Most of you have heard about the HasOffers affiliate marketing system if you’ve been around the industry recently. It’s taken a giant leap forward in the way affiliate marketing systems are structured and priced. Now I haven’t fully reviewed the HasOffers system as of yet, but I’ll be getting to that soon.

As for now HasOffers has recently mentioned in many press releases for their new client-hosting solutions for advertisers and networks who are looking to get into affiliate marketing. The press release can be found here: The Future of Referral Advertising.

My Quick Two Cents:

I think HasOffers has honestly changed the game here with this new dedicated hosting system. If I read correctly (mind me if I didn’t, it’s a little late), you’ll be able to host the affiliate system on your own hosting server which is provided by HasOffers. I believe that other systems such as Direct Track and Link Trust make you host the system on their servers which can be a complete disaster at times. As I remember a few times this year the whole Direct Track server has crashed more than once, leaving many frustrated and losses in revenue. So in reality these DT and LT systems are hosted on their servers, but with this HasOffers hosting it’s technically YOUR server, it’s just brought to you by them. I’m a little fuzzy though on the fact that if your HasOffers dedicated hosting server goes down, will it affect all the other ones? If it does, is it that much different than DT and LT which host it on their own servers?

Even though I have my own pros and cons about HasOffers (which will be saved for a later post), I believe that this is another step in the right direction. They have already helped lower prices all around for affiliate systems, so maybe we will start seeing a few more changes with this press release.

You can learn more about HasOffers at www.hasoffers.com.

Quick up date concerning ExpressRevenue which is now eSynergyMedia.com. Looks like they adapted a linktrust script also and are going in the non incentive direction. Don’t blame them, they had way too much trouble and fraud with incentive publishers. Here is the email I got from them a couple of weeks ago:

It is with much bittersweet frustration that The Express Revenue Team comes to you with this e-mail today. While the contents of this e-mail will dissert the current and future plans of our network, please remember that it was only because of you—our dedicated and committed publishers—that Express Revenue has been able to sustain it’s place in the affiliate marketing industry and succeed as a network.

After nearly 14 months of continued business, ER will be entering into a period of transition while we evaluate and modify the current vertical we are operating in. We have stood witness to the volatility and constantly transitory nature of the incentive marketing business, and have been affected by these industry traits a few times in the past year. [NON-INCENT PUBLISHERS WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BY THIS E-MAIL, AND BUSINESS WILL CONTINUE AS NORMAL].

Now with this said, ALL incentivized campaigns will cease operation on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 12:00 AM (Wednesday at midnight going into Thursday). Please note this date and try to have all ER incent links removed from your sites and marketing campaigns by this time. Final payment statements will be generated on October 1st and will cover ANY and ALL outstanding balances you may have. In addition to any currently outstanding payment invoices (whether still pending, approved, or previously denied), these final statements will be reviewed and ALL unpaid commission will be disbursed on October 15th. If you had a previous payment statement that was denied for either a missing W9 or under $50 in commission, please send an e-mail to Accounting@ExpressRevenue.com and we will have this approved.

I’ll be removing them from the affiliate reviews soon and updating that list also. A lot of those companies are either no longer incentive or just don’t have any incentive campaigns.

Quick hint for all you facebook marketers. I found a way to select all your facebook friends so you can invite them to your fanpage or event or whatever else there is. Here’s how you do it:

1) Go to the event or fan page.

2) Click “suggest to friends” or “invite all”

3) In the same URL bar up top, put in this code and press enter:

javascript:elms=document.getElementById(’friends’).getElementsByTagName(’li’);for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === ‘object’){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

4) Now say “OMFG IT WORKED! SHAZ IS AWESOME!”

Oh no, don’t thank me, it was all this guy:

Source: http://funkyplumbo.com/2009/04/21/how-to-invite-all-your-friends-on-facebook-to-your-event-in-one-go/

I noticed that I never really gave FSRevolution a review, even though I have used it for a long time on some of my other incentive websites. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I’ll just cover the main points of the script.

