Desktop Dollars: Delivering dollars straight to my desktop
Written: Dec 28 '00 (Updated Dec 28 '00)
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I have been using Desktop Dollars for a little over a month now and I think it has some promise. Desktop Dollars promises to pay its users up to 70% of their advertising revenue. Keep in mind that this 70% consists of what you earn on your own as well as what your referrals earn, not just the former. You will be paid 45% of the revenue for yourself, which is divided amongst users depending on how much they surf, and 25% of the revenue for what your referrals surf. You can get paid for an unlimited number of ads a month!
You have to be at least 13 years old to sign up and if you’re under 18 you have to get a parental consent form signed- this is necessary because of the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) Law that was passed earlier this year. Signing up is fairly simple. Basically all they ask for is your name, birth date, mailing address (to send checks), email address and interests. Desktop Dollars is available only to people of certain countries, including (but not limited to) USA, UK and Canada.
To get paid to surf you have to download a 1.5MB viewbar that displays advertisements when you are connected to the Internet. The one-inch-tall Desktop Dollars bar is by no means ugly, but it hardly has any features- I suppose that explains why it’s so fast and doesn’t crash. Anyway, all it has is a search function and a news ticker. You can remove the ticker from the bar if it bothers you, or you can choose what kind of news you wish to see – Entertainment, Health, Travel etc. I’ve turned the ticker on my viewbar off because I can’t concentrate on my work with it scrolling all the time. Every 15 to 35 minutes, a small window pops up and you have to click "Continue". This is annoying but, at the same time, necessary so that Desktop Dollars can block out cheaters who just start the viewbar and leave the computer. If you like, you can change the look of the viewbar from "Metallic" to "Web" or vice versa. The "Metallic" skin transforms the viewbar into a sleek silver color and this is the skin I’m using right now. The "Web" skin changes the viewbar to green and white but I don’t like this skin that much. The viewbar can be docked to the top or to the bottom of the screen but you can’t drag it around anywhere else. It does not put an icon in the taskbar, but it will support this option in the future.
Desktop Dollars has a six-tier referral system, meaning you will be paid for referrals up to six levels down. For direct referrals (people you referred), you will be paid 15% of the revenue. Level two referrals (people your direct referrals referred) will get you 5%, Level three 2%, and Level four, five & six 1% each. From my own experience I can tell you that referrals are updated immediately, none of them are missed out, and all the ads they view are counted.
The minimum payout amount for US members is $30 while for international users it is $60, or you can set it yourself to up to $500. Payments can either be sent through check or through a Desktop Dollars Debit Card. The debit card is mailed to you once and after that it is credited with your earnings every month and you can withdraw them from an ATM. The account balance is updated every now and then and the number of ads are converted into cash depending on how much Desktop Dollars makes that month. Every week, Desktop Dollars rewards their top users with a $250 bonus! Payments are sent out about 50 days after the end of the month, as that’s when the advertisers pay up.
Desktop Dollars looks like a pretty good contender in the Get Paid To Surf scene. I'd recommend it.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
navinthebean
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Member: Navin
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 46 members
About Me:
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
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