Sunday, April 30, 2006

April Payouts

GottaLottaHits
Looks like the new GLH is going to be up in a few hours. Unfortunately I cannot in good faith recommend it to anyone. I've still not received the first round of refunds nor have I heard from Christian despite sending 2 emails in the past one and a half months.

Looks like he's refunding selectively and from what I've seen in the forums, mostly are small account holders. I've over $800 out of pocket in the program and only received slightly over $300 in payouts. I suppose at the end of the day, I leave you to draw your own conclusions here. As of right now, I'm giving this a huge thumbs down.

EPaySurf

I've updated the blog entry here together with both EpaySurf and EPaySurfMini payouts for the entire month of April.

The site is currently down for maintenance and hopefully would be up in the next 2-3 days. The great thing here is that there is always constant updates coming from Kent either by email or thru the forums. This is what first class communication from an administrator should be about. It keeps members up to date on progress as well gives confidence in the program.

eDataSurf
I've received a small payment from them and the blog entry has been updated to reflect this. I'm sure more payments will arrive on a weekly basis. Right now it's a very new program and a good time to join and make some cash here.

NSFG
If my reading of the reports are correct, it's probably going to be another poor result for the month of April. We broke even here this month. I suppose that's probably good that we didn't make any losses. We'd probably have to wait for an official statement from the guys here to see if there are any returns, positive or negative.

What's more important for me is that managed accounts and pooled accounts reports the same result. I'm still waiting on official word on the differences between the 2 account types for Mar and Feb. I've already positioned myself to set up a managed account, and now only waiting for news to see if I should go ahead or put a hold onto my plans.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Lady Luck, you don't visit often enough

Don't let the topic fool you. I'm a firm believer that hard work and competence goes along way in this arena. Learning from mistakes and more importantly, learning to avoid them would prevent unnecessary heartache. However, luck also plays an integral part.

MPDW
As everyone knows MPDW has become my favourite whipping boy the past month and a half. If you've been following the shenanigans, they posted their first loss the past week and their reserve balance basically collapsed. Of course there was the usual excuse of rogue traders and private placement programs not fulfilling their end of the bargain.

Well, allow me to gloat alittle, I feel like I deserve it after abit of stick I received, not only in the forums but even via the email contact on this blog. I still can't understand why others were not as quick or as desparate to get out when they could. Sure there was the risk of endless waiting, but didn't it seem clear when they stronged-armed us that something was amiss? I would've assumed that getting something was always better than getting nothing.

Personally I'm even surprised I got out unscathed, but I'm surely not complaining. It's about due time Lady Luck paid a visit. Unfortunately her visits are erractic at best. Well, at least she makes her rounds when it matters.

Hyips
I been making pretty good money with hyips since Feb this year. Taking a conservative approach and doing it with abit of research. Unfortunately, this month I took a beating. Every game or gamble that I went in actually went haywire. Even after exercising plenty of conventional knowledge and common sense, I still ended up on the losing end. Scammers and incompetence runs rampant here. To make matters worse, most programs are run by incompetent scammers.

Looks like Lady Luck deserted me, or she's telling me to stop. The silver lining here is that even though I lost everytime, the amounts were relatively small. Time to take a rest, but the itch will be back, I'm sure of it.

AutoSurfs
I've been cautious about joining autosurfs in the past couple of months. There are plenty of good looking sites, many providing very good public DD information, and I've been avoiding them all. However I'm beginning to sense that the so-called industry may be in for a minirevival. Either the admistrators are getting more in tuned to our needs or the scammers are getting smarter. Either way, it boils well for players like myself.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

eDataSurf (Manual Surf)

eDataSurf is run by Ramesh Kumar from Chennai, India, and also a long time member of MMG. Let's start with the bad before going on to the good here.

He owns a website called eDataMerge which is essentially a monitor site. And I'm sure anyone who has gone thru my blog knows what I think of them. In fact I believe both Ramesh and myself started on the wrong footing in the MMG forums, especially with my perception of him being a referral whore. I've somewhat soften that notion after seeing the amount of work he has done on his site. I've always been an advocator of passive income, but making money of others isn't my way of doing it. At least he's put in effort and hard work in keeping his referrals up to date and more importantly, he tests programs with his own money. On top of that he constantly writes newsletters on his findings, his hits and misses with regards to the traffic exchange industry.

However via conversation with him and seeing his conversations with others, I've seen that he not only works hard on his site, but projects a genuine sincerity. But of course take my words with a pinch of salt, if you will. You can never judge true sincerity over words typed on a screen.

On to the program. eDataSurf is run on a dedicated server. I'm personally in with $500. I believe in Ramesh's sincerity. Moreover what's more important is that I believe with all that he has seen and gone thru with his 'monitor' site, he would be experienced enough to avoid the pitfalls in this industry. I'm actually taking a leap of faith in his competence, more than anything. Hopefully my faith would be repaid in the profits that follow. Moreover some members from India have met him, making it kinda hard to do a runner. A determined scammer would still get away, but I have no doubts in my mind that Ramesh isn't one of those types.