On the FSRevolution website it states these features for it:

Admin Side

• ADMIN HOME
  View a quick “to do” list: flagged items, pending support tickets, credit requests, account verifications, orders, spam reports, and credit exceptions.
• STATISTICS
  View some stats about how your site is doing. View commission earned for offers, amount of orders shippied, and profit for each site you’re running. See the top ten earning users on your site (in terms of both orders and offer commission). Also see which of your affiliates has the most offer credits and is earning you the most money. You can also see the top ten most credited offers on your site (in terms of number of credits and commission)!
• ADMIN CONTROL
  Manage admins and what they can access as well as what they’re notified of: support ticket replies, order approvals, credit requests, etc.
• MANAGE SITES
  Manage all of your sites from one central location! Create a referral, points-based, cashback site or even import an existing site from another script: IRS, RAFS, or FSRS. You can then define properties such as the site’s title bar, header image, offer requirements, percentage of points received from referrals, and number of orders allowed. Also define what countries your site is open to and what prizes are going to be offered on it.
• MANAGE USERS
  Search for a user a variety of ways: by e-mail, IP, user ID, address, offer completed, and many more!
• CROSSCHECK SYSTEM
  Crosscheck users on your sites with any other site that uses FSR – make sure you’re not being frauded!
• MASS E-MAIL
  E-mail all of your users at once with important messages.
• QUICK USER ACCESS
  A toolbar at the top of every page allows quick access to any user by their ID, e-mail, zip code, or admin notes.
• VIEW/EDIT USER
  Shows global user info, users with matching passwords, last login, IP log (users with matching IP’s), offers completed, notes (left by admin), total amount of prizes received, W9 status, ban from support tickets, and details for each site the user is registered on: status (place on hold, remove from hold), change prize, verification report, referred by, completed offers, offer clicks, issue manual credit, credit requests, referral information, registration IP, logged IP’s, open/closed support tickets, and admin messages. Place a user on You can also manually credit offers or reduce the prize requirements (issuing a credited referral). Also send messages to the users that will appear on their status page. You may also change a user’s referrer, change a user’s prize on an order, or assign a prize offset to reduce the amount of referrals or points a user needs to receive to place an order.
• VERIFICATION REPORT
  Check for fraud when a users submits an order for approval. The user’s password, IP, and address are all matched against existing users to check for duplicates. If there are any matches, that user’s information is displayed as well as what offers they completed. A log of the user’s profile changes is also shown and that information is also checked against all existing users to check for matches.
• MANAGE ORDERS
  Manage any orders for users whose account has been approved – view details of order and change status from here.
• MANAGE AFFILIATES
  Add and Edit affiliates you use for offers. From here you can enter CSV information as well as postback information (instant crediting) so the fields are automatically recognized when offer credits come through. Also offered is the ability to mass add offers through Mass SQL lines (if your affiliate offers it).
• MANAGE OFFERS
  Add and Edit offers for your sites. A grid of checkboxes allow you to add/remove an offer to/from all sites with a single click. You can also edit offer details, including switching to a different affiliate. If this affiliate has been used for the offer previously, the old data for that affiliate will automatically be reloaded for that offer. You can also specify a range for credit time, as well is if there is a money-back guarantee. Also sort and filter offers through a variety of methods: by affiliate, payout, or site.
• OFFER CATEGORIES
  Create categories for your offers to organize them further. Users will be able to display and sort offers by their category on the user side as well. This is useful if you have offers that are only open to certain countries or if you have a couple offers of a certain type (gambling/casino offers, free trial offers, etc.).
• OFFER CREDITING
  List offer credits on your site and export the data you’d like to a CSV file. Manage pending credit requests and process CSV record. Processing a CSV record allows you to choose an affiliate and a CSV file to upload (or a textarea to paste the information into). If the commission from the offer has changed from what it originally was, an admin will be notified so that credit values can be adjusted if desired.
• CREDIT EXCEPTIONS
  If something goes wrong during an offer crediting (through postback or CSV) such as a bad user ID, offer ID, or invalid IP attempt, the attempt is logged and shown. Also, if the commission for an offer is higher or lower than what was expected, this is logged as a credit exception and an admin is notified.
• SUPPORT TICKETS
  View and Reply to support tickets – display filters include all tickets in date range: all, today, yesterday, last 7 days, month to date, last month, year to date, and last year. You can also display only open or closed support tickets, as well as if the last post is by a user or an admin. We also offer canned reponses so you can quickly respond to questions that pop up frequently.
• ORDER RELATED MESSAGES
  Mark support tickets or admin messages as being relevant to an order so that when it comes time to verify a user, this relevant information will be displayed as well.
• GENERAL OPTIONS
  Configure the name of your network, the default terms of service, default privacy policy, support e-mail address, support AIM screenname, support MSN screenname, referral link variable, how long the user’s cookie should last, whether or not to hide completed offers, as well as a maintenance mode for your site.
• STATUS MESSAGES
  Edit the specific messages that are associated with the statuses of orders, credit requests, and hold reasons or even add new customized ones.
• CUSTOMIZABLE E-MAIL MESSAGES
  Customize the e-mail notifications that are sent to both users and admins.

