A problog runs the gauntlet

This is a followup to my earlier post titled What, you don't have a problog yet?!?.

What is a problog? Apparently it is a blog with "professional-quality content".

Well guess what... the same chap that I heard about problogs from has put
one of his own problogs "under the gauntlet".

What does that mean? It means he has asked for some "tough love" from his fellow online-marketing professionals. This is your chance to critique a problog and to see vicious professional marketers critique it too. This could be quite educational for anyone who is interested in the world of "professional" blogging.

-MarkM-

The Leading Guides project now has a blog

The Leading Guides project now has a blog: the Leading Guides Blog.

Wow it has been a while. I have mostly been hanging out at Net Marketing Forum.

-MarkM-

The Illuminati!

Hey, nice conspiracy/illuminati blog! It even has a cool link to something that claism to be a precise exegisis! Plus an explanation of the term Neo-Conservative.

Yeah I am finally back at blogger. Sorry, been very busy lately with the awesome folks at Net Marketing Forum... no doubt some of the up and coming leaders of the new "secret government"! Hahahahahah! ;) ome on over and help blow their puny little minds into new dimensions and inner riches!

-MarkM-

What, you don't have a problog yet?!?

A what? Oh yeah thats right, you might not even have heard of a problog yet so sheesh how could you hope to have already gotten hold of one yet?

Aha! Well, today's Instant Messenger Interviewee happens to be
Tim Linden of CLiX Network / TCN Traffic Exchange fame, and I have just learned from him that, amazing as it may seem at first blush, there just might happen to be some among you who just might already happen to have a problog even if they had not yet realised that they had one.

Heh, ok, I know, that probably seems like an easy one to you - if you're one of those lucky people. But some among the rest of you might, if we have managed to attract anyone who hasn't had their second cup of coffee yet, still be going like "what the...?"

So here ya go: a problog is a professional blog, as in a blog of professional quality content. And no, Tim didn't coin the term but he knows who did. Heck it was a friend of his that did it. Oops, Tim has to go now, sorry, end of interview. So lets just leave it at that for now but chances are you will be encountering the term again. In the meantime happy blogging and may you encounter many problogs in your travels.

-MarkM-

Article: Automatic Money

I have added an article to Makemoney Knotwork. The article's title
(and topic) is Automatic Money.

-MarkM-

Leading Guides Network Revamped and Expanded

I have finally gotten around to setting up a nameserver on my main server, and am running another at home. While I was doing all this I not only moved all my .info domains over to my own nameservers but also got the .com, .net and .org versions of the Leading Guide(s) domains moved to my nameservers from where they had been parked.

So now finally the whole panoply of Leading Guide Network sites should be up and running and reachable from anywhere on the internet.

-MarkM-

High Art Splash-Pages!

I am using some images of some of my dad's paintings to make high art splash-pages! Just two so far: Magick and Mystery, Karma and Destiny featuring the painting "Buddha" and All Hallows Hallows All featuring the painting "Dancers 2".

Oh in case you're wondering what a "splash page" is, it is a fast-loading simple page for use in traffic-exchanges to try to elicit a click in 30 seconds or less. I am only using these in "manual" traffic-exchanges, as so far my experience has been that with auto-exchanges there is too much risk of using up more bandwidth than the results are able to pay for.

-MarkM-

Goddess Knotwork now has a blog...

Yes, I have finally gotten around to installing Simple PHP Blog at Goddess Knotwork. As I write it really has no content yet, but at least it does now exist. Oh a link? Sure, here ya go: Goddess Knotwork's Blog.

-MarkM-

Hey hey, Nick Martin is heading back into action...

Well well, long time off doing education stuff but looks like he is heading back into action. What, you don't remember Nick Martin? But he's the chap who got Mage Software (oops no link sorry, they seem to have been knocked clean off of the web) to upgrade their "MLM Manager version 1.2" to make Nick's "Special Edition"!

What, you don't remember that "special edition"?!?! My goodness. Well the idea was that instead of making some huge monolithic downline-builder using huge amounts of bandwidth and gaining privy access to everyone's contacts Nick planned on having his team-members "hive off" (yes I know, reminiscent of covens "hiving off" in Wicca) to run the same thing he was running but on their own server, their own bandwidth.

Good to see you're starting to move toward active again Nick!