Screenshots of Payment

Apr 06
May 06

Here are the statistics of the site:

Manual Surf
No signup bonus
8% daily
$10 per ad pack (upgrade)
10 site to earn 8%
5% referral commission
Minimum payout $10
Pays automatically on Saturday for earnings made on the previous Sunday
2% withdrawal fee
Maximum upgrade $1000

If interested, please use the links below.

No referral link

My link

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Payment Processors

I realised that the entire section on pay processors has been neglected. There have been major changes since I last updated that section back in Feb, especially with the demise of Stormpay and EMO. Not to mention the one which I was pimping so hard, Auto-Surf Money. Thankfully this lazy blogger has removed all of them.

Well, one thing's for sure here, nothing stays static for too long, not even payment processors.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

New GottaLotta?

GottaLottaHits
Just got this in my mailbox when I checked my mail box earlier today.
100% Refund: It has been our plan all along to refund 100%, but due to our losses we were unsure how we were going to be able to do so. Therefore, we decided to start with 50% for three reasons; (1) to buy us time to better understand what our January-February losses were, (2) not knowing what the chargeback frenzy would do as some have been paid and still charged back 100% , and (3) to give us time to see if our program could be restructured. After discussions with six attorneys, we are sure that the old GLH is un-correctable. Trying to continue to offer a way
for the average person to make money online, we came up with a new program based on the first five attorney's advice. Yesterday we met with an attorney (our sixth) that specializes in affiliate programs and have been given a thumbs up for our NEW program (which is not a paid to surf
site or investment). Having now received this, we are ready to announce the 100% refund for ALL members. More good news, we will have additional money left over after this first round of refunds is completed around the 20th, so we should begin our second round of refunds around the 21st (late next week). Our profits from the new program should be able to fund the completion of the 100% refund process. Most of the financial loss GLH endured was out of my control, but I believe it to be the right thing for me to continue to work to see to it that everyone be refunded 100%. I cannot put a timetable as to how soon we will be able to finish everyone's 100% refund, but we will use 100% of our profits each month of our new business until everyone has been thus refunded. We are still going to be announcing our new program late tomorrow with an official launch of May 1, and will be offering a pre-launch for existing GLH members around the 25th. Members are NOT required to continue in our new program to be refunded for the old program, we will be fair to all.

Christian


Quite frankly I don't know what to make of it. 100% refunds always 'sounds' good in a program where hardly anyone actually made profits. But in reality we know how all these promises go, so I wouldn't be counting my chickens soon.

And speaking of reality, I haven't gotten my 50% refund yet, despite joining and upgrading in Oct, and another time in Jan, even though those should have already been dealt with. Anyway, I'm cutting Christian some slack here. According to the timeline given, it should be in by the 20th. Again not keeping my hopes up here, just hoping everything turns out fine.

EPaySurfMini
I just got paid 60% here. The other 40% will be credited to my EPaySurf account. According to the administrative team, the new script for EPSM will be ready within the next 2 weeks.

So far the administrative team here has kept everyone adequately informed of updates and payments have been prompt. There is also very little push to pimp the program, which personally endears me to the program. At least it's not giving the impression that it's a ponzi which needs new members to facilitate operations.

SurfIce
Surprise surprise. I actually got paid here.

I've been making my rounds in the forums basically bashing the program due to the similar nature it's being run to a well-known scam known as Paid Response/Paid Exposure. In fact they run the same script, have an almost uncannily similar style of management and recently payments have been delayed in a similar fashion.

In case anyone is wondering why I even put my money here despite badmouthing the program...I didn't. I did not put a cent into the program. During their initial promotion, I was presented a $20 account level and compounded from that since Jan 06 to a level where I can withdraw.

However I'm still not encouraging anyone to join the program. From what I read, payments have been erratic at best. From what I've seen, smaller payouts have been made and the larger amounts are still left in limbo. Well, don't say you haven't been warned.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Goodbye MPDW

MPDW
I got a full payout today and am officially no longer a MPDW member (PHEW!). The payout was nice due to the increase in the price of gold in recent weeks. I've almost tripled my money here since August last year.

Now I don't have to waste my energy worrying when they will shift the goal posts again, and locking up or finding excuses to hold on to my money. I'm still adament that the program is a ponzi and a scam waiting to happen.

NSFG
This is the second month they have experienced less than stellar results. At least the results are still positive. Part of the reason for this was lowering their stop-loss from 1% to 0.5%, thus missing out on a number of good trades. Things however are looking up for the month of April.

March 06 = 3.06%(Net)/4.08%(Gross)

What is more worrying to me is the discrepencies between the pooled account and the managed account. Apparently the managed accounts are making losses while the pooled accounts registered a positive return. Will wait the official word from Paul and Ken on this. It's particularly interesting to me since I'm just about to take the plunge and dropping 25k into their managed accounts. I may wait another couple of months depending on how this develops and how satisfatory the answers to the queries are.

LilacUnicorn
Looks like this one has bite the dust. No more updates via emails, nor in their forums. I've removed them from this blog.

