instead of sending this out to just a few people, I am making a blog post out of it instead.

A paid ad-earning system that I got in on free back in November, is going to be offering free-to-earn options soon. Hashing Adspace is a different pay-to-click service where instead of earning something up to this point, you mint a new coin in the Asimi crypto-token space. This means buying your first Asimi stake to begin the process. If I had to pay my way in, I wouldn’t have joined right off the bat because their help files were horrendous. Video only, as if most of us are still back in preschool and need visuals to help us along. However, they now have an actual helpdesk thanks to zendesk, and it’s quite extensive! I just had to suffer through without it for a few months. I don’t recommend joining sites without a help system built in if you aren’t the type to click around on your own. I am, but I needed assistance with one major task and couldn’t find help for it anywhere that I could read and reread as necessary.

I muddled through and can tell you that the site does pay. (see payments gallery further down) I am now implementing a plan that will hopefully earn me multiple payouts every month starting in May. If all goes well, this site will eventually earn me a monthly salary that will start paying down bills and debts accrued over the past few years due to health and other issues.

One of Hashing Adspace’s latest announcements is as follows:

– Free earrings (View to Earn)
– Free sign up bonuses (details coming soon)
– Free new marketing materials (new capture pages and follow up emails)
– Free lead generation (for those people included in the lead rotator)
– Free Asimi bonus give away! (Daily prizes)

For people who could afford to invest in the Asimi token, their monthly income is already replacing day jobs and paying for university tuitions according to some of their testimonials being shared in these announcements. I hope to add my own testimonial eventually, as a former free beta member.

If you want to login and check out the dashboard, the helpdesk, and other features, use this url here.

Over at SFI, my weekly newsletters have recently been looking at our target market in our promotional efforts. Who are they and where do they hang out? What are they looking for and does your personal brand appeal to that market?

Today we looked at Lesson #27–PERSONAS and how building a persona of your target market is different than merely using keywords. Now don’t toss out keywords with the bath water, they are still a valid method for tracking down where your target market is hanging out and who is responding to your keywords. Keywords you use for placement in the search engines can be turned into hashtags for use on social media. I see them as helping you figure out who that persona is that you are trying to reach.

Keyword tracking is the tool that helps you in this scenario. Google Analytics, or Bing’s webmaster tools both give you analytics that let you see countries, languages, browser types, length of stay, etc. So if you are finding that your keywords seem to get the most clicks from a particular country, that helps in building the persona of the person you are trying to reach. They are likely to be from that country. That greatly narrows down the data you need to gather next on who your persona is. What do people in that country value? What do they need? What are their aspirations? Do any of the answers to these questions line up with your personal brand? Can you offer what those people long for?

I know I’ve mentioned keyword tracking before, but I had to bring it up again, largely because this is one of those bits of marketing prep that I fail at badly. One of the reasons for that is busyness at my offline end. As a single mother, you don’t always have the time to sit down and really study who you are trying to reach. You’re playing Mom’s Taxi, doing housework, trying to work to pay the bills, buying groceries, etc. Then if your health isn’t the best, that eats into time you could spend studying your target market too. One thing with these traffic exchanges, email safelists and ad viewing earning sites, is that the target market for those is already using these services too. Advertisers for anything from baby care to essential oils to crowdfundraisers to brand new social networks are all trying to get word out. You have what they need right here, with the added bonus that they will be paid for their time spent at these sites as opposed to others they could be and perhaps are already using.

For example, I now have a large single monitor instead of two smaller ones. The two smaller ones died within months of each other. This one is so big it doesn’t fit into the cubby designed for the monitor on my computer desk, so it sits on the armoire’s arm instead. BUT. . . I’ve discovered that on Windows, Start/left or Start/right will snap a window to either the left half or the right half of the screen. So now I have two browsers open, each snapped to the left or right side. Most of my paid-to-use sites are in one browser, while most of the non-paid to-use sites are in the other. I say most, because there are a couple where I have them in the non-paid-to-use browser because of the next paragraph here.

To make sure I get paid for the time I spend marketing and promoting, I will open a paid site in one browser and a non paid in the other, at the same time. I will click back and forth, ensuring that almost every click in the non-paid is matched by a paid click in the paid side. So I match InfinityMailerBoost, BTC Clicks, and CoinBulb on the paid side, with Easyhits4U on the non-paid side. I match Bitter.io with Mega-50 or #1EasyBitCoin on the non-paid side (#1EasyBitCoin is a TE only offering a BTC contest, not actually paid for clicks). I pair AdBTC with Pangea, and AdFeedz with FreeAdvertisingForYou. I’ve been paid once by IMB, 9 times by BTC Clicks, 3 times by CoinBulb, 1 time by AdFeedz, 1 time by AdBTC and I keep InfinityTrafficBoost on the non-paid side because while I earn there (and been paid 3 times now), I check emails, do banking, surf social networks etc while clicking through ITB for the day. Hashing Adspace is also on the non-paid side because there is nothing to pair just a few clicks with. Of all of these sites, Hashing Adspace has the fastest potential to a decent monthly income that is ongoing.

Arranging the monitor for two browsers like this means wiser use of my time than just one browser. I’ve been paid 3 times now by CryptoTabBrowser and use it for most of my social networking, job-related, and paid-to-earn sites, as well as for most of my research. They’ve tweaked their mining algorithms and it appears I am now earning close to 100 satoshi per day in that browser, on an aging computer. I’d imagine newer machines could earn faster. But the fact I can mine and still find the browser working better than Firefox on this aging box, has sold me permanently on the new browser. it definitely is my primary browser now.

March 5, 2019March 5, 2019 Marilynn Dawson Products, Rants, Reviews

Be Careful You Don’t Get Cut by Bleeding-Edge Technology!