User Side

• GLOBAL REGISTRATION
  Each user has a single login for all of your sites which can easily be extended to any other site in a few clicks. International registrations are also supported!
• PUBLIC OFFERS PAGE
  Before a users register, they may now view a list of offers without having to log in!
• STATUS PAGE
  All of the information you’ll need all in one place: referral status, credited offers, order status, credit requests, messages from the admin, and a scratchpad to save notes about ongoing trades.
• STATUS BAR
  A bar at the top of every page which lets you quickly see your status from all pages: referral status, offer credits, and any new support ticket replies or admin messages you may have.
• PROFILE
  Change your profile information and account preferences here which include auto-notification of: support ticket reply, admin messages, offer credit, referral signup, referral status change, account status change, and order status change.
• OFFERS
  Easily sort and view offers all on one page: display instant, one-day, or all credit times, partial, 1 credit or more, or all credit values (as well as point value), free, money back, or all offer costs. Also sort by offer name, credit time, cost, or date added. Or only view offers in certain categories (Casino Offers, Free Trials, etc.)
• ORDER
  View the status of existing orders or place one if you’ve met the requirements. If you have enough referrals for a prize with lower requirements those prizes will be displayed and you can easily switch to that prize with a single click. If one of your referral’s is placed on hold or has an offer credit removed, your order status will temporarily be set to Denied. If you obtain another referral or the user’s hold is removed, your order will automatically be re-submitted for approval. You may also place multiple orders if the site allows it.
• SUPPORT
  Create support tickets, credit requests and view their status all from one page. You can even close your own ticket if you find you’ve answered your own question.
• CREDIT REQUESTS
  If a credit request’s status is changed to “More Information Needed” the user will be able to edit the same credit request to add more information and resubmit it without having to create another credit request.
• CONSTANT STATUS UPDATES
  All support tickets, credit requests, and orders have status updates that occur at each stage. Find out when an admin has read your support ticket, or your credit request has been sent to the affiliate, or when your order was shipped.
• REFERRAL INFORMATION
  Now you can tell how many offers your referral has completed, not just if they’re green! You will also be able to see if a referral is on hold and for what reason.
• REPORT SPAM
  If a user is annoyingly spamming their referral link, report them to the site and let the admin deal with them.

Yeah all that good stuff makes FSRevolution seem like he god of incentive scripts right? Well lets see what you think about it after I give you by review about it. Let’s start with the Good Features of FSRevolution.

The Good:

• Very Easy to Use - honestly, after you’ve installed the script and all that good stuff, the script is pretty much self explanatory. You get alerts for support tickets, orders, etc in your dashboard. Once an order has come up it shows you all the information pertaining to the user who ordered and their referrals. FSRevolution has really made it easy for even a hobo to open up an incentive network.
• Automated Postback – Basically everything is almost automated. Once you add the correct affiliate settings and offers you don’t need to manually credit anyone. It just happens on its own which is a BIG relief. Some might think it’s a little difficult for adding offers and affiliates, but I have made that a little easy for you guys by posting FSR Direct Track Postback Setup.
• Fraud Alerts – FSRevolution does a great job implementing all the tools you need to check fraud. It records every IP and also checks for multiple IPs of users throughout the network, multiple credits, multiple information matches, etc.
• Central Admin Panel – If you are a person who likes to create a bunch of websites, well FSRevolution lets you do that and have all the websites under one central admin panel. That means that you don’t need to check into 10 admin panels to get all the tickets and information, it can all be under one.

