You may have my permission to call me butter, for I am on a roll.  This morning I received a $350 payment from YouriPodTouch4Free.com.  I used the “social engineering” method discussed in my post about getting $580 from YourFreeiPhone.com.

I spent $150 to get referrals and made $350. If I consider the $150 an investment, the $350 payment I received is a 233% return on my investment!  With this payment, I have received a total of $930 from freebie sites.

And the proof follows:

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Let’s be real.  I have been a Windows “fanboi” for as long as I can remember.  In fact I’ve also been a “fanboi” of Intel, Apple, and AT&T-but those are a different story.  My very first computer ran Windows 98.  My second computer ran XP Professional.  My third computer runs Vista Ultimate x64.  I’m annoyed at Vista!  At first, I was a huge fan of Vista.  Its graphics are a little over the top for my video card at times, but initially I was quite please.  The occaisonal crashes and bluescreens were few and far between and for the first time, I had Windows Media Center.  I find it bloated and slow, but it works.  Or at least it did.

As you may or may not know,  I was one of the first adoptors of the public release version of Service Pack 1 for Vista x64.  Since then, Vista has become increasingly unstable.  I, for one, would have thought that Vista and WMC would be BFF considering that they’re made by the same people!  Every morning, I try to record 2 episodes of JAG using Windows Media Center.  Almost every morning, Vista throws a bluescreen and ruins the entire program.   This also happens in the evening when I’m trying to record The Biggest Loser or American Idol.  While these problems are merely annoyances now, because I’m recording these shows at home as well, they are completely unacceptable.

I am faced with two choices. I can either try to fix these bluescreen problems by reformating and starting, or I can cut my loses and move on to some Linux distro. I think that I will try to reformat and reinstall Vista over spring break which is a week away. while I’m at it, I might as well also set up a partition and install Ubuntu 7.10.

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I shall begin this post by donning my enlightened despot cap and claiming that wisdom (or maybe just a working knowledge of economics) is knowing when to quit.

I began working as a webmaster with one simple goal.  I wanted, and still do, to own and manage a “big board” forum.  I’ve always been fascinated by forums but, I’ve never been able to create and grow a unique community.  In around 5 years of online work, I still have not approached this goal.  I’ve not even come close.  Over the years, I’ve dabbled in many other niches, but none have really ever caught my fancy.  I buy or start a site, use it for a while, and then let it go.  I never give the sites the time, effort, or passion that they deserve.  When they’re mere shadows of their former selves, I sell them-hopefully at a cost high enough to recover my investment.  My goal with sites like this has always been to make money.  This, however, is not enough to be a success.

After 5 years of online work, I still consider myself a novice in the webmaster game. I’ve turned a profit here and ther, but I still know nothing about web marketing, nothing about programming, nothing about monetizing a website when it is getting traffic. As such, it is time for me to tender my resignation. I’ve been a monumental failure in this business and I need to withdraw and reqroup. I’m not pulling out completely, I’m just liquidating all the sites that I currently own and starting over with just this blog. Until I know what I’m doing, I’m going to try and refrain from proliferating the spread of useless sites clogging the net.

This leads me to a metamorphosis for this blog. Starting when I get around to it, this blog will have a new focus…the world according to me!

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Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the weather in Arkansas is anything but crazy.  Over the weekend, highs were close to 70. Yesterday, the temperature was 60 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy thunderstorms. Right now, it is 29 degrees and we could have as much as a foot of snow on the ground!  It may be as much as 10 or 15 years since I’ve seen this much snow!

Snow day!

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As you may or may not know, I am a sophmore business student majoring in Accounting at Arkansas Tech University. This semester I am taking a course on the Legal Environments of Business. This week we discussed the sale of goods in general and ecommerce. During the lecture I learned something interesting about warranties. Did you know that if a customer asks you to recommend a product to suit their needs and they subsequently purchase it you have contractually guaranteed that this product will work for the needs that they have described to you? I didn’t! I work part time at an AT&T wireless Authorized Agent and we give out recommendations all the time!