I’ve always known that if you are going to get in on the bleeding-edge of something, there’s a high chance you’re going to get bit. As a computer repair tech, I’ve always advised against going with the latest and greatest of anything until at least 6 months into the existence of the thing so as to allow for any major bugs to be worked out of the system, required initial patches rolled into the product, etc. People who have ignored that advice often speak of trouble connecting to peripherals, or losing data, or suddenly can’t use a favourite program or some other productivity-halting complaint. It might be the latest smartphone, the latest OS upgrade, a new laptop with an unfamiliar operating system, etc.

Most of the time I am pretty good about abiding by my own advice. Partly due to household finances, but largely due to my general aversion to risk-taking and wanting to be sure that any move forward is always sure-footed. I like to know what I’m getting myself into before I go there, and that it is largely stable. But in the Fall of 2019, I found myself joining beta-testing for three different online initiatives. Of those three, one got me so frustrated I nearly gave up on it. The bulk of that frustration dealt with the lack of a support system outside of purely video content. I don’t watch TV. I rarely go to the movies. I rarely throw in a DVD at home, as in perhaps once a year, sometimes not even that. If I watch anything on YouTube, it won’t be because I went to the site to watch something on purpose. It will generally be because I was on another site with a video embedded, such as Facebook, the local news website, the national news website, etc. I don’t even watch the news online, I read it. Videos on these particular sites are often the cute kind that I watch, dolphins using a puffer fish as a ball to play with, cats curling up under a dog’s nose, a 3yr old drumming with an orchestra, that kind of thing. So yeah, the fact that one of these three sites was so heavily loaded down with nothing but video content in their help area nearly sent me packing when I really, really, really needed some informational tidbits and couldn’t find them anywhere in text! Did I feel bit??? You better believe I did! Now I’m pretty good at figuring my way around things. I teach people to give themselves self-guided tours of websites they wish to use before they actually use it, so they learn where everything is and what it does. Eventually I figured out what I needed to do, and eventually found help files for the second half of a very important task. But I had such a bad taste in my mouth with the lack of readable assistance that I very nearly hung up on this one.

The first beta test I joined back in the Fall, was for a new social network called Webtalk. Webtalk is kind of a coded-from-the-ground-up mash-up between LinkedIn and Facebook, with a touch of Slack thrown in for good measure. Being a beta-tester there meant occasionally reporting bugs or unexpectedly-missing features to the official business page on Facebook. There is still one feature missing that I am hoping they will implement, but the last time I inquired, other things were taking priority over that one. They are hoping to come out of beta soon, the original date being sometime in March of 2019. Joining is by invitation only until they come out of beta. Users of this social network will be able to earn from ads viewed while sharing data, they will be able to maintain both personal and professional contact lists, sort those lists when creating new posts, and more. The timeline and list of future features is long and some are even patent-pending.

The second beta test I joined was over at AdFeedz. Similar to InfinityTrafficBoost, InfinityMailerBoost, AdBTC, and EasyHits4U, AdFeedz is all these things rolled into one with 6 ways to earn an income while advertising your own site(s). I’ve been paid once by these guys already, and we’ll see how long it takes for the second payment to accumulate.

The third beta test I joined, and the one that very nearly sent me packing, is Hashing Ad Space. This site mashes together advertising earnings with minting a cryptocurrency called Asimi. Asimi trades on the Wave DEX, and the last time I looked, it was around $2.50+ give or take. You can check the DEX to see where it’s trading now. As a beta tester, I got in on minting Asimi by viewing ads, for free. I was also able to become a sales affiliate for free as well. Asimi earned during the beta period could not be cashed out, so I used it to claim an Asimi stake. Staking Asimi decides how many ads you can view per day, as well as roughly how many Asimi you’ll earn per day based on those ad views. For 24 days after Hashing Ad Space left beta testing and went live, I was earning from 2 ad views each day, one being the free stake while in beta, the other being the stake I purchased with the Asimi I’d earned during beta.

Compared to other advertising sites listed so far, viewing a single ad on Hashing Ad Space earns much faster, because you aren’t “earning” per se, you are “minting”. Because Asimi is an in-house token for H.A.S., it isn’t useful to you until you exchange it on the Wave DEX into a currency you can use elsewhere. The value of Asimi therefore, is stated either in BTC on your HAS dashboard, or in USD in your HAS wallet. The Wave DEX lets you sell your Asimi for any other type of coin or token however, so you can view the index to see what a single Asimi is going for in whatever currency you prefer.

The day came near the end of February when I wanted to do a test of the cashout system. I hadn’t had a chance to do this during beta, so it took the period of having 2 ad views per day before I could test this feature. This was where I ran into the lack of anything written down that I couldn’t quickly figure out on my own. Two days later, and a fair bit of frustrated correspondence with my upline, I finally got the withdrawal made into the Wave DEX, the exchange done into BTC, and the BTC sent to the wallet I prefer to use (because it earns me interest). During this time, I was so certain I was ready to throw in the towel, that I didn’t mint for a day. I thought it was a couple days, but my graph only shows one day’s minting missing during that troublesome few days.

A few days after that scenario, word came down from the site owner that a support system was in the works and should launch Monday March 4th. Monday was a busy flurry of household activity so I didn’t get a chance to check for the new support system until today, March 5th. HAS has set themselves up with Zendesk, and have a very nice text-based support system now! Plenty of graphics are included to guide people along who need a more visual cue added to the text. This means that those who prefer to watch videos can. Those who prefer to read can, and those who need the instructional screenshots, can have those too.

Whew!!! Oh my word! This computer repair support tech can finally tell you about a system that finally has decent support built into it! There is one benefit to me getting bit by that problem instead of you. While I had to proverbially apply bandaids to the cuts sustained on the bleeding edge of this particular bit of technology, you don’t have to. Barging trails as a kid meant I got the thorns in my sleeves while those behind received fewer to none of them. The same applies here.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t give you this breakthrough until AFTER HAS left beta. This means if you want to join me in minting Asimi with just a few ads per day, you need to purchase Asimi stakes using your own money to begin with. You’ll need a Wave DEX account, install the desktop app so you have access to the support website from the info area under the gear in case you need assistance using the interface, and you’ll need to fund your country’s currency into that asset in your Wave account. From there you can buy a Wave token or two to handle Wave transactions. After that, you can trade for enough Asimi to purchase one or more Asimi stakes. Each stake right now is just under 56 Asimi. When you create your HAS account and click on Asimi Stake, you will get a more exact count of how many Asimi you need to purchase for one stake. Go back to your Wave account and trade for that amount. Return to your HAS wallet and fund it with your Asimi from Wave. Go to the Asimi Stake tab and purchase the stake(s) you want.