Those good features give FSRevolution a competitive edge over their competitors. But with all that good, I still want to sometimes strangle FSRevolution and do away with it.

The Bad:

• Slow As Hell – If you have about 500 users, FSRevolution is perfect for you. Now if you have anything over 1000+ users, you’re screwed. FSRevolution cannot take anything more than 500 users, it slows down immensely. Sometimes I had to sit there and press refresh about 10 times for about 30 minutes just to get into a users account information so I can check their account and pay them out. One time I had to have one of my users make another account because I could not get into for days. FSRevolution is @#$%ing SLOW!
• Not very customizable – Look at all the FSRevolution websites, do you notice a similarity? They all look the same. It is very hard to distinguish yourself from your other FSRevolution competition. Not only that, the whole script is encoded so you can’t add any features or make any changes. This is for security purposes so FSRevolution isn’t nulled (basically cracked), but that hasn’t stopped hackers from nulling FSRevolution.
• FSRevolution Support Is GREEDY – Yeah, you heard me. They are greedy. For every little thing they will charge you. You want to add telesign to control fraud? Cough up some money. You want support after one year? Cough up some money. You want users to have signature images? Cough up money. There’s a story behind this for me, which I will tell you in a little.
• Support Sucks – Honestly, support sucks @$$. Support is so slow, there have been times where it’s screwed up on me for no reason and I’ve had to wait a whole day just to get a response. And then the response isn’t even all that helpful, so that’s more time I have to wait. Hey Chris (FSRevolution owner), in case you didn’t know, time = $$. K? Thanks. About 75% of the time I’ve had to ask close friends for help who have fixed the problem for me, not FSRevolution Support.

As you can see the bad honestly outweighs the good. And as for the story I mentioned about FSRevolution being greedy and sucky. Here it is:

Well a couple weeks ago I had a problem with FSRevolution that I asked support to help me out with. They told me to update my FSRevolution, but I know that there was a simple way to fix this without updating it because the same thing happened to a good buddy of mine. Plus, if I wanted to update it, I would have to renew my support package and I didn’t want to pay money for shit support.

So my buddy tells me that Chris from FSRevolution actually told him how to fix this problem by going into the cpanel and fixing something. Well I asked Chris about this, and of course he said he didn’t know what my friend was talking about and that there is no simple fix, the only way to fix it is to update FSRevolution. Oh really Chris? Is that it? Or is it that you saw my support package was expired and you just wanted more money from me to give me the simple fix. On top of that, he told me that if I wanted to continue getting support I’ll have to renew the support package, otherwise he can’t help me out.

Here are his exact words:

Since your updates are expired, that means your support is as well, so even if I did have a database fix for this (which there isn’t – the template files HAVE to be updated as well), I still wouldn’t be able to do it since you don’t actually have a valid support package with us right now.  You’re going to need to renew that either way.

–
Regards,
Chris Ham
FSRevolution

I was about to rip his asshole for lying to my face and being so greedy, but instead my buddy helped me out and fixed the problem for me. This buddy has the full support package that he does not have to renew, so that’s the reason Chris was helping him.

So as of right now FSRevolution isn’t on my good side because of the slow script and horrible support. If you have any comments and reviews about FSRevolution, please do comment below and let everyone know!

I’ve been getting many emails by readers asking me how to create  their own incentive-GPT-freebie website and instead of answering everyone I just thought I would create a post on it.

I’m going to simplify these steps as much as I can so it’s not hard to understand.

