I’ve experimented with quite a couple of websites and blogs (such as this one). Most were created on whims, some were successful enough to earn a domain renewal, and two have managed to pull in some money. Not gigantic amounts – the first site I was able to sell for a solid $1000, the second is earning a small passive income through Adsense of about $1.00 – $2.00 a day. However all my sites suffered from the same disease. After the initial excitement of technological birth it was only a matter of time before I lost interest. Updates would come to a standstill, comments were left unmoderated, and soon the staleness would settle in.

A common and apparent denominator quickly emerged. Updating these sites required ME to generate the content and ME to keep the site alive. And the second that MY interest started waning, the site would suffer! This was not a good thing, as I can be quite the lazy webmaster. That’s when the answer struck me: Visitor-Created Content. The sites I mentioned above used it, to great success. If I relied on my visitors to provide a site with content, the effort required of me to keep the site updated would be minimal. All I’d need to do is screen, format, and edit! Tada, a new blog post!

Thus starts my first experiment into created a viral website. The idea came to me on a camping trip after I took a peek at my friend’s phone (he was checking his Facebook at the time). One of his friends had posted a hilariously aggressive Facebook status update – the kind laced with so much venom and hate that you had to laugh that Facebook was chosen as the platform to express it. A Facebook fan myself, I decided to create a viral website centered around mishaps just like that which occur on the site. Surely others would find such gems in their newsfeeds. And so Lawlbook was born!

I’m currently working behind the scenes to set up the website, but you can visit the launch page for now. Once I get this going I’ll document my progress, so anybody with a working knowledge of creating websites can try it out!Similar Posts:

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Most studies require an hour or two of ‘work’, but pay (on average) $10 – $15 an hour. It’s a quick way to make some extra cash and potentially participate in some pretty cool research!

Someone who hasn’t volunteered as a research subject may have some misgivings. Let me quell your fears – in scientific studies, the researcher will usually fully brief you on the tasks that you will be performing unless the way the experiment is designed requires otherwise. Privacy is a big deal and is handled very seriously by the researchers – they will not refer to you by name in their reports or release any identifiable information about you to the public. Prior to the study, you will sign a contract stating that you are able to stop the experiment at any point if you feel uncomfortable.

I will not participate in experiments which require me to consume an experimental drug or other unidentifiable items, or to receive substances intravenously (and these usually pay a lot more than $10/hr, more in the $xxxx.xx range!) since I’m a wimp. However I’ve participated in non-invasive experiments which hooked me up to an EEG Machine, required me to use a computer, or sit in a dark room for an hour listening to tones and looking for lights. Part of the fun is seeking out weird projects! With scientific research, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get something completely different each time.

‘But wait Spiffy Owl,’ I can hear you tweet, ‘how do I find these lucrative opportunities to donate my body to science?‘. Hearken my dear lost owlet, one needs only to wander through the halls of your local Psychology Department to be bombarded with the flyers of many a desperate researcher. January and February are particularly fruitful months, as crunch-time is upon these poor students to complete their thesis. You may also want to see if your local University has an online board for this kind of stuff – simply add your email to the list to be notified of future studies. Hospitals may also be good hunting grounds. Generally once you’ve applied for one study, they’ll put you on a list (with your permission) as a potential candidate for others.

I’ve got a couple of studies that I will be participating in lined up for the coming months They will be recorded here for your amusement. In the meantime, Spiffy out.Similar Posts:

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I came across Unlimited Wii Downloads and thought that this was something that would be of interest to the facebook crowd. This site supposedly lets you download games, videos, and music to your Nintendo Wii system. A quick search on the internet shows that this site has generally favourable reviews, and that the software works. Unfortunately I do not own a Wii, so I can’t test or vouch for the program.

Membership for the site is either $39.95 (for one month) or $49.95 (for a lifetime). Promising a payout of 75% for each membership sold, I will need to sell either ~3-4 one month memberships, or ~2-3 lifetime memberships to break-even on the $100 facebook voucher.

I’ve applied to create the ad via facebook using the following settings. I’ve heard they are quite strict on accepting ads, but we’ll see. Hopefully persistance pays off.

The wording of the ad is important. I choose a question for the title, a technique known to capture attention more often than a simple statement. A brief description of the service, as well as a call to action is included in the ad description.

I chose the United States as my target market instead of Canada, for the simple reason that the website I am promoting caters first to Americans (the price is listed in USD). I’m targetting people over 18, since those are the ones who posess credit cards. I’ve included both males and females since, despite popular opinion, there are almost as many female gamers as males (I should know, I am a female gamer!). Keywords are restricted to anything containing ‘Wii’.