After those steps are completed however, you can put a plan together that has the potential to earn you a decent income minting Ads on HAS. The best part of your plan will include the fact that your initial out-of-pocket expense has been reduced to mere transaction fees now over at Wave, and no further fiat currency needs to be used going forward. In fact, further Wave tokens can now be purchased with Asimi, just be sure you still have Wave token bits available to handle the transaction fee for that.

My own plan is to earn enough for another stake and purchase that, then earn enough for minimum cashout. Then earn enough for a third stake, then earn enough for minimum cashout. I plan to repeat this cycle until I am earning roughly $100 USD per day in Asimi, and depending on how things are going at that time, I may continue the “purchase, then cash out” cycle. There is a contest going right now for anyone who can get themselves up to 25 Asimi Stakes. The first group to get there will win the contest. If you are reading this later in the year, that contest may be over by now. You’ll have to check if other contests are going.

As noted earlier, I generally don’t get into bleeding-edge situations, but I did with this one. I think if support stayed solely with nothing but video content, I would have had strong thoughts about walking away, because I can’t promote something I can’t support. Either that, or I would have begun doing what my upline was doing, which was writing out his own written help files.

What I can say about Hashing AdSpace, is that they are definitely paying. They deliver what they say they will, and I have my payment proof to prove it. Stars denote dates and times, and where the Wave title is on the dark theme of the desktop app. Now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing when it comes to cashing out, those dates and times should be closer together in the future.

December 19, 2018 Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

AdFeedz Review from Songdove’s Viewpoint

(Note: Article contains affiliate/referral links, and title provided by AdFeedz to comply with review guidelines)

Have you ever used a traffic exchange that let you add as many website URL’s as you wanted? What about a mailer that let you send emails to however many people you had available ad credits for, no minimum? How many free ad services out there let you put up a login page full-page ad without paying for an ad pack first?

Now add in presentation features such as those found on 1popeasy and AdBTC, and throw in an earning system reminiscent of InfinityTrafficBoost but with significant differences, and you have a brand new traffic exchange system that just launched November 16th 2018.

Currently, surfing or reading until you have 10 points (1 for every 10 sites or emails surfed/read) earns you as little as 3 cents USD to 7 or 9 or even 15 occasionally. Payment however, is offered via BTC if you prefer once you reach $10 minimum cashout. At the moment, you can take advantage of an introductory bonus offer that will potentially give you up to $2.50 just for following the tutorials around the site via the purple bar on your dashboard. Everyone can earn even if you don’t build a team of surfers under you. The surfer’s pool is open to everyone. In the month since I joined, I’ve earned $1.61 myself, and a total of $3.14 overall. I didn’t complete the tutorials as that meant purchasing an ad pack, so I only received $1.50 of the introductory bonus.

One major difference between AdFeedz and other services linked above, is that when you run out of ad credits, your URL’s are paused until you click the green arrow to enable them again. This means that after every surfing session, you need to check your various listings to re-enable them manually. I give Traffic Exchanges 100 sites per day if I have the time to do so each day. This earns me anywhere from 100 to 500 ad credits depending on which surfing option I choose: frame/tab/reading, and how many ads are available in each option.

Surfing ads via frame earns a single ad credit for every site surfed. Surfing via tabs earns 2 credits for every site surfed. Reading the text offers earns a whopping 25 ad credits for each text entry viewed. This kind of makes AdFeedz both a traffic exchange and safelist in-site mailer all-in-one. The only other “all-in-one” site that I currently recommend is FreeAdvertisingForYou, but while they have a ton of advertising options, they don’t pay you to surf. AdFeedz does.

AdFeedz is also not staying static. Since I began to write this blog article, they’ve already added more features, including a cash-links feature where you can earn without also earning ad credits. So if your focus is about earning and not promoting anything, you can do that too.

It’s only one month since I joined, but so far the system is easy to use and unique in its presentation. We’ll have to see how long it takes to cash out. If you want to cash out sooner and earn from building a team under you, you also need to purchase ad contracts as they call them. These purchases open up several other group-style earning opportunities on the site, including commissions earnings.

If you’re looking for another advertising platform that pays you to use it, this is definitely one to check out.

November 20, 2018 Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

Review of Services That Pay You For Your Time – and a new kid on the block

Getting paid for the time I spend online has been a wish of mine for several years now. It is FINALLy a reality! Let me count the ways:

1) InfinityTrafficBoost: This is a traffic exchange that lets you have one website URL, several banner ads and several text ads as a free member. For every 4 sites you surf, you earn a full credit for someone else to see your site. You also earn a surfer reward pool share for every 10 sites you surf. This share gets used to calculate your earnings at midnight every day.

2) InfinityMailerBoost: This is a safelist mailer with a difference. Credits you earn are calculated so that half the credits you have, are used to send to the number of members you wish to send to. A full credit is earned for every four emails you open and click through. You earn a mailer pool share for every 10 emails you open and click through. If you want your email to show up in the site’s “read messages” area and not merely in people’s inboxes, you need to send above a certain amount. This amount changes occasionally with site activity.

This means I can do free credit-based marketing AND get paid for it! Cool!

3) CryptoBrowser: My 12yr old computer can finally start earning it’s keep while I surf online regardless if I’m fixing a remote computer or dong social media or reading the news or checking on balances. My 12yr old system doesn’t earn me much, but it’s something it’s elderly cycles can now contribute.