6 Easy Steps On How To Create Your Own Incentive Website, GPT Website, Freebie Website

1. Think of a good domain name that will be easy to advertise and pretty much explains your website. Register the domain name and get proper hosting. Examples of good domain names include the words “incentive, GPT, or freebie,” such as something like freebiegifts4umylove.com, GPTsitathomeandchill.com, or incentiveguruhollaatchaboy.com.
2. Buy one of the popular incentive scripts, such as FSRevolution, Shiftcode, or AuroraGPT. I’m sure there are many out there, but those are the most popular ones. Upload the script to your website.
3. Go to a popular freelance website and find yourself a freelance programmer who can make your incentive website design, AS WELL AS INSTALL THE DESIGN FOR YOU. Make sure you agree that they will integrate the design in your script.
4. Sign up for affiliates that have incentive campaigns. Check out my affiliate reviews for that information. Add the campaigns that they have to your website. If you need to figure out how postback and everything works, for Direct Track affiliates visit FSR Direct Track Postback Setup, for other affiliates contact your Affiliate Managers.
5. Advertise your website in forums, on google, on other GPT websites, anyway possible.
6. Monitor your users in case of fraud and pay out your users ON TIME!

Got more questions? Comment below.

Check out MyBrownLife.com, it’s a very funny website pertaining to the lives of Indian, Pakistani, and other “brown people.” Who falls under the term “brown people?” Well basically anyone who is from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Middle East, and other countries. “Brown people” also includes Hindus, Muslims, and all other sects.

MyBrownLife doesn’t really try to offend anyone. Hell I would know, I’m considered “brown” myself. And you better believe that I have submitted some funny posts pertaining to “my brown life,” no pun intended!

If most of you don’t know yet, the lives of Indians, Pakistanis, and other brown people is very hysterical. I’m sure most of you have heard of the arranged marriages, hilarious Indian accents, the strict parents, and many more things that make us brown people who we are! Well what MyBrownLife tries to bring is humor to all the situations that all brown people go through. Trust me, brown people are funny! And their lives are even more funny!

What really makes MyBrownLife.com unique from every other website with the same theme is that on MyBrownLife you can submit not only text posts of funny brown people, but you can also submit pictures of funny brown people and videos of funny brown people!

To understand what MyBrownLife.com is really about, check out the About Us page below:

We all know that brown people have an interesting and humorous life. Who do we mean by brown people? Well, first look at your skin, if your skin is any shade of brown, we’re talking about you. Second, if someone has ever called you “Apu Nahasapeemapetilon” instead of your real name, we’re talking about you. Third, if your parents are planning to marry you off to some rich, gas station tycoon brown guy who is about 10 years older than you, we’re talking about you. If people compare your body odor to the smell of curry, we’re talking about you.

Last but not least, if you resemble our friend Raj in any type of way, we are talking about you.

Simply put, we are talking about all the people of South Asian decent. This may include, but not limited to, people from Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Middle East, and any other place “brown” people are located.

We are in no way trying to be racist and do not condone racism in any way, we just think that the best way to come together and appreciate our differences and similarities is through humor. Whether it be through texts, pictures, or videos, we are just looking for a good laugh pertaining to your “brown” life. To us, humor is the universal language.

So sit back, relax, and start reading some funny stories about the events that are either happening in your life or happening to the people around you. And when you remember or come across something that is humorous and can contribute to our community, don’t hesitate to submit it!

You gotta admit, Raj from MyBrownLife.com is one sexy looking brown guy! Don’t act like you haven’t seen people like him floating around, he’s one cool dude!

Here are some of my favorite posts from MyBrownLife:

Funny Brown People Text Post:

Today, at the movies, my dad looked at a movie poster with al pacino and said, “look, beta, there’s al cappucino.” He was serious. MBL.

Funny Brown People Text Post #2:

Today, I watched Titanic with my parents and covered my eyes when the red head stripped down naked. I’m 30 years old. MBL.

Funny Brown People Picture Post:

Oh no sorry, you must be mistaken. This is “Mohinder’s Lisa.”

MyBrownLife.com – Funny Life of Indian’s, Funny Life of Pakistani’s, Funny Life of “Brown People”

Funny Brown People Picture Post #2:

In India, “Just Do It” has nothing to do with sports.