-MarkM-

So... Which autosurfs actually move traffic?

Heh well actually the question posed by the title of this article is a bit beyond where I am actually at as I start writing this. I have not gone through the rigamarole of deploying trackers yet, so far I am merely noticing that some of the autosurf sites that I am testing are not using up the traffic-credits that I earn.

So today I am going to try to make notes here as I fire up each autosurf. Oops I already missed StudioTraffic, I never pay attention to that one for some reason. It has the annoying "feature" of firing up its surfbar in a new window, so I used my middle mousebutton to force its surfbar to fire up in a different tab of the same window rather than in a whole new window and then used the tab its member-area was in to fire up blogger to write this log-entry.

So onward. 4Daily: hey, my credits got used! Cool.

5Daily: Hmm, they haven't checked the URL that I added yet, maybe they're on vacation or something.

HitzPay: Heh they are using up credits alright, lots of credits as they let me surf with no limit in sight so I earn lots.

GrandHits: Hmm, this one allows up to 50 URLs, maybe I am gonna have to fill in all fifty, I have five filled in so far (mostly just the same URL over and over again) and it is no way keeping up with the amount of credits I earn. I like to put a bunch of credits when I add a URL though so I will add another and assign it the points I've accumulated since last I added one and maybe some day we'll see what happens.

ProfoundHits: Hmm, today I have somehow managed to accumulate a bit of backlog, but I had the impression it was one of the good ones. I see that I have already plugged in my SurfDownline URL twice so far (it allows up to 50 URLs). Maybe it just wasn't one of the worst ones. I'd better add my URL a third time maybe that might help.

123etraffic: this one seems to be moving along smoothly.

12DailyPro: Heh they only let you surf a few sites so it'd be hard to build up a backlog at this one. Did you notice their latest plan? Kind of a currency of their own in a way: their lines of products will not be buyable with ordinary currencies from other currency-providers, only one's 12DailyPro earnings will be able to buy their stuff! Interesting idea! Meanwhile they have zeroed my balances and claim that I have a withdrawal queued up. If that withdrawl ever arrives at my e-gold account I will probably buy another unit at this one so that I can continue watching it.

2Dollars4U: Hmm, this one allows 5 URLs, I have them all filled in, and I am still racking up unspent credits. Not good.

911Hitz: another that is not managing to eat up my credits. They allow 5 URLs, I have added one URL five times. Looks like I am racking up an ever-incresing backlog of credits.

AWD-Network: Hmm, hard to tell with this one. I have plugged my URL in twice os evidently had not thought it was movinmg well back when I only had my URL in once. It allows 5 URLs. I think I will rack up points for another day before deciding whether to plug in the URL a third time or spread my points among the two URLs already plugged in.

AussieAutosurf: allows tree URLs, I have my URL plugged in three times, and it looks like I am still starting to backlog. But the owner fell ill and it has only just been taken over by temporary new management (planning, it seems, to switch it to a 2% daily rate) maybe the new management can get traffic moving, we'll see I guess.

AussieEarners: credits here seem to be moving.

AutoSurf4Euros: wow, a large backlog of credits here. Not good. Heh they are another (like StudioTraffic) that want to pop up a whole new window for their surfbar. Bleh.

Auto-Surf Biz: credits here are moving.

DadNDaves: Sheesh, how can I even guess, being as how they only allow one URL, I entered one URL way back when I signed up, and it is still waiting for them to approve or reject it - it will not get into rotation until they do. Maybe they too are on vacation.

DaiPaySurf: only one URL allowed and backlog of credits is growing and growing here.

EarnCash4Surfing: Hmm, evidently I assigned my points last time I was on this one, so not sure if it is using them up or not. But hey, it allows 2 URLs and I only put in one so far so it looks like it has not yet commended itself to my attention as one that is backlogging.

eProfitSurf: this one allows ten URLs but just one has been enough so far, my credits are being used.

GWPtraffic: only allows one URL but that is enough to eat up the credits no problem.

RapidSurfDaily: I am up to three URLs used in this one now (it allows five). Not sure if three is enough or not, lets leave it at three for now and see.

SurfCityAutoSurf: only allows two URLs, I have my URL in there twice, and I am building up quite a large backlog of credits.