4) Webtalk: My time spent on social media will finally pay me for the data I volunteer by using the site. This is supposed to happen over at FuturePro where I used to be a member, but the social media portion of their online web presence needs so much work I could no longer promote the social media side of the business. When my account was hacked, there was no easy way to change my password or security settings either, and I don’t think I received any assistance from the attempt at contacting technical support. Needless to say, I am no longer promoting them as a way to be paid for your time on social networks. I want my recommendations to be useful, reachable, and safe. I am able to say that with Webtalk, so I am trying to move my contacts over there.

I’ve been part of webtalk for roughly a month now. I’ve been using the CryptoBrowser since late August, but wiped out my earnings due to forgetting to log in. Don’t forget to log in to save your earnings! I’ve been a member of InfinityMailerBoost since May and am looking forward to being paid for the first time soon. Hopefully before Christmas. I’ve been a member of InfinityTrafficBoost since a year ago August and could have been paid 3 times, but so far have been paid twice instead, as I’d been allowing the system to purchase ad packs on my behalf to begin with.

My earnings don’t just sit around doing nothing either. I send BTC earnings over to Freebitco so that they will earn me daily compounded interest. They pay 4.08% annual interest. You don’t have to be a gambler to use the deposit feature. If that’s the only aspect of the site you use, that’s fine. I am not a gambler either. If you play the faucet on the main page, you do earn reward points that you can cash in on various bonuses, or even gear if you accumulate enough.

I now try to time various tasks on the computer so that I have an earnings page open on one screen with unpaid activities occurring on another screen. This way, my time spent online is renumerated in some fashion.

A new traffic exchange has entered the ad credit/pay you for surfing, space. This site will pay you via BTC, Payoneer, or SolidPay, so you are shown your earnings in dollar value, not BTC. It appears they stole some of their ideas from InfinityTrafficBoost, but are unique enough that the co-founder of ITB is endorsing it himself! This site is called AdFeedz!

Similar to ITB, you earn one point for every 10 sites you surf. Those points are used to calculate your share of the surfing pool which is paid out at midnight. Whereever this site’s server is, midnight for them is 4pm for me. Midnight for ITB is 9pm for me. Unlike ITB, Adfeedz gives you a 5-to-1 surfing ratio so that your site gets seen for every 5 credits you earn while surfing. You earn a full credit for every site you surf. Also unlike ITB, you can have any number of website URL’s, banners, and text ads as a free member. They offer a site rotator, but as a free member you are only allowed to create one rotator. Premium members can create more. Currently, they have a new sign-up bonus of up to $2.50 that you claim by walking through their guided tour. I am stuck on their stop on tour where they teach about earning from team groups. But to claim that portion of the bonus, I have to purchase an ad contract first. Otherwise, I earned $1.10 going through their guided tour to that point. I have since earned another $0.087 cents surfing roughly 116 pages. Just like ITB, the amount you earn per point varies depending on member interaction with the site.

I am so glad, and relieved that I am finally locating services that let me get paid for the time I spend doing various things online. I hope this list is helpful for you too, knowing that you don’t have to be wasting valuable time getting stuff done online when you can now be paid for it instead.

October 24, 2018 Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

The Rabbit Vs The Turtle. . . Who Won This Time?!

What follows today, is part of a newsletter I recently sent out to my teams at Infinity Traffic Boost and Infinity Mailer Boost respectively.

Among the ways to get publicity for your product or service, is something we call “Word of Mouth”. This used to be the main way offline marketing was done years ago, for much of humanity’s existence too. Meeting people, who meet people who meet people who all send you business. Modern technology has taken us back to those circles through social media where we can now video chat or see snapshots of people’s faces while we chat with them via text or voice about our opportunities. They then get excited about it and tell their friends and so on.

Of course word of mouth is not the only way to get publicity for ITB or IMB. One method has become a thorn in Google’s side as a search engine. This is known as “link-backs”. The original idea was that reputable, well-trafficked sites would link back to you via an article you wrote or some interaction they had with you. Unfortunately, this concept quickly digressed into full-on link pages we now call “free-for-all link pages”. Some say these FFA’s work well for them in drawing in the crowds. Other people never see traffic from them at all because their link might be visible for a day or just hours at best before they scroll off. Google won’t index them much anymore because there is really very little human-readable, human-useful content on these pages beyond pages and pages of nothing but links.

However you choose to go about obtaining publicity for your business or opportunity, be sure it’s reputable, be sure it’s honest and truthful, and be sure your association with other content doesn’t tarnish your business reputation or that of the company’s. “Guilty by association” is a thing, and a very serious thing at that. So be wise. There are many reputable sites and methods of obtaining publicity. The best way is blogging and sharing your blog articles around. If you know how to blog, you can start writing about your favourite feature or aspect of your business or opportunity. Starting off with a review is a great beginning. A few months later, blog about the results you’ve been seeing if you are tracking your hits from various sources.

For example, I just had another SFI sign-up from ITB at 12:34am PST last night. ITB continues to be the best use of my marketing time and effort! I sent out a massive safelist mailing to almost a dozen different safelists totaling well over 45,000 recipients in one afternoon’s efforts. Now if I do the math I’ve been taught in some of the marketing materials out there, 1/10th of those recipients may actually open the email. Of those, perhaps 1/10th might click on the link in the email to get their ad credits earned. Carrying on, maybe up to 1/10th might respond to the offer or product or read the blog article. So 45,000 becomes 4,500 which becomes 450 which becomes 45 people that might take action. To my knowledge, the results of that particular campaign, as wide-reaching as it had the potential to be, might have only sent me TWO sign-ups roughly 2 weeks after I’d sent out the campaign.

By comparison, surfing just 100 sites every day nets me just 25 guaranteed views to my site URL every day or roughly 750 views in a month, and I just had a sign-up. In fact, due to the time of day I’ve been surfing the past month, I haven’t been getting a full 100 sites surfed before the server clock rolls over to the next day, so this particular sign-up was taking place with less than 750 views of the promoted link! Sure we get paid here to spend our time using the advertising services of ITB and IMB, but the greater benefit is seriously how responsive the general user-base is!