MyBrownLife.com – Funny Life of Indian’s, Funny Life of Pakistani’s, Funny Life of “Brown People”

Funny Brown People Video Post:

Old but classic. “My dog, she kicked it, and now I’m going to f**k her!”

Funny Brown People Video Post:

The real prank was that the guy on the right convinced his two friends to wear a long skirt while filming them.

So if you’re looking for a a good laugh about the funny, humorous lives of Indians, Pakistanis, and other “brown” people, check out MyBrownLife.com today!

Heads up: CPAFlash is a new affiliate company that I have not personally tried myself yet. All I’m doing is informing my readers about new companies out there instead of the ones I have in my Affiliate Reviews. Once I try out this affiliate company and feel as if they are legit and worthy, they will be added to my reviews. Until then, I would like publishers who have used this affiliate company before to speak out and let us know their personal reviews about them.

I stumbled across CPAFlash while doing my regular everyday web surfing routine. I normally visit many websites and forums to try and stay up to date with the industry. The President of CPAFlash, James Smith, was kind enough to give me his perspective on his company and what his company strives to achieve.

Hello, my name is James Smith and I am from CPAFLASH affiliate network (www.cpaflash.com), which is a division of Revenue Vision LLC. We started the affiliate network in Feb , 2009 and since then we are growing immensely. Recently, we launched incentivized campaigns including exclusive free trials, High payout Email/zip submits, ringtones and gamble offers.

Currently we have more than 100 incentivized campaigns with high payout rates.  We offer fast payout periods, such as net15, biweekly and weekly, which are based on the volume and offer categories.  Welcome to join CPAFLASH and check  out our incentivized campaigns. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at james@cpaflash.com , aim art jamescpaflash and call at 1-701-231-8697.

Thanks and have a great day!
James

Personally I haven’t tried CPAFlash at all, but they do have a few exclusive campaigns that are just calling out my name saying “Shaz, won’t you come try us? You know you want to. Just do it. Come on.” Yeah I’m a little weird aren’t I?

Anyway, from the first glance of CPAFlash you can tell they use the LinkTrust Affiliate Platform. Their homepage looks pretty decent, they have the skyline view of Manhattan which is something I truly love since “I Love NY!”

James keeps in touch with me regularly and answers all the questions I have. I might be trying them out pretty soon so if I do I’ll report back here and let all of you know what I think about CPAFlash. In the mean time, if anyone has tried out CPAFlash please do give us your honest review of them down in the comments area.

As many of you should know that sometimes when your users complete campaigns (offers), the campaign does not convert properly. This can be caused by many reasons, but many believe it can be caused by not clearing cookies and other small steps that help the campaign convert properly.

How much do these steps and techniques really help? One can never be too sure. For all we know it might do absolutely nothing, but then again it can be that one small deciding factor that lets the cookie register your sale.  I just treat them as one of those folk stories that everyone just knows and follows. Like when I was little my mother used to tell me if I left one shoe upside down something bad would happen to one of my family members. Did I believe it? Eh. Did I obey it? Hell yes.

This simple step by step guide is what I have available for my users so that they can read and follow these instructions to help with their conversions. If you want to create your own that closely follows mine, go ahead. If you want to completely rip it off, well go ahead because it’s not like I can really stop you now can I?

Crediting Guide by Shaz from Best Incentive Affiliates

To ensure you receive credit, please follow the instructions below and remember you must complete step 3 before completing each offer:
1. Disable all pop-up blockers
Internet Explorer
1. On the top of the browser, click on “Tools” and then “Internet Options.”
2. A new window should pop up. Click the “Privacy” tab and uncheck the “Block pop-ups box (if it is checked), and then click “OK.”
Mozilla Firefox
1. On the top of the browser, click on “Tools” and then “Options.”
2. A new window should pop up. Click the “Content” tab and uncheck the “Block pop-ups box (if it is checked), and then click “OK.”