So what does this mean to you? When you tell a customer that something will work for the needs described, you have offered them an express warranty that need not be in writing. If you recommend one of your products to a customer, they purchase it, and it doesn’t fit the needs that they described to you, then you have just violated the sales contract and they could take you to court to receive a refund! All they have to do is prove that you promised them that it would do whatever and that this promise had a significant influence on their decision to purchase.

You are, of course, allowed to use sales language (this is the best product “4 eva”, ect.), just don’t over do it. So, the next time a customer asks your advice, watch the pufffing. You could be doing more than blowing  smoke up someone’s…

The Obligatory: I ain’t a lawyer, don’t sue me if you read this post, use it, and it in some way irreperably damages you or causes you bodily harm or mental anguish.

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Ok, I’ve just recently discovered StumbleUpon.  I know, I know, it’s been around for a while now.  Up until a couple weeks ago, I was just too busy to mess with anything new.  Now I find that if I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll just open up Firefox, hit stumble and away I go.  It really is countless hours of fun.  My only complaint is that I can’t use it with Opera, my browser of choice.  So far I’ve found a few really addicting games such as copter and virus as well as the best web tool ever-well, probably not but it’s still pretty cool though.  Check out the Xinu backlink/PageRank/social networking/ect. tool here.

You can also check out my favorite sites on Stumble at http://sam2k.stumbleupon.com/

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There has been unbelievable hype leading up to today in anticipation of some sort of new product release from Apple.  There is significant evidence pointing to new MacBook Pros being released today which have shown up in Best Buy’s inventory database but, the iPhone SDK is supposed to be released by the end of February which suggests a firmware update, and the 3G iPhone is coming out *sometime*.  Maybe we’ll get all 3 today.

Oh, btw, the Apple Store is down.

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Revolution Money Exchange is a new player in the online payment processing game. They look to be offering a competitive experience and are not charging fees when you send or receive money. In fact, the fees they do charge are all administrative for stuff like requesting a check and overdrawing your account and appear to be quite reasonable.  Also, their arbitration clause looks to be much more fair than most.

To establish themselves as players in the online payment processing war, they are offering a free $25 bonus to sign up and are offering $10 when you refer someone up to $500.  These offers will be expiring on February 29th, so take advantage of this while you can.

Revolution Money Exchange LLC is underwritten by First Bank & Trust, Brookings, South Dakota, which is FDIC insured.

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Introduction
We’ve all seen them. You can’t go to many websites around the world and not see a flashing banner advertisement informing you that you can get a free trip to the finals of American Idol or a free Macbook Air, or a Free iPhone, or…or…or…*. Did I mention the * ? Let’s try that again. * * *. Yeah, I think there’s some fine print that goes with those advertisements. Something about having to sit under a toadstool while wishing upon a star during a full moon that eclipses while eating a snickers bar and visualizing a Jolly Roger. Or something like that. In fact, there is so much fine print, they have to use a star everytime they think about thinking about thinking about actually interacting with a vict-er, client.

Now, if I tell you that you can actually use one of these sites to get an iPhone for $80 or less, its probably not going to be long before you turn around and leave, never to darken my doorstep again. Actually, scratch that.  You can darken my blog’s doorstep but, you probably shouldn’t darken my doorstep. If you too skeptical at this point to follow along, check the bottom of this post for a Paypal screenshot that was taken Thursday.

If you’re going to trust me (you shouldn’t trust random people on the web as they’re probably out to screw you, just go with me on this one for a minute), you’ll need a few things. First, keep in mind that this is a way to lower your net cost when purchasing your iPhone. You will still have to slap down the $400 or $500 at your local Apple or AT&T store to get the iPhone. This is just a way to recoup much of that money or get it in advance. Second, if you don’t already have one, get an email address. You can get a great free email address at gmail.com. Third, you will need a Paypal (paypal.com, type it into your browser yourself to prevent phishing) account and you need to add a bank account or credit card to verify your identiy. Fourth, you need to reside in the United States or Canada and have a major credit card. Finally, you need to know that this will not be instant gratification. It will take at least a week of your attention and will require either some social networking or some social engineering.

Let’s Do This
Now, what’s this all about? The site is Your Free iPhone. The following easy to use step-by-step process will ensure that you are sent either a free iPhone or $560 in cash that can be used to get an iPhone at a net cost of $80 or less.

