Jul
10
ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator Review
Filed Under Alerts | 83 Comments
Is ASD Real or Just a Scam or Ponzi Scheme?
Reading Down to End of Comments is a MUST !
My May 6 post, The SpiderWeb Marketing System, garnered many readers, especially from search engines.
While I expressed some concerns over the Spider Web program, I never implied that it was a pyramid or scam. My issues with Spider were the hype, the spam and the choice of GDI as a web hosting platform for their blogs. It was the spam over at Direct Matches, one of my favorite social networking sites, that first grabbed my attention.
A recent unexpected development however has dramatically hurt the growth of the Spider Web just as it was starting to gain steam. The SpiderWeb Marketing System is facing some serious competition from a program that may be little more than the latest money scheme and perhaps the next 12 Daily Pro.
Andy Bowdoin Launches ASD at ASDCashGenerator.com
The get-rich-quick crowd has welcomed the new ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator with open arms. With oil prices moving up and real estate prices moving down who wouldn’t want to make a quick buck?
If you could spend a few hours a week viewing ads and make a load of money without having to recruit a single person, wouldn’t you at least want to check it out? I know I would.
So yours truly put on his business analyst hat, transfered $30 to his Alert Pay account, and gave that money over to ASD so that he could report back to you first hand with the inside story.
Here’s the story. You decide for yourself whether ASD is the real deal, another scam or something in-between.
The ASD Business Proposition
ASD purports to sell website traffic and to rebate a percentage of the sale price to qualified members. The rebate percentage is currently set at 125%, and amount tied in to new sales volume and subject change in the future. To qualify, members log on and surf 24 sites of other members daily for 125 days.
My Evaluation Criteria
My research and analysis of ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator focused on answering some important questions.
ASD claims to be in the business of selling website traffic. Is their advertising a reasonable value at the price asked, or would it sell only to people hoping to make money from the ASD rebate scheme?
ASD shares revenue from new business by paying rebates. Can ASD sustain itself without continually recruiting new members? Can rebates adequately compensate members for the use of their funds, their time and for the associated risks?
Traffic Exchange Visits
Website visits provided by traffic exchange schemes are very much untargeted and incentivized. Moreover, such visitors are typically multi-tasking while plodding their way through the required website rotation.
I want to be generous rather than conservative in my assessment. If you could make a perfect match between the ASD viewing membership and your target websites, each visit to your sites might be worth as much as a nickel. While it’s likely to be less, let’s tentatively assess the value of a page visit as $0.05.
ASD charges $1.00 per page visit. There is a large 20-to-one discrepancy between price and value. If you can find me somebody who’s genuinely prepared to spend a dollar for one traffic exchange site visit, put us in touch. I have a bridge I’d like to show him.
Seriously, nobody in his right mind would pay more than pennies for a traffic exchange visitor.
I have to conclude that members are paying ASD for the privellege of making money from rebates or recruiting — and not for website visits. It appears that ASD is in the money business and not in the advertsing business.
If government authorities reach a similar conclusion, they could rule that ASD handles investments and is threrfore subject to the purview of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC). Such a ruling would not be favorable in the least for ASD nor for ASD’s membership.
Sustainability
In a video Andy Bowdoin explains that, unlike 12 Daily Pro, ASD doesn’t make payments to members at a fixed rate, and that it may not continue to make payments in the future. I appreciate that Andy was up front in raising the possibility that ASD as we know it today may not be sustainable long-term.
Andy’s disclaimer may allow ASD to comply with anti-pyramid statutes today and to bow out in the future if new sales ever decline sharply.
ROI Return on Investment
Whether money paid to ASD legally constitutes an investment or not, I’m not competent to decide.
However, to qualify for rebates members need to surf through a rotation of 24 sites each day. Given the slow speed of ASD’s site and frequent hiccups, it takes about three hours per week to run their Cash Generator.
How much is three hours of your time weekly worth to you? $50? $100? More?
If you’re buying rebates, not advertising, you need to figure the value of your time. The amount of rebates you will earn relative to the value of the time you spend determines whether or not ASD is profitable for you.
Your profit threshold will probably not be the same as mine. It might be higher, or it might be lower.
Just as an example, let’s suppose that you would like to earn $35 per hour, and any benefit you get from your advertising you’ll accept, and consider it gravy.
Math-phobics may skip this part if absolutely necessary.
You consider the possibility of purchasing 500 units for $500. Each day you receive $5 which is one percent of the principal.
$4 of the $5 is recovery of principal, not profit. 125 days times $4 equals your original $500.
$1 of the $5 is your daily profit, so each week your earn $7.
You want to earn $105 or three-hours times $35. You’ll need to invest 15 times as much or $7,500.
Invest $7,500 and do the required surfing. You’ll earn $105 profit per week.
Invest less, you’ll earn less.
If you don’t have much money, you won’t make much. If you do, you probably have better things to do with it and prefer not to devote a month per year of productive time to this type of risky project.
Risk Management
Yes, there’s definitely a considerable risk factor. I’m not going to call Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator a scam, but I’m telling you… It is risky.
You might not recover your $7,500 or earn the 25% bonus of $1,875.
You have to account for risk and plan for it — if you can. You can try Lloyd’s of London if you need help.
Sure everybody’s making money now. Some are making tons of money, but will ASD last indefinitely?
Perhaps not.