SurfMunkee: ouch, my URL has 8555 credits assigned still that it has not used. Looks like this one is backlogging. Only 89 credits have been used since the get-go! Ouch! I do not see any indication of how many URLs one can enter. Nor how to take back some of those 8555 points to put them toward another URL if I did enter another URL.

Wow that took a long time. This autosurfing stuff is actually quite time-consuming. Did I mention that several of them keep suddenly logging me out? Don't go believing that you can set them up then go to bed.

Finally, I am done firing up autosurfs for the day. Good night.

-MarkM-

Oh nice, a must-have art link!

"In 1991, when 2400 baud modems were the norm, ArtQuest released an exclusive art bulletin board service known as a BBS. The BBS provided galleries, consultants and dealers a quick way to locate art throughout the art community. As technology has progressed, so has ArtQuest. Today, ArtQuest offers its members the latest up-to-date service available to the art industry."

Yummy link, and guess where I found it? Surfing a homebrewed new traffic-exchange: TrafficSurfer!

Contrary to the expectations of some folk - though I cannot quite recall which folk they were - joining new traffic-exchanges doesn't seem to be a complete waste of time! :)

(I filed it, of course, under art. :))

-MarkM-

My Fourth Blog!

Just a quickie: I have whipped up another blog - my fourth, if haven't lost count already.

Tah-dah: Space Cadet Academy!

-MarkM-

Traffic Exchanges and Mini-Hubs

Manual Traffic-Exchanges

I have been testing "Traffic-Exchange" programs for years now. Over at Net Marketing Forum they love the things, but with a proviso: it is the "manual" ones that they like; they have tended to denigrate "autosurf" ones.

So anyway, I tried them and sure enough they work. They seem to work best for obtaining free signups. Trying to directly promote things that folks have to pay for seems to be a rather wasteful expenditure of "precious" page-exposures. Get folks signed up free first, then worry about "converting" them once you have them.

Thus what I have been running on the exchanges is what I refer to as "minihubs". Others refer to them as "downline builders" but my experimental ones are mini compared to such comprehensive hubs as Michael Russell's M.P.A.M. (MPAM: Massive Passive Advertising Machine). My experimental "minihubs" are simple hacks of Mage Software's MLM Manager version 1.2, as modified by Mage Software for Nick Martin's "Special Edition", which I had been in the process of prototyping for a client who seems to have moved on to something else (I am not sure what).

The prototype is still mostly full of the traffic-exchanges that it came pre-stocked with, or at least those that have survived the test of time. (I have not so much as looked at it in many months, maybe well over a year, though maybe less than two years; the things are kind of "set and forget"). For my mini-hub experiments I chopped it down considerably to make a hopefully much less daunting one: Makemoney Knotwork's Free Viral Money Generator.

As I write, the VMG is the central minihub of a growing family of minihubs, as I branched out with Goddess Knotwork's Free Viral Karma Generator followed over time by various other niche-targetted minihubs. (All of them so far, except Adult Knotwork's Free Viral Traffic Generator, can be found inside the VMG.)

These work rather nicely, a kind of "glorified email-capture page", glorified in that they do not merely capture an email address but actually provide a "member's area" and a forward-looking set of activities for members to progress into. Initially the novelty of them was probably a big factor because back then everyone and their gameboy had seen MPAM countless times and various other hubs containing a daunting number of programs came (and, in some cases, went) but I call these minihubs for a reason: they are mini! They don't present a huge number of programs for folks to sign up to. So they might be particularly appealling to folks who are new to it all and not already used to signing up for umpteen separate programs. Also they are traffic-building downline-builders, which gives them a tendency toward snowballing. They generate traffic which is fed back into them to sign up more people who go on to generate more traffic producing more signups and so on.

Auto Traffic-Exchanges

Then I moved on to testing "autosurf" exchanges. I almost made a minihub for them but ouch, thank about the bandwidth usage compared to the signup ratio! I decided not to risk using more bandwidth than a signup might turn out in the long run to be worth, so went with a third-party downline-builder for that. (Don't bother, unless you figure you can make much better use of it than I did. I only run it in autosurf exchanges and don't bother running plain old autosurfs at all presently as I have moved on to testing the latest wave of autosurf innovation... stay tuned, I will get to them.)

Paid-To-Surf Traffic-Exchanges

Somewhere along the line someone came up with the "bright idea" (sarcasm to be added by the reader, or not; it is up to you) of paying people to surf.