These kinds of details are what other marketers and promoters are looking for. They want to see results! I get results here! Getting those results requires a daily commitment to sit there clicking through ads to get your free ad credits and earn your daily satoshi at midnight. But that determined effort, as boring as it might be to some of you, is what gets results. Truly, slow and steady wins the race! A safelist campaign to over 45,000 potential eyeballs all sent out in a few hours versus obtaining only 750 eyeballs over the course of a month. . . well, we know who the rabbit is and we know who the turtle is now don’t we?!

To me, this advertising service is well worth sharing with family who are in business, friends who are in business, acquaintances who run business, etc. Of course if they don’t want to spend the time surfing, they can purchase ad packs to get the eyeballs instead. Those sales are what keep the company rolling.

October 5, 2018October 5, 2018 Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

There’s a New, More Complete Social Network in Beta Out There!

With the growing discomfort people have with Facebook over recent years, I’ve occasionally kept an eye out for other social networks that might replace it. I’ve tried a few in the past and they all had problems one way or another. Some had next to no privacy settings. It looked like Facebook but acted like Twitter. Others had severe operational problems, such as comments on a single photo being propagated across all photos in an album. Those that let you create groups often had weird setups that didn’t seem to have any security built into them. A closed group was still open to the public too. Others that let you create business pages had strange ways of managing them and those tools sometimes overlapped your personal profile unexpectedly.

I finally had a chance to test another one recently. I could have tried it a few weeks earlier, but at that time it wouldn’t accept a hyphen in the middle of my domain name. However, it finally let me sign up using my own hosted email address. The ability to create groups or pages isn’t present in this network, nor is the ability to create photo albums, although I think it’s safe to say that most social media users don’t do that anyway. I’m always surprised when friends will comment on a set of photos, seemingly oblivious to the fact they clearly state they are part of a larger album. Needless to say, this one omission honestly won’t be missed by most people I know because they never used it in the first place.

The real plus in this new network, is how your contact list is managed. For starters, it’s not called a “friends” list. For me, friends are friends, co-workers, acquaintances, classmates, camp or church buddies, etc. The contact list at this new network is divided between professional and personal lists, allowing you to share certain things with each list. I thought I would try adding a friend who signed up for the service a couple weeks ago, and I had the option of adding her to either list. I added her to both, because we are both friends and professional colleagues.

When you create a post on the service home page, the default privacy setting is in bright orange, and says “public”. Click the dropdown arrow beside this setting, and you can choose if you wish to share it with your professional list, personal list, or just yourself (such as in case of making a note to yourself about something that no one else needs to see).

This new network has been in beta since 2016, and this Fall apparently went through a number of upgrades to the system. The polish that is on the current system leads me to believe that new features won’t be added unless they are as complete as the developers can make them. The presentation of the site does not lead me to believe this is a pre-written downloadable code package like so many others out there. If it is, then the developers are doing an amazing job customizing it to suit the inventor. However, judging from tidbits slowly showing up in the zendesk help area, this site is being built from the ground up. I like that!

When the network comes out of beta, a full-featured affiliate system will kick into high gear immediately, as will a purchasable upgrade to pro feature. This feature is in direct competition with LinkedIn, offering similar search and communication options for those who want or need that functionality.

Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, you can’t create groups or business pages, at least not at this time. The road map available on the founder’s own profile page however, does have these things listed as future additions. Groups however, sound very different from what people are used to on FB or LinkedIn. They appear to be more along the lines of groups of people you can contact, much like how you send emails to groups of people.

Adding to your newsfeed is done from the home page as well, not from your personal profile. This isn’t to say your personal profile isn’t important, it’s VERY important! If you are business-minded, use this as your CV and fill in as much as you can. If you are here to socialize, fill in the parts you want the public to know and leave the rest. However, the site does say that if you wish to receive commissions in the future, you should complete your entire profile one way or the other.

Part of completing your profile is obtaining 10 contacts for your lists. Again, unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, this service is currently invite-only. There was a time when Facebook was invite-only too, back when it was just a Harvard-only social network. But I remember the year it stopped doing that and went public. Whether or not this network goes public in the future remains to be seen, but for now, it is invite only. As such, you have two links you can share: Your personal profile, or your referral link. Because of the potential for future earnings with the site after official launch, you want to put your best foot forward. Building your list now lets people try out the system for themselves and if they approve, start bringing over their friends and colleagues. If you want a piece of the Internet Marketing Income pie, don’t skip this!

Many people are disillusioned with FB now, and are looking for networks that respect their privacy, respect their freedom of expression, and don’t censor them for having conservative or liberal viewpoints. If you know people like this, then start rebuilding your contact list here:

April 19, 2018 Marilynn Dawson money-saving tips, Products, Reviews

Infinity Traffic Boost Update 9 Mo Into Using the Service

Update report on how InfinityTrafficBoost has been doing since I joined in early August 2017:

Marketing efforts online can take anywhere from one to three months to get decent trends developing that one can work with. I spent most of the past year more focussed on the earning side of surfing than I did on the marketing side, although a free member does have their share of links and banners they can promote on the traffic exchange. However, in the past several months, I began noticing trends that I found rather encouraging on the advertising side of life.

Courses I’ve taken in marketing for on and offline efforts generally state that you have to show someone something at least 7 times before they take action. These courses also teach that you need at least 1000 views to your product or service online before you start seeing action. Some say in more recent years that this number has ballooned to 10,000 views or more. This is due to the fact that so many more websites are out there and so many more viewers to get over to your site who are now largely jaded by most advertising.

Safelists are coming back into vogue in a huge way to get human eyeballs back on company advertisements. Traffic Exchanges have become another big item on the scene again, to get real human beings viewing ads and websites once more. Many offer 2:1 or 4:1 or other odds whereby a free user of these services can get so many other eyeballs sent to their site in exchange for the number of sites that user surfs themselves. Safelists offer free members so many email sends in a week whether once per day, once every 3 days, every 5 days, etc. Some offer as little as 1 credit per email viewed while others offer up to 50 email credits per email viewed.