And finally, I’ve set my daily budget to $5.00 and my max bid per click to $0.10. That means that each time a facebook user sees my ad and clicks it, up to 10 cents will be deducted from my account. I will probably need to adjust this later since this budget is quite conservative.

So now I just need to cross my fingers and hope that facebook approves the ad. I’ll keep you updated!

Edit: Holy that was fast. Within an hour (and before I could even get this blog post up) facebook has approved the ad! I’ll watch it for a couple of days and update the Spiffy Owl with any progress.

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I haven’t tried affiliate marketing yet but this seems like a great opportunity to get my feet wet. It could make me some cash, or it could be a bust. Basically what I’ll try to do is find a good program that I can promote on facebook to a target audience, and attempt to make more than the cost ($100) back. The good news is that since the voucher is free, there’s really no risk – I wont actually have to spend anything!

If anyone has some programs they’d like to recommend shoot me a comment. If you have a referral ID I’ll sign up under it if I decide to give your program a spin. And of course, I’ll document the whole process on the Spiffy Owl if anyone else would like to try it out!Similar Posts:

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This contest is running every week until December 21st, and unfortunately for the company (and fortunately for you!) there is almost no interest in this contest. Zip. Nada. Zero. None. The week where I entered, I was only competing against one other person. The odds of winning are pretty freakin’ good.

Here’s what you need to do: head on over to the Sprout website and download their program. I checked it over and it looks clean from any viruses or trojans. Once you’ve signed up, start using the Sprout reader – basically what you need to do is find really WEIRD news stories. Once you have something good, click the Show Location button at the bottom, and copy the URL and headline of the article.

Then, simply log on to facebook, and post both in this discussion board. You can enter as many times as you want so keep on surfing until you find something juicy! The contest closes every Sunday at 9:00pm. As of this week, I only see one person entering! Good luck!

Here are a couple of quick thoughts about Sprout. Sadly, despite their (failing) contest efforts, I really despise their program. Clicking the ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ leaves is supposed to help narrow down the types of stories that you enjoy reading, however it’s riddled with bugs and frequently gives me stories that I’ve ‘sad-leafed’ over and over again. Many of the pages it spits out aren’t even news stories, or in other languages. And most of the news stories it spits out aren’t interesting or weird or funny. When your program can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to do well – WELL – take it back to the drawing board!

Perhaps its most heinous crime is hijacking my choice of web browser. That’s right, Sprout is a stand-alone program, with it’s own built-in browser. One that is painstakingly slow, and frankly, kind of ugly. I see what Sprout was trying to do here, but they should take a leaf (hah!) from StumbleUpon. Don’t develop a stand-alone program, try a Firefox extension, a toolbar, something that lets the user control their browser when surfing the net.

I’ve won Sprout’s contest but that’s not enough to sway me to use a flawed program. I’ve uninstalled it this morning, but wish Sprout the best of luck in developing something that works!Similar Posts:

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One of the staff actually told me they would only be sent out once a month, and that the November cheques would be mailed today, so either they made an exception for me or decided to send them out early. If it’s the latter, I hope they change their payout scheme at least to once every two weeks – if they can approve poster submissions on the weekend, they should be able to fill out cheques more often than once a month!

At any rate, I’m $150 richer, and pretty pumped that I’ve covered a good portion of my holiday shopping. Complete review of the ScreenScape program coming soon.

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That’s right, I’ve successfully put up 50 posters, and all my claims have been confirmed (I was supposed to put in 50 claims, but I think I may have missed one). Each poster translates to a minimum of $2.00 each. You can see the total amount ‘Pending payment’ of my account in the image above.

Since all 50 posters were put up within two weeks, I should also be receiving an additional $50.00 bonus. This doesn’t show up in my Account Information, but I’m assuming that it will come with the check. I submitted my claims on Friday night I believe, and they were approved by Saturday afternoon. The check is supposed to automatically be mailed out when my account hits $50.00 – which means that it should have been mailed out today (Monday morning) and should arrive within the week.

Fingers crossed!Similar Posts:

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Total time needed to place posters*: 5 hrs and 50 mins
Total time needed to submit venues online: 35 mins
TOTAL TIME NEEDED TO COMPLETE JOB: 6 hrs and 25 mins

*transportation to and from CIRCUITS was not included (similar to the way you would not be paid for the time it takes to get to and leave work). Transportation time between poster-plastering within a single circuit was included.