2. Accept all cookies
Internet Explorer
1. On the top of the browser, click on “Tools” and then “Internet Options.”
2. A new window should pop up. Click the “Privacy Tab” and there should be a bar under “Settings.” Lower the bar to “Accept all cookies.”
Mozilla Firefox
1. On the top of the browser, click on “Tools” and then “Options.”
2. A new window should pop up. Click the “Privacy” and then the “Cookies” mini-tab. Make sure the “Allow site to set cookies” box is checked and the two boxes below are unchecked. Also make sure the setting “Keep cookies” is set to “until they expire.”

3. Clear your cookies and cache before completing EACH offer
To automatically clear your cookies and cache, download CCleaner from ccleaner.com. This software is free and with a click of a button, clears the cookies and cache off your internet browser cache. If you choose not to download CCleaner, you can manually clear your cookies and cache with the instructions below.

Internet Explorer
1. On the top of the browser, click on “Tools” and then “Internet Options.”

Hey! Anyone remember me? Yeah you know, the weird looking brown guy who has many incentive websites and claims to be awesome?

Ok good, glad I haven’t been forgotten!

I know I randomly disappear for a while and then all of a sudden come back with updates and other helpful tips, but I can’t help it that my mind always thinks of creative and new ideas that I have to pursue. Anyway, I am back now and I should be updating frequently as I have found a way to manage my time a little better.

Let’s update everyone on the incentive/freebie/free stuff/anything with the word free industry. Just a caution, I tell it how I see it, so if I’m wrong about something then just correct me or if I forget something then alert me. So before I went on my hiatus, Free Lunch Room (FLR) was on it’s way down, Anything4Free was in the same position that it has always been, which is getting small traffic but a loyal user base, and Calistyle101 was upcoming with new ideas to generate forum traffic.

Forward couple months into the future to today’s date (9/4/09), Free Lunch Room is maintaining its traffic, although I have a feeling it’s more of them logging on and socializing/worshiping Leo Shimzu instead of trading now days. Anything4free.com is about the same that it’s always been. Lastly, Calistyle101.com has made some progressions but still a little behind Free Lunch Room in rankings.

As for Project Payday, I believe they’re still using all their traffic for themselves and netincomesolutions.com, this other forum ran by “Zman” aka Zollie which only allows to trade his freebie websites and no others. Project Payday decided to make freebie websites of their own to increase their profits, which I can’t believe they took so long to come up with. I keep forgetting which websites are theirs but once I figure it out I’ll let post about them. As for netincomesolutions.com, I’ll have a post about them and what they’re all about soon enough.

To sum it all up, incentive websites who advertise mainly in forums aren’t doing so well. I’m guessing only a select few who have crazy promotions every month are the only ones getting any type of significant traffic. As or the rest, it’s come to a screeching halt or a big drop in revenue. As for websites who have other sources of traffic (refer to traffic help link), they’re doing fairly well and maintaining their business.

Most of you might be wondering why the sudden drop in traffic of the freebie forums. To make it short, what happened is that Project Payday used to be the main source of traffic for everyone. Project Payday filtered all their traffic from search engines to freebie forums, which then filtered the traffic to the incentive websites. But then Project Payday decided that they could be making even more money if they just set up their own freebie websites and send all their traffic there. There are a few other rumors I’ve heard on why they chose to do this besides the money reasons, but I’ll save that for my Project Payday post.

As for incentive campaigns/offers, there are still a decent amount of popular incentive trials that have always made the incentive industry what it is. The lack of popular incentive offers is definitely not the reason for the slow down in traffic. I mean sure there are no more $1 Valuemax, Dealmax, At Home Rewards, etc, but there are still some $4.99 trials out there.

I think that about sums up the update on the incentive industry. I wouldn’t recommend anyone who doesn’t have a well thought out plan to generate traffic try to get into it right now. What I mean by that is, if you are looking to rely on the forums for traffic, you might as well donate your money to a charity and save your time. At least that way you’ll have a +1 in the good deeds category.

P.S. I was playing around with Photoshop, so that should explain the horrific header image to this post. I’m still amazed at how complicated I find Photoshop and web designing to be.

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Been very busy with new projects which is why I am very nonexistent here! But don’t worry, I shall return soon with the news, gossip, and of course my opinions on the incentive industry!
For now, enjoy Aziz Ansari.

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