I am a free member of over 12 different safelists, several classified ad sites, and InfinityTrafficBoost as the only Traffic Exchange that I am actually working. I think I joined a couple others, but with ITB not merely giving me credits to send other surfers to my site, but also paying me to surf, I got spoiled and only really hang out there compared to the other TE’s.

But as I was saying, recent months began showing trends that I wanted to share today. The first is that I get, on average as a free member, roughly 750 views per month to the various links I’ve put up on ITB. The main link goes to SFI and is the one actually being surfed by other members as they participate in the TE. While I was getting sporadic sign-ups to SFI from my safelist efforts, I could go for up to two months or more at a time before anyone would sign up. Meanwhile over at ITB, I am averaging roughly 2 sign-ups to SFI per month! That totally blows those marketing stats I mentioned earlier out the window!

A friend of mine recently signed up in April 2018, and is promoting her husband’s blog. Hardly a week into using ITB, she reported that Google Analytics was saying surfers from ITB were spending on average, 2+ minutes each at the blog link she’s promoting. Now keep in mind that an ITB surfer must sit at each website for 15 seconds before they earn another .25 ad credit and work toward their surfer reward pool shares. A free member can earn up to 25 full ad credits per day minimum, and up to 10 surfer reward pool shares that pay them at midnight EST every day. With those stats, my friend got excited and asked if she could surf more than her 100 daily sites. I replied that yes, you can, as long as you understand you will only get paid on the first 100 sites.

There’s more to InfinityTrafficBoost than what free members can do for sure! Advertisers can purchase any of 11 Traffic Package Options (TPO) and each one lets them advertise more links the higher they go, and purchase more ad credits the higher they go as well. One of the co-founders of ITB recently began doing comparison research to see how ITB’s traffic packages compare to other traffic exchanges out there and discovered that ITB’s prices are anywhere from 30% cheaper to over 50% cheaper than many of the TE’s he’s already looked at. In addition, advertisers wanting to save even more money can now make use of a brand new feature on the site called “The Ad Credit Auction”. This is where surfers make accumulated ad credits available for sale starting in 1000 ad credit increments, for prices well below ITB’s usual TPO pricing. Of course all you’re buying at the auction are ad credits. No additional link capabilities come with it or other benefits. But the potential for purchasing human views of your site drops significantly in this auction room.

I got thinking recently myself, that ITB will now be attracting two types of users: The earner, and the advertiser. Earners can advertise, and advertisers can earn, with 80% commissions possible, but each type of user will have a larger focus. Advertisers can even turn off the earnings capability if they choose, in their settings. This step alone boosts the number of eyeballs they can get on their websites.

My own focus is primarily on the earnings side of things. if I can find 4 active referrals who will do their 100 sites every day for a month or more, the snowball will start roughly 30 days later and then I can start working my way out of debt! Earnings are in BTC, but can be paid out in Etherium or Litecoin. Coinbase, the service ITB uses to pay in BTC still has high fees even though other places have dropped theirs to almost nothing, so ITB is recommending users get paid in Etherium or Litecoin and then exchange that to BTC to send to their primary wallet. Qoinpro is a good place to go for those kinds of transactions by the way. I’ll be making use of their services in this regard hopefully soon.

I could have cashed out in BTC within a month or so already, but decided to take another stab at “TPO my way up” which lets you automatically purchase TPO’s based on what you’ve earned, rather than purchase out-of-pocket. If I can find 3 other active referrals between now and the end of June, that will be great. Otherwise I’m looking at my first potential cash out this coming summer. If I hadn’t been attempting the TPO my way up method all last year, I’d have cashed out twice by now. But the months where I only accumulated my earnings instead have been some very interesting months on the advertising end of things!

If you want these stats for yourself, sign up here using my referral link. I’d love to have you on board!

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 Marilynn Dawson Products, Saving Money - Groceries

End-to-End System for Earning, Saving, Growing, Spending BTC!

As I prepare to type tonight, I am busy in InfinityTrafficBoost doing my 100 site surf routine for the day. The rest of what I am about to type about today however, begins with the earnings that Faucet Ally has netted me since March of 2017. It is my goal to get ITB doing the same thing and ITB has the higher opportunity to do so in a far safer fashion. In addition to the faucets originally listed on Faucet Ally, other contributors were found that are also paying. These have been added to the end of the Faucet Ally page.

(NOTE: Image links are provided tonight because it seems my server isn’t always serving them to you, sorry for any hassle, but wanted to show you certain pics today)

I am now at click 57 in ITB because I realized this blog article couldn’t be written till I updated Faucet Alley! Eesh! To complete one task, another has to be completed first. Kind of feels like the domestic life of a house wife, compute repair tech, or network administrator! The job’s never done. Or so it seems.

Since March, I’ve been on the prowl for active, useful ways of spending what I earn. Contrary to most BTC investors out there, I am actually wanting to use this as a form of currency that benefits my family. The incredible rise in value over the course of the past year hasn’t hurt the effort either. At first, I was going to stick with Xapo’s wallet because they have an integrated BTC debit card. That changed when I discovered they don’t ship to Canada. I am Canadian, so sadly, Xapo’s usefulness came to a screeching halt in this house! I continued my faucet earnings, found BTC PTC sites that paid decently and added those to the daily mix, and continued my research.

Eventually push came to shove and I had to do something to keep my HPConnect InstantInk subscription paid up. That was when I discovered Uquid. At the time, they had a virtual credit card you could pre-load after sending over BTC to your Uquid wallet. I sent over half my earnings at the beginning of August and had enough for two month’s payments in USD. Uquid’s provider suddenly stopped working with them, sending the company scrambling for a new card provider for their customers. I had to go get a pre-paid gift Mastercard to keep things rolling in the interim as I could no longer use the virtual card.

https://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/files/2018/01/IMG_00000097.jpg

Continuing my earnings efforts meant earning back what I’d had before August by November 2017. December would be the moment I’d been waiting for! Uquid found another provider, AND this time, their physical card shipped to Canada!!! YES!!! I completed my application for a physical card on December 20th and sent over half my earnings to cover the cost of the card. Shipping is free BTW! The Christmas holidays came and went and I sent in a query about the status of the card because it wasn’t showing up on my dashboard. I sent that on December 30th. The card arrived January 2nd! Apparently, while the status had not been updating, the application had been approved and shipping took place during the New Year’s holiday weekend! I was so surprised when DHL Courier showed up on my doorstep that day!