I just submitted my last chunk of claims and they are all currently pending. I put up 50 posters in total, used up all my brochures, and a handful of stickers. I put 51 claims in to ScreenScape (50 being for the posters, 1 being for brochures left at a location). If all my venues are accepted, the projected base pay for this job comes to $102. Since I have made more than 50 claims within my first two weeks, I should also be receiving an additional $50 bonus, bringing the total pay up to $152.

This translates to a projected salary of $23.40 an hour, which is significantly larger than my previous post.

ScreenScape is usually very quick on the ball with approving submissions, keep checking back here and I’ll stick up a note once they’ve been confirmed. By then I would have met and overshot the $50 minimum payout, so we’ll see how quickly the check arrives.

To note: some ScreenScape staff have been checking out this blog, and have acted on one of my suggestions to make the ‘Submit a Venue’ form a little more user-friendly. Now it remembers the last city and country you’ve been in, so you don’t have to select it down from a drop-down menu each time you make a claim. Might not seem like a big deal, but those wasted seconds could have really added up, so thanks!Similar Posts:

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I did experiment with several poster locations, and I’m glad to see that the eligibility criteria isn’t as strict as I initially thought. Even though I was not able to provide a full street address for most of the venues, I was still awarded the $2.00. For one location, there were no places to stick up posters – though I noticed that many ads were left along the windowsill. I left two brochures there instead, and was still credited for that location. I was worried that I may have put up too many posters in SMU, but each one I submitted from there was confirmed as well – even a poster that I stuck up on a random wall in front of a water fountain. *thumbs*

What was not acknowledged (at least not yet) were locations where ScreenScape brochures/stickers were clearly visible. I made sure that these items were included within the picture, but so far I haven’t received any extra compensation for that work. Again, handing out brochures/putting up stickers is supposed to fall under ‘potential for bonuses’, and employees are not given a set rate for the extra work.

It’s been raining all day today as well, and the weather does not look good for the next week. I wasn’t able to get any more posters up today, and I’m going to be swamped with other work in a very short period of time – I really want to attempt to put up the ’50 posters within two weeks’ to qualify for the $50.00 ‘bonus’, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it. At any rate, once I hit at least 25 posters ($50.00), a check is supposed to be automatically mailed to my doorstep. Will keep you updated about payday.

Something I haven’t touched yet, though I should have, is the whole general idea behind ScreenScape’s Marketing techniques.

The approach they’ve taken – hiring young, enthusiastic people who know their city well – is nothing new. Many companies employ a similar type of technique through the use of ‘Campus Representatives’. Hired students with an established network of friends, who are promised awesome perks for promoting certain products. Apple does this – Campus Reps help promote iPods and Macs by throwing Apple parties/concerts and giving away free products. I often see a highly branded ‘smart car’ zipping around my campus promoting the energy drink Red Bull – they usually hit up University sporting events and give out the drinks for free. Certain travel companies also employ campus reps, giving them free trips for organizing a group of friends to participate in spring-break getaways.

However, the way that ScreenScape uses its employees is different and novel – they invest quite a bit upfront (close to $100 for a starter package) and pay for performance instead of # of sales. In other words, you are paid directly for the posters you put up – it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, tries it, or buys it, you still pocket some cash. I haven’t seen this type of technique used by any other company, and I actually think it’s both a very clever way to advertise, and provides fair returns for the hired student.

ScreenScape is also a small, new company, and spending this kind of cash on street-level advertising must be a fairly large risk. The staff are therefore quite dedicated to making this work – the communication with street team members is quick and thoughtful, and you get the feeling that there is support available when you need it. The fact that they mail you poster-sticking supplies along with their advertisements shows that they have thought this through and are trying hard to make it easy for the street team to do their job.

For their sake, I really want to see this work. Especially since they are a small, local (close enough, us Maritimers gotta stick together), and smart start-up. Catching the attention of local businesses is exactly what they need to sell their kind of product, and once one venue uses it I’m guessing their hope is that it will spread like wildfire throughout the city. Using a sharpie to scrawl the venue name on each poster is another extremely insightful and clever strategy to catch the attention of the venue owner (but the overly excited lady looking like she’s receiving the blessings of the Screen-Display gods, eh… but whatever works). Paying the street team member a reasonable amount for each poster and providing all the necessary tools needed to do the job shows respect for their employees. They know the target market of their product, and the ‘target market’ of the type of people they employ, and use a very intelligent marketing campaign to bring the two together.

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I won’t show pictures of the locations that I have postered just yet – I want to see what ScreenScape will pay me first, since I tried a couple of different things and I want to evaluate their eligibility criteria. In the meantime, here is a basic timeline of the day – I only managed to get around fourteen posters up.