Every gambler who makes money at Las Vegas faces the same dilemma: cash out or let it ride.
There were many people who made big money at 12 Daily Pro and many other high yield income programs (HYIP’s) that circled the globe a couple of years ago.
And there were people who lost. Some of them lost a lot.
A Few Quirks
Like most other growing sites ASDCashGenerator.com can be very slow. They’re upgrading their servers, but their upgrades will soon need upgrades. You’ll have to be patient.
It can take days for your payment to show up in their system. Perhaps some things are done manually. Submit a support ticket and be patient.
I created a unique e-mail address just for ASD and received an unsolicited business offer from a woman oversees sent to that address a couple of days after registering. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that my sponsor exposed my address when sending a group e-mail.
I requested to buy 30 units of advertising but received only 28. I guess they took $2 as a processing fee.
A Major Fallacy
I hear people explaining that they already made their money back, and that they’re playing with profit as if the profit isn’t their own money.
You can take your profit and do something for yourself or your family. It definitely is your money just as much as your original principal was. If you throw it away, you’re throwing away your money, not ASD’s or anybody else’s.
It Boils Down to Using Common Sense
You don’t have to be a top business analyst to figure these kinds of things out.
If you get down to the basics and avoid the hype, you can make excellent business decisions. As my mentor Diane Hochman, founder of My Private Classroom, says, “Use your common sense.”
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Jun
29
Web Hosting for Your Blog
Filed Under blogging | 2 Comments
In Creating a Home for Your Blog I discussed blogging platforms and stated my preference for starting a WordPress.org free-standing blog for greatest control and flexibility. Review that post to decide what’s best for you at the present time.
Blogging communities such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, and social networking sites such as MySpace and Yuwie will host a blog for you.
However, if you decide on WordPress.org or another free-standing blogging platform, you must set up an account with a web hosting company.
Make sure to select Linux shared web hosting and not Microsoft hosting.
Here is a partial list of web hosting companies to consider for your blog:
Each web hosting company has its own features and pricing structure. All these hosting companies are mainstream. They’re listed in alphabetical order. Choose the one that best fits your plans.
If you choose a WordPress.org blog, and you have never used WordPress before, ask a freind or colleague to help. You can also contact me, and I will provide you with personal help for a very modest fee.
One side note: If you’re looking to buy domain names, 1&1 Internet offers .com domains with private registration for $6.99 per year.
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Mar
9
I was away yesterday with my family. About once a month we all spend a day in a group home for multiply handicapped girls. Our hope is that they will enjoy, at least for a brief time, a warm family environment.
When I arrived home I found three pleasant surprises.
- Another reader had registered as a user of my blog bringing the total to 105.
- My blog had moved up to #8 in Google for the keywords online social networking. I’m back to #51 today, but it felt good to receive validation, however temporary, from Google.
- An envelope had arrived by Priority Mail with my very own copy of Mike Dillard’s Building on a Budget.
Today I’m feeling jetlagged from the advance to Daylight Savings Time, but I’m happy to report that I’ve already read Mike’s book cover-to-cover. Here is my feedback.
My book review of Building on a Budget is mixed.
The advertising promises to show network marketers how to leverage a one-time cash outlay of about $500 to acquire new skills and resources and generate a continuous stream of leads without further expense.
Building on a Budget outlines an excellent marketing approach and provides great tips that all marketers could learn from — not just network marketers. The Internet and social media marketing concepts presented in the book are explained very clearly and concisely.
The book discusses one pre-requisite and five marketing strategies which are more effective than the strategies that most marketers currently employ. There’s a chapter each for lead capture pages, Craigslist classified ads, video marketing, press releases, blogging and funded proposals. I feel that these are all excellent choices.
Social networking sites are mentioned but only in passing.
Here are my reservations about Building on a Budget.
I have the knowledge and the resources to implement Mike Dillard’s suggestions. I’m already using several of these techniques in my online marketing, but what about a newbie?
Let’s say that our enthusiastic new marketer decides to follow the book’s instructions. He or she sets up web hosting, domain names and an autoresponder, all absolutely essential tools, and purchases Magnetic Sponsoring, MLM Traffic Formula, Black Belt Recruiting, a camcorder, Camtasia Studio, and one or two other items. The $500 figure can very easily top $1,000, and paid third-party assistance might still be needed.
I have spent much more than that to educate and equip myself to market effectively in today’s environment, and I’m a former IT professional with more than ten years network marketing experience.
I don’t regret it at all.
What I object to is an unrealistic $500 price point established by Building on a Budget. And not only is it unrealistic, the book itself is a powerful sales letter — not an academic marketing text. It’s written to sell information and recruit affiliates. Mike points out that he’s a great copywriter. I totally agree. However, I don’t fault him one bit.
I will make good use of Building on a Budget. It’s a compact reference that I will want at my fingertips. You may find it useful too. However, please be careful about your expectations.
Oh, before I forget to mention it. I will schedule conference calls to help. So if you purchased the book, expect to hear from me.
I welcome questions and comments about the book, but please, keep them upbeat.
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Nov
11
Thank You Very Much
Filed Under Acknowledgment | 1 Comment
Thanks to my friends Tom Long and Tim Draayer and to my hosting company Go Daddy for the support and advice that led to the creation of this, my first WordPress blog.
And thanks in advance to all of you who will come to share this endeavor with me.
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