Going to buy these items with this card — https://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/files/2018/01/20180109_142938.jpg

Today however, I got to test the card at a POS terminal at a local thrift store. My daughter didn’t like the idea of me testing at a gas pump or grocery store, although I intend on using my BTC for that too. So we went to Value Village and picked up a few items that were on my “to get” list. I need to replace my cookie sheets, so we found one on the shelf today and grabbed it. Turns out its insulated! Nice! I’m also looking for a knitting hoop so I figure out how to knit grass. If the experiment is a success, I will have a new way to make baskets while I try to reteach myself basket-weaving in general. Rest assured, there will be blog posts here about that journey as I continue learning how to do things at home to cut costs while living better than if I was spending money I don’t have downtown. Also found a replacement lid for my medium-sized saucepan. So it was off to the till.

Screenshot-2018-1-9 Uquid card UQUID — https://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/files/2018/01/Screenshot-2018-1-9-Uquid-card-UQUID.png

I don’t know if it was the card’s chip, or the card terminal, but the terminal claimed the chip couldn’t be read. The Uquid card comes with Tap-to-pay enabled, so I tried that instead and the transaction went through flawlessly. It should be noted that the card’s currency denominations are in USD. They don’t have CAD in their list of currencies supported for everyday transactions. This made me curious how my transaction list would look when I got home and logged into my account.

The transaction was listed as having been successfully completed, but the card balance was higher than I thought it should be. That’s when I remembered the exchange rate between USD and CAD. But even with the fee Uquid charges to handle that exchange on the back-end, I was pleasantly surprised to have basically earned on that purchase! See screenshots for details.

math balance — https://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/files/2018/01/mathbalance.png

I earned roughly $1.22 in exchange, fees included, from today’s purchase. As I click through site 87 on ITB, I am quite happy with that discovery!

Needless to say, I have found a very workable end-to-end system for earning, saving, and spending BTC! The bigger way to generate the earnings is through InfinityTrafficBoost. The savings account earning interest is through Freebitco.in, and the spending wallet/pre-load card is over at Uquid. I invite you to check out the presentation I’ve created showing the steps to engage in to make this all happen for your household.

https://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/files/2017/08/10stepsbanner.png

BTC pay to click and ITB will be the better ways to earn going forward. I am still earning via a quartet of faucets I still keep active, but now I’m only doing it a couple hours or so per day instead of spending all day doing it. These sites also let you obtain referrals and then reward you for their efforts, so that can speed up your progress exponentially if you are the type to rope in family, friends, coworkers etc.

But I sit here a very happy clicker, techie and single mother as I recount for you the path from nothing to something to spending. You read that right, I did not spend a single dime on this path! Not one! Not even a digital penny went into any of this! All I’ve invested is my time. That’s all it can take for you as well, just your time. So as I click through site 97 on ITB, I will close off the writing portion and start adding my graphics to show you what I’m talking about today. I’d love to have you join me on this journey!

(PS: Pics are now added as I click through site 117 toward my 12th pool share as a TPO2 advertiser, again, nothing out-of-pocket for what I am doing!)

August 4, 2017August 4, 2017 Marilynn Dawson Products

When the Digital Intersects with the Offline World

It isn’t quite how I envisioned it. . . I’d dreamed of taking out my cellphone and opening the camera. I saw myself change the settings to video and then hand it off to my daughter as I prepped to open the envelope. My dream had me talking on camera excitedly about the trip to the store I was about to make, then we hopped in the van and ran off to the store. My dream continued with me picking up a few items then going to the self-checkout where the camera’s video function was turned on again. I dreamed of that moment when I punched in the card’s PIN and pulled out the receipt, triumphantly announcing that I’d just bought groceries with my BTC debit card!

No. . . it’s not going to be that way. Instead, in order to keep my HP Connect Instant Ink subscription going, I am needing to obtain a debit card that has a virtual number rather than strictly physical as is the case with the XAPO card I wanted to get. As of tonight, I have begun a slow transfer from freebitco.in over to the wallet of this virtual card. We’ll see how that went by morning. If successful, I’ll be able to order the virtual card tomorrow morning and then update my payment settings over at HP Connect Instant Ink to maintain my monthly subscription. Doing this makes the cost of ink so much more manageable and the printer gets used for everything from resumes to printing to music.

On the plus side, thanks to the meteoric rise in value of BTC, the faucet earnings I’ve accumulated since mid February’s experiment began will be enough to pay for at least two month’s worth of this subscription as well as fees for use of the card and exchange rates from USD into CAD. So it’s nice to know I have accumulated useful coin that can have a real-world benefit to this household even if it isn’t a bag of groceries at the store. Still looking at that keychain flashlight I posted about earlier as well, but ink is a little more important at this time.

Hopefully, if all went well, I can post an update to my FB page saying HP Connect InstantInk is saved by the bright, shiny new world of Bitcoin!

April 26, 2017October 18, 2019 Marilynn Dawson Budgeting tips, money-saving tips, Products

6 Habits of the Wealthy – a Low Income Perspective

I read an interesting article on CTV News last night! The lady was talking about the attitudes of the wealthy and was impressed that most wealthy people she interviewed, discussed wealth outside the terms of money. Whenever money did come up, a list of generally accepted mindsets or attitudes began to develop and she shared them in her article here:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/5things/pattie-lovett-reid-engage-in-these-6-habits-of-the-wealthy-1.3374225

<br /> When I read this list, I was suddenly amazed at how my own family often accuses me of having a poverty mindset! I had to add my own thoughts to the author’s 6 main points in the article above. Before writing these out however, I showed my daughter this list and asked her how many of them are present in our home. She responded with “most if not all of them”, although current finances prevent us from enacting one of the sub-points in this list. It hasn’t however, stopped us from trying in the past, nor will it stop us from trying in the future. Here are my own thoughts. Anyone who has purchased my course “The Poor Man’s Budget: a Five Week Course – Learning to live within your means” (paid link) will recognize some of these points.