3:00 – Packed all my supplies into a bag – ready to plaster the masses. Brought along a friend.

3:15 – Walked down the hill to the Rockingham Community Centre – I was denied placement on the noticeboard
3:25 – Walked a little more down the road to Mount Saint Vincent University. Managed to place two posters in the building. Got on a bus and headed downtown.
4:00 – Reached downtown, and started to hit up several coffee shops and bars on Spring Garden Road. Also managed to plaster the Public Library. Left a couple of brochures in strategic venues. The rain is downpouring at this point. Managed seven posters so far in total. Took a bus to Saint Mary’s University.

4:40 – Visited several academic buildings and locations within SMU. Put up seven posters (and spotted another ScreenScape poster already on a noticeboard! There’s another hired student in Halifax it seems). Also attempted to use a couple of stickers.
5:30 – Was going to visit Dalhousie to complete my route, but gave up postering for the day and decided to check out the Parade of Lights since the rain had let up.
7:30 – Torrential rain began falling from the sky, the parade people and spectators are soaked, and I decide to jet early and catch a bus home.

9:05 – I began uploading the venues via ScreenScape’s Facebook ‘Submit a Venue’ tool. I had placed fourteen posters in total today, but made a claim for fifteen locations.
9:20 – Completed the submission process. They are all currently pending approval.

The amount of time which I would consider ‘work’ (a.k.a, not on a bus) came to about two and a half hours. If I receive $2.00 for each of the fifteen locations, that translates to around $12.00/hr. That’s a pretty decent salary, and well above minimum wage!

I was not able to get as many posters up today as I would have liked. Granted the day was poorly planned – I should have left much earlier (which would have allowed me to avoid the rain in the evening) and not have chosen a day which coincides with the Parade of Lights (many of the roads were blocked off leading to loooong bus waits). However, aside from that, it was much more difficult than I anticipated to find venues that would allow posters (especially since they were not advertising a local event, but a company), and not many had community noticeboards. I didn’t feel comfortable sticking up the posters directly on bare walls as I thought this disrespectful and frustrating for venue owners. Because of this, the majority of the posters I managed to stick up were in University locations, as they contain a plethora of noticeboards. Attempts to vary my ‘venue type’ was therefore pretty difficult, they either fell under ‘Food&Drink’ or more commonly ‘Civic’.

Taking pictures was a relatively painless process. However it was hard to get a good feel of the venue if you’re basically taking a picture of a wall. It’s very difficult to communicate a great location if the photograph can’t capture any people or demonstrate a waiting area or longue. However taking wall photos may also mask the dead-ness or perhaps inappropriateness of a location.

Alright, I guess you can see one photo. Walls do not lend themselves to a proper representation of location. This is a bustling coffee shop - no, really.

As anticipated in my previous post, the stickers had a hard time finding a home. I honestly had no idea where to put them. Walls were out of the question, since they’d be a pain to peel off and would probably damaged paint. They were also large enough to obscure the flyers of anyone else. I only used them in one location as an experiment – feeling guilty as I plastered five or six stickers over other people’s ads. There’s no way I’m going to be able to go through the packet of 50.

The brochures, on the other hand, proved to be more useful. I attached one or two with a thumbtack to a poster in strategic locations – specifically noticeboards where I saw the ads of various other small businesses. I figured that they would be able to take along a brochure if it caught their eye the next time they swung by to put up their own ads. Unfortunately since I was only given ten brochures, these ran out rather quickly.

The submission process was not too painful – it took fifteen minutes to complete fifteen submissions (this was also factored in the time I considered ‘work’). That comes to the tune of one minute/submission. Unfortunately you have to select the City, Province, and Country each time your submit – I’d much prefer a way to ‘set’ these since you’re likely not going to be moving from city to city just to stick up posters. They also require a ‘Street Address’, which is pretty difficult to find on venues like bars or libraries or Universities. I only managed to fill out the full street address for a couple of venues, and just used the street name for the rest. Hopefully this still counts as a complete submission.

I’m planning to hit several outdoor noticeboards that I know of tomorrow, then my University (Dalhousie). Dal is pretty large and I know it quite well – getting the remainder of the posters up there shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but I’m thinking 30 posters within a single institution may be pushing it a little. However as I said, I’m finding it pretty difficult to find privately owned locations that have space and allow people to put up ads and I know my city well – this may be an easier job for Street Team Members in larger cities. However if ScreenScape is not stringent with the eligibility process, the potential per hour salary seems worthwhile!

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