bsc

If this wasn't exclusively aimed at those outside the USA, I'd have posted this on the Online Stores forum....

....Essexboy mentioned in this thread that the Jaboom thing was a bit of a bust for UK surfers in particular - because for most, Net access can be expensive in terms of call costs. I'm using Callnet0800 but it is unreliable - and some of the schemes (e.g. AllAdvantage) are blocked. I suspect bandwidth would be too limited for Jaboom to be feasible and that it is only those at with ISDN-type connections (work, university etc) that can make use of the deal over here. With ADSL this may change.

In the meantime I was wondering if anyone else has been having any luck with these kind of deals? The only loosely connected scheme I have experienced is the Vividence survey panel. The surveys are few and far between but so long as you are fair, they are fair. I timed out whilst signing up for a site as part of the last one and so was unable properly to answer all the questions. I did my best and a couple of days later the coupon arrived. Oh yes, I also signed up for Beenz but don't think it is so hot. I understand that these can be cashed in for GCs also.

Other schemes (inc. Jaboom) also seem to pay in gift certificates. I will be using the DVDTalk affiliate link when I cash in that $15 Amazon coupon for the Vividence survey.

------------------
bsc
<small>"Hey! Little Baby, don't you lay down low:
Your brain's exposed and it's starting to show....
....Your rotten thoughts! Yeuchhh!"
<small>Death & Night & Blood</small><small> (Yukio), The Stranglers</small><small>

Peter.R

I do Jaboom & FirstLook regularly and if I can, I do pointclick whilst doing something else.

Jaboom in particular has been profitable. If I choose a suitable time, I can do the 20 Jaboom songs in about 30 minutes ( I've not received any warnings in a 'long' time. This would equate at off peak BT rates of about 30-40pence ( although I confess I'm not too aware of BT call charges - perhaps someone could provide better call charge figures).

The 20 songs bring in 450 points ( I have 5 stars ) which at the lowest reward of 1000 points for a $12 GC equates to about $5.40 per session. This is a profit of about $4.60. If you hang on for the 2000, 5000 or as I did once the 10000 point reward the rate of 'profit' increases. Of course if you are a low star rater 20 songs will only bring in 250 points which equates to $3.00.

I do have ISDN but I only use a single channel. I don't think there'd be much benefit to using both channels - certainly not when you consider the double call charge.

FirstLook can be extremely slow. I did complain about it last week and got a response ( although they didn't actually promise to do anything other than discuss the issue at a meeting). Again, it depends on the time of day.

Essexboy

OK, as I indirectly seemed to have kicked off this one. The best ISP to use at the moment (because of the lack of 0800 access), is www.totalise.co.uk

They issue shares in the company for the time you use them. At the present value of shares, you earn about double what u pay for your phone. Great deal...the shares are issued the month following the one u earned them....if that makes sense?

If you're feeling generous...use my username as a referal.

on me 'ed son.

------------------
Wicked

bsc

quote:<HR>The best ISP to use at the moment (because of the lack of 0800 access)<HR>

I already have free access via Callnet0800 and there are quite a few "free" ISPs these days: unfortunately there often seem to be teething problems. Callnet0800, for example, just isn't very fast/reliable and seems to block certain ports!

As the title suggests, the real point of the post was to check out general usage and experiences of these "paid-for-surfing" schemes outside of the USA.

I've heard of Totalise but I'm really more interested in reliability, connectivity etc. so that I could - if I wanted - make good use of some of the schemes that Peter.R is using from the UK.

(I am interested in the valuation aspect that you mention: where does one check these figures and who is buying?)

By the way, Essexboy are you personally signed up for any of the paid-for-surfing schemes and, if so, do you get decent connections etc when using them via Totalise?

Anyone else out there got any positive/negative experiences to add to those already mentioned?

------------------
bsc
The facts expressed here belong to everybody; the opinions to me: the distinction is yours to draw....but remember, if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.

Essexboy

I am personally signed up to 2 schemes. Alladvantage & Spedia, although I rarely have both running simultaneously.

Totalise are excellent from this aspect because they are able to provide two choices of connection.

1) The first is through their own dial-up number, which is adequate. But they do say that this one does not fully support a 59k connection. I have never had surf problems...only connection (engaged-tones).

2) The other, more ideal choice is a dial-up connection through UUNet, who were recently voted best european ISP by some mag or other I think. They do support 56k access, which is adequately fast when running a pay as you surf prog.

You also get to access your e-mail while surfing, aswell as with outlook....which if especially helpful.

Remember who told you about this one!!



------------------
Wicked

delboy

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Essexboy:
I am personally signed up to 2 schemes. Alladvantage & Spedia, although I rarely have both running simultaneously.
<HR>

Did you have any problems setting these 2 up on one PC ? Once I installed Spedia, Alladvantage failed to work. How did you do it ? Only way I can think of is to install/uninstall each time.

Have been using Alladvantage for about 3 months , but only got one cheque so far. They have just halved their surf rate for New Zealand from June.

Only just started on Spedia. Have they paid you yet ? What did the rate equate to ?

Essexboy

I haven't had a problem with either of them, I've been with Allad for about 9 months, and with spedia for only a couple of months.

The rate with spedia varies...Jan and Feb only equated to be around $.20US....but recent months have been about $.70 per hour.

I rarely use both, because it does take a bit of bandwidth, and slows down the page loading a bit.....but if you're patient, it's not that much of a problem.



------------------
Wicked

freeballs

I found one as I am in Australia, that pays in US dollars, Amazon gift certificates, or flooz. They pay .20 cents per hour, but the site says that it will definatley be increasing each month, have a look, nothing to lose here. It is for international users as well, they send the cash in the post, but the amazon gc's and flooz in email.
http://www.surfingprizes.com/go/?139999

Hope this helps, I just started it today and am already up to the first dollar!

BigBadJust

Hey guys, good to see some fellow UK users here. Try this page out;

http://go.to/webrevenue

They have reviews of UK oriented paid for surf schemes and some new ones too.

[This message has been edited by BigBadJust (edited June 05, 2000).]

haggis

A good place to start for checking out free ISP's is TheScream (www.thescream.f9.co.uk). It was initially started for screaming.net users, but now has info/discussions on most UK based free IPS's. Personally I use WorldOnline (and with being an ex-localtel customer still get the the free off-peak access for the basic line rental - opted out of the 7/24 access for £14.99/month). Ok, at first they had major probelms, and their customer services/billing is still not up to scratch, I now nearly always get connected first time and with good connection speeds - no lag problems with online gaming.

As for paid to surf programs, I use both Alladvantage and PaysU succesfully without any significant performance overhead. I gave up with spedia due to its huge footprint and interference with other net apps.

Kumar J

Well surfingprizes.com is allways down and cannot connect, for the first few days it was fine then it started to cause problems.
So hard to even get to thier website.
Even alladvantage has some bugs.

------------------
My slow growing collectionhttp://www.dvdtracker.com/~kumarav