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.
Before you purchase anything online now, ask where the product you want was made. On Amazon you get user answers. On Canadiantire and Homedepot’s website, you might even get the manufacturer’s answer to your question. If the website you are on doesn’t have a question feature, send the seller an email or fill out their contact form. BUT however you do it, ASK THE QUESTION: Where is this made?
Around this household, what you can’t pay for with cash, you pay for with effort. My health is not the greatest, so sometimes the effort needed to provide for myself or to earn the cash tires me out quickly. It isn’t fun to head up into the hills to go foraging and then come down to find myself zapped the rest of the day. But that is my reality. This past summer it was made worse by forest fire smoke in the hills. Allergic asthma means trying to filter out as much of that smoke as I can, but on hot Okanagan days, that means breathing in hot air and on a hike, that’s not fun. The long term rewards for my efforts however will last through the winter months and hopefully into the spring when plants start to grow again. We didn’t get as much as we wanted of some plants this year because of a) floods and b) forest fires hampering my breathing, but we got most of what we need for personal hygiene products, medicine, and teas. We broke down 8 large, heavy pumpkins into pumpkin puree to freeze as a winter vegetable, and roasted several tubs of pumpkin seeds which contain an ingredient highly important for managing my condition! My winter nibbles are more than welcome as a result!
In addition to writing about the family foraging lifestyle change, many articles over the course of 2017 related to another venture known as my bitcoin experiment. That experiment now has roughly just over $100 CAD in bitcoin sitting over at 