I didn't pay much attention to that, the pay is usually very low and although some of the exchanges I have used have been of that variety I always surfed for credits (display to other surfers of URLs of my own choice) myself and didn't really notice any big difference performance-wise between manual exchanges and manual paid-to-surf exchanges other than the amount of attempted click-fraud they seem to attract. (But how hard the admin fought against click-fraud was probably an important factor.)

That brings us up to just a few months ago, when I started testing the latest "bright idea"...

Paid-To-Autosurf Traffic-Exchanges

The latest wave of paid-to-autosurfs seem potentially characterisable as "ponzified" autosurfs. Take a look for yourself.

They seem poised to maybe bring some attention to the distinction between games (including simulations, including simulations played using "real money") and a classic prototypical fraud known as a Ponzi or a Ponzi Scheme.

It seems obvious to many that educating people about classic prototypical fraudulent schemes has potential merit. What might not be so obvious to some is whether or not education by means of simulations/games is educational or (at least from some possibly extreme points of view) defensible, especially if the simulation/game is played with "real money" to "make it more interesting" (as the saying goes).

So quite apart from whether this breed of autosurf-exchanges is effective as a means of advertising some folks might see other concerns which might even seem more important than whether the surfers actually respond well to the advertising that they are being "paid to autosurf". (For example "are they being paid?")

There are a number of sites that purport to monitor whether various admins of various paid-to-do-something sites do actually pay; that is not what I am trying to find out. Just a few days ago I happened upon a third-party downline-builder that includes a Top Ten of Paid-to-Autosurf Programs.

I have not even checked yet whether each and every one of the so-called top ten is in fact plainly described as a simulation of a ponzi, rather than being fraudulently described as not being a ponzi or (fraudulently or not) being described incorrectly.

That is, I do not yet know whether any of them are ponzi schemes, nor whether any of those which plainly by their own description fit a ponzi model have the key feature which distinguishes fraud from open honest descriptions of the actual rules by which a game or simulation is actually performed/played/run. I have, however, noticed that there are a few that do not pay members who have not put in any money ("upgraded"). Those might be the most likely candidates for the label "ponzi" because the basic prototypical ponzi is, as far as I am aware as I write, for paying participants only.

The way the test is run is to promote the downline-builder using the type of traffic-exchange that is to be tested. Thus I run this one in the ("ponzified"?) autosurfs that it contains. A nice side-effect of that procedure is that I am promoting it to people who are already "into" programmes of that type.

The reason why I selected this particular downline-builder is that it also contains manual-surf exchanges and even some of the classic traffic-building downline-builders of the manual-surf field: MPAM, Profit Rally and Joe Shmo 200. Thus if indeed people do sign up for stuff while paid-to-autosurfing it might serve (one can always hope) as a lifeline extended to any "victims" that might be out there someplace in the paid-to-autosurf field, inviting them into the possibly more productive waters of the free manual surf genre.

It seems probable that least some of the paid-to-autosurf programs inside the "SurfDownline" hub/downlinebuilder operate along the lines of a ponzi, but how many of them tell potential members something that amounts to "we are a simulation of a ponzi, the key difference between us and a ponzi is the fact that there is no fraud involved (we are not pretending that we do not operate the way we do; we are telling you how we are operating and we are in fact operating in the way described)" I do not yet know. Perhaps you might accompany me on that yet-to-be-undertaken investigation?

(Yes, that is an invitation to comment! Go ahead, comment! I will end this post here to give you a chance to go look at the things for yourself and see what you think.)

-MarkM-

Revisiting Omelas ;)

Omelas!Wow, quite a "Blast from the Past"word! Possibly the word alone might have sufficed to lure me into reading further but hey, the word wasn't all by itself: it was just the last word of the four-word title of the weblog in question.

Oh go ahead, check it out. I won't mind... this post is over anyway. :)

-MarkM-

My Second Blog!

Hey hey, I now have TWO blogs! Well kind of; actually the blog that I have just created is not really "mine" in the "personal" sense, it is really GoldDoubler.info's blog but technically I "own" it.

Yesterday at SourceForge I picked up a copy of Simple PHP Blog (at no charge, naturally; it is free open-source software).

