Aliana
Old Alpha
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2006
- Posts
- 955
- Location
- Charleston, SC
- Society
- Ubers-In-Training
- Avatar Name
- Aliana Hermes
I understand and respect your position even if I don't agree. But maybe my view is skewed by having more experience over a longer history with programs such as this than the average person. If anyone has ever tried these types of programs and ran into one of the poorly run ones, I am sure just at a glance, another such program would be viewed less than favorably. That much I can give you and agree with. There's no consistency in the quality of what you are working with when it comes to these programs. There are good ones out there, but you don't know which they are until you either try them or get solid reviews from others. Not from their referral links. They could just be after the extra money. But from people on forums and such. Most people aren't going to do that kind of research. The inconsistency in quality is the reason for having separate emails and a spare computer. It's unfortunate that there could be several good programs out there, but it only takes running into one bad one to completely ruin things for you if you don't have safety precautions. Just like we have precautions we all follow against scammers inside the universe. It's a similar thing. If a new participant gets scammed, then they are left with a bad impression of the community (unless others have stepped up to show otherwise) and can be enough to ruin what otherwise I view as a good thing, being participation in EU.
Not all of the programs have paid me yet, granted. I could be in error and didn't complete some of them fully. However, I did receive 70 ped (maybe a little more, they started coming through at odd times and I haven't bothered to actually add up all the results). That really isn't much in the grand scheme of things. However, if someone were to have a choice between sweating for 70 hours or filling out forms, if they are open to it, for 4 hours. It's a better deal. Not only for the participant receiving the 70 ped, but for MA and the PPs as well because that person can now go out and buy equipment for whatever it is they want to do and create decay faster than they would through the sweat gathering method. Also some percentage of that 70 ped will make it into the loot pool. I'm only one person. 70 ped is nothing. But if 10 people did it, that's 700 ped. If 100 people did it, that's 7K ped and so on. I think with my impression of your background you can see and already know how that works.
In MAs defense, I have been doing these kinds of programs (paid to click, paid to surf, paid to play games, affiliate programs blah blah blah) for over 10 years. I was very active on a daily basis in them for quite a while. I even got our Xbox360 for free form playing casual games online. Entropia caught my attention away from those programs and successfully consumed the time that I used to spend on those programs. The point of telling you all that experience is to be able to inform you that this is one of the best affiliate programs I've run into and hopefully the background allows you to see that I'm talking from a more knowledgeable position than most. I have not had any problems with viruses, malware or excessive spam. The worst is that a couple of tool bars got through as well as extra programs until I noticed to read the installation pages. After cleaning up the start up menu everything is fine. There hasn't even been any of the offers that have set off a series of popups to the point of annoyance. I completed all the offers in the free section. Not just a few. It's only my speculation. But if someone were to ask, I would say that MA must have done some research and didn't just associate themselves with merely any old program out there. I really think they took some time to develop the confidence that they were implementing a quality option (for what it is) for participants to have to generate ped.
Yes. I agree someone could go do such programs separately then allocate the earnings to ped. However, that's not likely to happen. It's a matter of convenience. I never bothered to do that. It's too much bother to move the earnings from paypal to my bank account to EU. It was a lot easier to leave it in paypal then go do my Christmas shopping on Ebay. What MA has implemented is quick and easy for a lot of the offers. Some of them really do pay in about 20 minutes and MA knows that everything generated from it is going to go into the Universe. Whether it stays there or not is a different story.
If MA had this option displayed and heavily advertised as a way to make ped on their home page (I mean big top of the page banner in your face), I would probably be in more agreement with you. However it's pretty deeply embedded on the deposit page. It's all the way at the bottom and anyone who knows marketing knows that the bottom of a page that requires scrolling is anything other than prime real estate. I think it was implemented in a discrete, non intrusive manner. I had no clue it was there until you expressed your displeasure about its existence. Even the ad that is on the home page is not made in any way to stand out more than anything else in that category and also requires scrolling to see it. It also wouldn't surprise me to see that small ad fall off the home page over time as new developments take its place for attention.
Hugs,
Aliana