Change your money mindset: Have a positive attitude, increase your knowledge base, have goals and get disciplined ~ This begins by being thankful for what you have and following that Biblical concept that if you have two of something, give to him who has none. It can be tempting to hoard when you are financially struggling, living below the poverty line, or desperately battling debt. But if you honestly end up with more of something than you realistically know you need (not want), giving it away to someone else in need also contributes to a more positive attitude.

Sweep away your financial dustballs or myths:
a) Self worth equals net worth (Clearly it doesn’t but some might think it does) ~ I run into many people who believe this lie. Your self-worth is not found in things, nor in others around you. Your self-worth is found in the One Who made you! Your self-worth is found in Jesus Christ. Believe what He says about you in His Word and lack or plenty won’t affect your view of yourself. Secondarily, look after yourself no matter how much or little you have. You can always use water from a public fountain to wash up in the morning if you live on the streets. You can brush your hair and straighten your clothes. Walk with purpose rather than ambling aimlessly. Shake hands firmly and meet people eye to eye when greeting them. Don’t let life’s problems define who you are. Everyone, rich and poor have issues they battle with. Hold your head up and don’t let your particular issues drag you into the dirt.

b) A little debt never hurt anyone (Yes it will) ~ Financial advisors will tell you on one hand that it isn’t wise to get into debt. They will turn right around in the very next sentence and tell you to get a credit card so you can build up a positive credit rating. They will then go into detail about how to manage that credit card so that you ideally never slip into debt. Human nature, being what it is, will invariable see the credit limit, see an emergency, what Christmas approach, and decide to spend just a little bit more than they can pay off at the end of the month. They will justify it by saying now they have a debt load against which to build that credit rating, because creditors will see the monthly efforts. Now this is true to a point, but it will come back to bite you eventually. Yes, unfortunately the modern financial world won’t sell you a car or house if you don’t have positive credit ratings, but a little debt has and will continue to hurt people.

c) I need at least $1 million to retire (No, you don’t) ~ What you need is to assess the lifestyle you want when you retire, what would it cost now and what is the current inflation rate? Based on that inflation rate, how much will you need to have in savings when you retire to lead that kind of lifestyle month by month?

d) I need to be a math major (Also, not true) ~ No, the above calculations are basic math. Addition and multiplication and maybe some division. If you graduated grade 6, you have what it takes to figure out the previous answer.

e) I don’t have enough money to start investing (How about $25 a month?) ~ Most people can afford at least $25/mo. Those living on fixed incomes may not be able to however, nor those living below the poverty line, but whenever possible, it is advisable to set aside even $5 a month if you can manage it. What I find in our household is that I can get up to $3 or $400 saved up, then an emergency comes along or income takes a dive and I need the funds to buy gas and groceries. I am looking forward to the day when income is steady and I can get that savings account above that particular threshold.

f) It’s too late for me to start building a nest egg (No it isn’t, and retirement could last a third of your life) ~ It’s true, you can start saving at any age, the earlier the better, but any time is a good time as long as it is sooner to your present than later.

g) Personal finance is all about investing (It is so much more encompassing: debt management, insurance, retirement planning and more) ~ The biggest point in personal finance, is budgeting based on what you are regularly earning at the time. Then learning to stick to that budget. Failure to get this step down will make any other financial management task more difficult.

h) I can do it alone (Maybe, but start by asking for help) ~ If you understand how to set money aside and not touch it, if you know about TFSA’s or RRSP’s already, sure, go it alone, but be almost religious about the plan you put into action. Asking for help often involves paying an advisor for their time or using their ongoing services from which they get paid a commission. If you can’t afford to pay someone for help, start small and work from there.

Eliminate the spending habit: Live below your means and ditch your bad debts ~ Hear, hear!!! This is the second worst problem I am seeing among those who claim to be struggling in their finances. They still visit the corner store regularly. They still buy cookies and candy bars regularly and sugary or other unhealthy food choices when grocery shopping. They still think they can engage in bad habits that cost them anywhere from $200/mo to $500 or more and they wonder where their money is going! Newsflash! You don’t need that jacket on sale when you have two others at home already. You don’t need sugary drinks or foods when because you are struggling, you need healthier food options instead. You don’t need to waste gas with extra-curricular activities when you can’t afford the gas to begin with. Start walking more. Cancel the Cable TV subscription and watch all your shows online. If this step isn’t mastered, the previous ones will all be derailed by some justification to spend!

Create a savings habit: Pay yourself first ~ See the previous comments about saving and spending.

Embrace the investing and compound habit: Learn more to earn more and compound your earnings ~ This may be where you want to ask for help, but in a standard savings account, if you leave your money there, the interest accrued will compound based on what stays in the account, previous interest and all. This can work in your favour.

Choose a destination: Get real and set goals ~ Revisit this entire list, master the other points and when you get to this one, write down those goals. In a quick-fix, instant-access society, long-term gratification seems like punishment. But if you can get over the need to spend and start actively saving toward your goals, you will discover the pride and personal joy in having achieved those goals on your own! Start with small goals that you can reach if you are disciplined in a month. Say perhaps you can get $25 put aside into savings. Reward yourself with a hot bath that night. Say perhaps you went for three months putting that money aside? Take $5 and go buy a booster juice smoothie (remember the poor spending point above). Say perhaps you managed to maintain your new saving regimen for an entire year, take $20 and go have pizza! These examples are merely for savings goals, but you might have other goals, like paying for a college course, replacing a dieing vehicle, maybe even owning your own home and saving up for a down-payment. Once you realize you can meet your smaller goals, these larger ones will become easier to achieve and you’ll have the necessary patience to see them through.