Can we trust them? UPDATE 23June Watch out!
Written: Jun 14 '00 (Updated Jun 22 '00)
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I have been a member of Alladvantage since November 1999. I had heard of them well before that but had no really investigated the facts until November. I saw that they where paying 50c per hour and went elsewhere on my searches to never never land.
In November I must have had too much time on my hands so I looked again. Good job I did!!
Alladvantage have a referral program that (with quite a big effort) can make you a regular income. Look at the facts! If your surf 25 hours and you have referred five people who each in turn refer five people, down to level four then you will be paid $4900 per month (everyone must surf the 25 Hours for this).
Sounds too good to be true? It is! Unless you sign up quality people that you know, who will sign up others (who also have to be quality) then the figures are unrealistic.
I have known users who have used it for a few hours then checked their statistics only to see that they have earned $1.50. They then quit! They may have been told that this is easy money. It is not! I have to make a note that even confuses me to this day. The people who quit are generally working in dead end jobs for minimum wage (or little more)?
So what is Alladvantage?
Simple. You sign up and download a piece of software (about 1.7MB). Next install the software and run it. What you get is a "viewbar" that runs along the bottom of your screen, about 1 inch in height. The viewbar receives advertisements which you can either click on to go to the advertisers web site or ignore. Advertisers pay for these and Alladvantage pay out their members and keep the rest. Nice business.
So why do I say can you trust them?
Two points here. There are "cheat" programs that have been widely available for a while. These programs will surf the web for you while you are away from your computer. Now that's easy money! Alas the viewbar programs have become more and more sophisticated and can detect some if not all of the cheat programs. If you get caught they will cancel your account and you will lose your downline of referrals and any money that you have accumulated, but not been paid out.
So what is my first point?
Ok. I have heard of people who deny strongly that they have cheated and had their accounts deleted. In the terms and conditions then can delete your account if they "suspect" that you have been cheating. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty ( or is that a thing of the past everywhere?)? Again look at the facts( the five people who sign up five etc). If you are one of the lucky (and hard working) ones who are getting $4,900 per month, then they have only to accuse you and delete your ONE account to save this amount of money! Makes you think eh!
The second point.
I joined in November 1999 and the "terms" at that time where to surf 25 hours a month for 50c, 10c direct referrals and 5c indirect referrals. They said at that time that they were looking to INCREASE the hours to 40. This month June 2000) I received an email informing me that the USA had been changed to 53c per hour. Yeah! Then reading further, they had cut my hours down to 15. Oh! Now there are advantages and disadvantages to this. If all your referrals are in the US then you will lose money (but you don't have to use their bar as long), but if most of your referrals are abroad where they can surf 30+ hours then you will be paid for all the 30+ hours they surf even though you have only done 15.
Since this has happened their database has been offline and stats are not retrievable. I know a way round this if you want to email me for the solution then go ahead. Oh! it is legal. Anyone worried about not accumulating time don't worry. It is.
Paid for surf (PFS) programs have now exploded onto the internet (some better than others). I will eventually write an eopinion on all I have used. I am a heavy internet user and "max out" on Alladvantage within a day or two, so use another. Collectively I earn quite a tidy sum.
My homepage has 15+ of these PFS's, but if you are a quitter then don't even look. If you have a 17+ inch monitor you can run 3/4/5 of these at a time. How much screen space do you need?
One last statement about Alladvantage. My time always accumulates accurately and I always get paid as promised. The viewbar also has very few crashes (about one every 70 hours or so).
To summarize. I have given Alladvantage a middle rating because of recent events, but will recommend it to friends that i know will not quit. If you quit at the first hurdle then is definately not for you. If you are looking for a moderate income that can grow in time then I think you will make it here.
Software : Free
Sign up: 2 Mins.
Download: Depends on connection speed (about 5 mins at 56k).
Useabilty: Friendly.
Warning : Cheat at your peril!
Footnote: I have a friend who lost his account. He is very honest and sincere and don't believe for one minute that he cheated. When he contacted Alladvantage they (eventually) gave him times and dates that they suspected him. It turned out that he had been using a search engine submitter for his web page at approximately these times. Alladvantage restored his account. They are not being totally paranoid as cheaters will not click on any adds and revenue will fall. That affects us all.
UPDATE 23 June 2000
I received an email today to take part in a member survey from AllAdvantage.
The survey was to change from being paid to having one entry for every minute sufed in exchange for an entry into a $1 million dollar sweepstake!!
Of course I voted in every case AGAINST this. You can get FREE entries to sweepstakes at many web sites, why use their viewbar and not get paid. Tosh!
In Dec 99 they claimed they had 4 million members, a member could earn a minimum of $12.50 (but most have many referrals), but just take to minimum $12.50 x 4 million = 50 Million. Now they are looking for you to surf for free to enter a lottery.
If this happens I will stop using the viewbar totally and forfeit my 120+ referals.
My original title was can we trust them? They have now one of the top ten biggest web sites in the world and they are polling members (THEY are, NOT an independant firm) to give up their earnings.
If you have more than 20 referrals then you become an A+ member and have further access to the site. I can see that some members have over 50,000 referrals and stand to lose ALL their earnings for their loyalty in promoting AllAdvantage. How would you like to lose $10,000, $20,000 in income every month?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
waytogo
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Member: Paul Thurlow
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 2 members
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