One active member is Joshua Dowden, a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Sacramento. While the average check last month was for $30, AllAdvantage said its top member drew more than $4,000. He said he also has hired a "chief privacy officer" to help protect consumers.Įach individual who signs up for is paid for a maximum of 25 hours of surfing time a month, so the real earning possibility lies in referrals. But AllAdvantage chief executive Jim Jorgensen said his company will not sell personally identifiable information to other firms. Privacy advocates worry about how pay-to-surf companies might use this data.
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The company can then record where the member goes on the Web and send a constantly changing array of ads matching the member's interests. To join AllAdvantage, members download a free software program that opens a one-inch-high horizonal window across the bottom of their screens. One,, is based in the homes of 16 employees scattered across Northern Virginia. Moonlighting programmers working out of their basements have launched several companies. Two dozen copycats with names such as and are recruiting hundreds of thousands of members. About 2.5 million have flocked to, which pays members to surf and chat. More than 3 million people have signed up for since it launched April 1. If success is measured by audience size, the companies are wildly popular. Officials at pay-to-surf companies brushed aside those concerns, insisting they can detect fake surfing. "If they couldn't, I would give them an F." "I would expect any of my students to build a near-perfect spoofer," he said. Phillip Greenspun, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who teaches advanced Web programming, said companies face a constant battle with the fakers.
#Million dollar pyramid audience full
From Georgetown to Stanford, whole floors of college dormitories are full of monitors lighted up with fake surfing programs, allowing students to literally make money in their sleep.
#Million dollar pyramid audience for free
Several versions of a program called "FakeSurf" are available to download for free off the Internet. Others cheat, using software programs that simulate Internet surfing by automating mouse movements while they are away from their computers. Some members, for example, simply block out the ad window with masking tape. And they wonder how successful it will be for advertisers since it is inherently difficult to make sure people really pay attention to the ads, which flow into a window the users must keep open on their computer screens. Skeptics, though, counter that the pay-to-surf business resembles off-line pyramid marketing. "AllAdvantage turns the traditional media-and-audience model on its head," LeFurgy said. But until the Internet came along there was no mechanism for direct dialogue between advertisers and viewers, he said. Rich LeFurgy, chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau and a partner in the venture-capital firm backing AllAdvantage, said the television industry would gladly pay audiences to watch commercials if it could monitor consumer reaction. Supporters say it promises to transform online marketing by making it more efficient and personal. But analysts are divided over whether the scheme is born of ingenuity or insanity. The theory is that cash payments will not only attract more "eyeballs" but also let the companies raise ad rates because surfers will respond more frequently to ads that interest them. The pay-to-surf companies essentially pass on to users a portion of their revenue from selling ads. "It's really the gold rush of the '90s for the average person, if you know what you're doing." "It takes no investment except one's own time, and you make money even if you don't work at it," said Streeter, 44, a Syracuse, N.Y., graphic artist. AllAdvantage and dozens of other companies are rushing to build big audiences by handing out cash to people willing to let advertisers track their Web surfing and send them ads tailored to their habits. Streeter and millions of others are cashing in on the latest Internet marketing craze. His reward? He got a monthly commission check for $2,044.43 in the mail the other day.
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The group Streeter initiated into now numbers more than 10,000 people. It was a pittance, really-50 cents an hour-but then he learned that if he signed up his brother Tom, or anyone else, the company would pay Streeter a 10-cent commission for each hour those "referrals" spent online.Īnd for all the people his brother referred-and for their friends and even the friends' friends-Streeter would collect another nickel per hour each. In April, Ron Streeter discovered a company that would pay him just for surfing around and looking at ads on the World Wide Web.
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By Ariana Eunjung Cha Leslie Walker December 8, 1999