GottaLottoHits
I've still yet to get a sniff from them. No refunds have been made to me despite claims that all refunds from Oct-Feb have been made. To top it off, they are relaunching the site on the 15th of April. I don't even know what to make of this. At least I've already counted this as a complete loss.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

SensaTrust

I've been meaning to write something or at least share my thoughts on SensaTrust for the longest time, but never found the time nor the motivation to do it. Since this is pretty much a lull period for me, investment-wise, I thought why not strike another off my to-do list.

For those of you who don't know what SensaTrust is, it's actually an online investigatory company which basically does pretty indepth Due Dilligence (DD). What they do is basically verify information of online investments/programs, by meetings (phone or physical) and by checking with relevant agencies. They also do make checks that profits are generated the way they are claimed. To cut the long story short, their processes can be found on their website.

As far as I know (to date), none of the programs they have approved or recommended has fallen. In the High Yield Investment Program arena, that actually says quite abit. Anyway all these information can be easily found on the internet.

I kinda just want to share my own experience with SensaTrust. I heard of them indirectly via an ex-colleague/acquaintance somewhere in May 05. This ex-colleague was sent over from Japan for a short job stint and through our somewhat chicken and duck conversations (my Japanese sucks and likewise his English) he realised that I was dabbling with online programs. On his return to Japan, he emailed me a program that he participated in called MCAJ. I've not joined MCAJ due to the large entry level of $500 then. And it's currently closed to new members. Anyway my ex-colleague claims to have visited their setup in Tyoko (Shinjuku to be exact), unfortunately he's unable to tell if real trading was done. In fact I'm not even sure it's the same MCAJ that's recommended by SensaTrust then.

Being curious, I did a little searching for information, and SensaTrust came up. And since then I've been keeping a watchful eye of the programs recommended by them. And so far I've only joined one of their programs, and am comfortable with the level of DD done by them.

They are by no means perfect, but a good platform to start from when doing your own DD. I'm not advocating you join all their programs, or dive in head first. It's just highlighting the fact that SensaTrust has come a long way to build up a pretty solid reputation. As of now, no one knows if they are doing what they claim they are doing, but so far it's setting the standard for serious public programs to get certified by them.

As of this posting, MCAJ seems to have disappeared from SensaTrust's website. Since their forum is down and getting a reply from their contact form is harder than squeezing water from a stone, I'm just going to assume they removed it coz MCAJ is a private program, no longer accepting new members.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

NSFG to be part of FeederFund's portfolio?

NSFG
Just received the latest email from the guys at NSFG. Apparently FeederFund is soon going to have NSFG as part of their portfolio.

Since NSFG has officially closed its pooled funds, FF would be an alternative for people unable to cough up 25k for their managed funds to get in. There's however one huge problem. FF itself is a private fund which is closed to new members. This sorta boggles the mind what administrators are thinking of. At the end of the day only those who are already in FF benefit from this inclusion. The saving grace here is that FF has openly said time and again that they would open their doors to new membership at a later date. So if you're not in FF and want to get into NSFG, you'd just have to be patient and read the forums for updates on FF.

Personally, I'd rather cough up the 25k and move into NSFG via the manged account. I have absolutely nothing against joining FF. In fact I think FF is a very good alternative for those who balk at the high entry levels of the programs they offer. The thing here about FF is that from all that I've read, it's run by no more than 2 people (I could be very wrong here). Should anything untoward happen to both at once, all the funds would be caught in limbo. The same applies to the pooled funds with NSFG. It's one of the unforeseen situation mentioned in my last blog entry. Which is why I'm looking to getting into the managed account at the quickest possible time. Yes, I'm a bit of a control freak, who hopefully exercises some form common cents. ;o)

MPDW
In the past couple of weeks I've bashed, thrashed and literally shit on this bunch and today is not going to be an exception. The truth is that they've done nothing to deserve otherwise.

The latest from them is that they are going to buy out all the members who requested a buyout by the 15th of April. By right this should be good news to everyone who has submitted a buyout. Unfortunately, they only announced this after the submission dateline has passed, meaning anyone anyone who hasn't requested or refused to submit a buyout under the previous terms got screwed over again. True to the form they have been showing the last 2 weeks, they unimaginatively threw the TOS back at everyone, which basically has the same immortal words which basically says that they can change whatever, whenever they like.

I did request a payout here, and might get paid by the 15th, but I'm still voicing out my displeasure as a matter of principle, something which the program or more fittingly, their administrators, seem to lack. Anyway, I'd be glad to get out completely by the 15th this month. Good riddence to bad rubbish.

E-Gold
This is just a little episode I encountered a couple of days back. Someone actually had the gall to hack my e-gold account (my first time). Don't worry, my gold is still intact and my password has been changed.

I'm just highlighting how important it is to set your e-gold AccSent settings to high. I received a PIN in my email for a login I did not attempt. It was carelessness on my part. I had used the same password about 6-9 months ago on a couple of autosurfs and did not change my password during that whole period. Good thing accsent saved my gold, or else I would've been much poorer. Also using my ISP email to receive my PIN probably helped too.