It was nice and easy to install, all I did was make a directory for it, unzip it into that directory, tell my webserver to support PHP for that domain, change ownership of the directory and all its of contents to the user that my webserver runs as (so that my webserver would have permission to write stuff in that directory) then visit that directory of that website with my browser. Presto, sphpblog itself appeared and walked me through the rest.

-MarkM-

A Visit to SourceForge

Wow, long time since last I posted here. What brought me here today was a visit to SourceForge ... I have not been there in quite a while, so of course I started coming across interesting projects.

Normally I would simply add the projects to my link-lists, for example by filing them under Info / Computers and Computing / Software but today I am not looking to "file and forget". My link-lists go back years; today I want to queue some things up to be looked at so I thought this might be a better place to stash them for now.

Not familiar with SourceForge? It is *the* distributed software-development site. Oh and guess what? I went to the dot com instead of the dot net and hey, the Enterprise Version is there! They have a publicly traded company (LNUX) now too! Wow!

So anyway, all this software is FREE and OPEN SOURCE. That is the BEST kind because when you work on, for example, GNU software, you don't lose all your work when you lose your job or leave your job. By putting all your work under the GNU license as you do it you ensure that you CAN take it with you. :)

Here are the projects that caught my eye today:

simplePHPblog: a simple blog, using PHP but not MySQL. (It simply uses flat files).

Nullsoft Scriptable Install System: I remember too well what a hassle it used to be, once upon a time, to try to get something installed on a Windows system. Maybe this thing can help with that. :)

libgmail: Python binding for Google's Gmail service.

GPACProject on Advanced Content: Multimedia Framework for MPEG-4, VRML, X3D, ...

vtiger CRM Customer Relationship Management. Yes that means leads and marketing and such. :)

BOXP Back Orifice XP. A SysAdmin tool for Windows systems. Control networkig and so on. Plugins for various additional features - even streaming video of the server's screen.

SQuirreL SQL Client: SQuirreL SQL Client is a graphical Java program that will allow you to view the structure of a JDBC compliant database, browse the data in tables, issue SQL commands etc.

WebGUI: A perl-based web application and web site framework designed to let the people who create the content manage it, and let the technical folks get back to tech stuff.

Emma3D: Emma (Extensible Multi Media Architecture) is an open-source, modular, extensible, dynamic framework for declarative authoring and display of 2D and 3D interactive multimedia. It uses Lua for scripting and Ogre3D for rendering.

Php-MultiShop: Market Place Multi Vendor: CMS & e-commerce cart system Multi Shop written in PHP MySql: a virtual mall, including various eCommerce stores (osCommerce) and content (PhpNuke). Each store could be managed in autonomy by its own admin as if it were independent from the e-marketplace.

bitweaver: Highly Modular CMS framework includes: Wiki, Articles / News, phpBB Forum Bulletin Board, Blogs, Image Photo Gallery, ... includes TikiWiki upgrader. Databases supported: MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Firebird, IIS/MS-SQL for PHP on Windows or Linux.

MailManager: MailManager is designed to solve the problems companies have as the volumes of email they receive increase such as making sure email goes to the right person, making sure it is answered on time, ensuring information in email boxes is shared within the organisation.

Compiere ERP + CRM Business Solution: Smart ERP+CRM solution for Small-Medium Enterprises in the global market covering all areas from order and customer/supplier management, supply chain to accounting. For $5-500M revenue companies looking for "brick and click" first tier functionality.

There is a particular thing I am specifically to keep an eye out for, and that is anything that might be able to serve as a start toward a surf-exchange, even an auto-surf exchange.

-MarkM-

Say hello to Knotwork.biz...

I have finally gotten around to separating Knotwork.biz from MakeMoney Knotwork which for a while it was simply parked over.

The plan is to leave all the little mini-hubs where they are - which is to say, in Make Money Knotwork, and in general separate the general idea of "biz" (presumably "business") from the "GNU Make Money Project".

-MarkM-

RSS2html: a little too wide open?

Hmm,a nice service, it let me easily post a SiteFind.info Feeds page. It is wide open, hmm, consider the exploits...

-MarkM-

A Directory of RSS Feeds

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Van is an ambiguous keyword...

Hmm, I tried to set up a section for "van" on my Auto Knotwork site under van...

Oops, It picked up a bunch of people's names mostly instead of vans of the automotive variety. ;)

-MarkM-