1. Join the site by clicking this link and entering your email address at the bottom of the page then fill out the contact info on the subsequent page. Read the Terms of Service and disqualify yourself if you are not eligible in some way. Believe me, this site will find out if you have violated the ToS and you will have wasted whatever time and effort you have put into this.
2. Complete 1 ‘Level A’ or 2 ‘Level B’ offers. There are several free trial offers that are just great. They cost just a few dollars to have a success kit of some type mailed to your home and they provide great info about money making opportunities on the web. Examples of these include the QuickBooks Simple Start, Yahoo Success Center, and Chuck Mullaney Teaches Ebay offers.  There are also trials for staples like Blockbuster and Gamefly.  If you like what you get then you can keep using the services after the trial period expires. If you’re not satisfied, you may contact the merchant to discuss your membership. For more info on completing an offer, see the completing an offer section below.
3. You will need referrals. This is where social networking vs. social engineering comes in, which I’ll explain below. The minimum referral requirement is 8. If you refer 8 people who all complete an offer, Your Free iPhone will send you an iPhone. No shipping charges or anything. They will ship it to you straight from Apple. The problem with this is that they can only purchase a few iPhones each day from Apple (due to Apple’s purchasing limits) so the waiting list is about 3 weeks long after you’ve completed an offer and referred peoples. When you have completed the offer requirements, gotten your referrals, and placed your order, ask them to send you $400 via Paypal instead of the iPhone due to their backlog.  They’ll be happy to comply.  The most efficient approach is to refer 11 people to receive $560 in your Paypal account. This was the approach that I took and I have attached a screenshot of my receipt to the bottom this post.

Social Networking VS Social Engineering
What do I mean by social networking vs. social engineering? Social networking is the way to maximize your profit on this deal and even come out ahead after purchasing your iPhone. Social networking involves getting your friends to sign up using your referral link and complete an offer so that they can work on getting their own iPhone. Its that simple. Give your friends your referral link, they sign up and complete an offer and you’re one referral down. There’s a catch, right? Nope. They just have to use real information (just like you) and they have to sign up and complete their offer requirements from a different network with different IP address. So, what if you don’t have any friends who could do this or you don’t have enough? This is where social engineering, building a network from the ground up, comes in. This was the approach that I chose because it can be dificult to try and explain something like this to non-web savvy individuals. Social engineering involves finding people online through forums or referral trading websites and paying them to sign up using your referral link and complete the offer requirments. I paid 3 people $20 and 8 people $25 to complete offers for me. You’re going to receive your best results if you place an ad offering this on a forum that you have an established reputation at and offer payment through Paypal. With either approach, keep in mind that the first freebie site is the most difficult. After you’ve found friends or acquaintances that are willing to sign up under you and complete an offer once, you may be able to go back to the well over and over again. If you have trouble coming up with somewhere to post your ad, post a comment and I’ll try to give you some suggestions.

Completing an Offer
After you’ve signed up, you have to complete the offer requirements. The offers rely on cookies to report your completion back to Your Free iPhone. As such, you need to make sure that you use Internet Explorer on the lowest security setting to make sure that your browser doesn’t reject the cookie that you need. Before you start the offer, you should also clear both your cookies and your browser cache incase you have visited the offer website at some point in the past as this can cause problems. With these things in mind, pick an offer that interests you and read and understand the requirements. Then click through to the offer website and fill in all the required information validly and use the same email address that you used to sign up to Your Free iPhone. Then, make sure and use a real credit card as virtual credit card numbers will not work and will get your account on Your Free iPhone closed. If you’ve got any questions about this, please leave a comment and I’ll try to help you out.

How Can They Afford to Do This?
The question that your entire decision to try this out probably hinges on is, “How could they possibly afford to send me an iPhone or $580?” This is simple. They use affiliate programs that provide ads through their website. When you click on one of the ads and complete the requirements for it, they get paid by the affiliate program. They actually lose money when you claim a prize so they’re hoping that you get a referral or two and then quit. But, if you do complete all the requirements, they are more than glad to send you your prize because it further solidifies their reputation. The company that owns Your Free iPhone has shipped several million $ worth of cash and merchandise over the last couple years, including $560 to me.

How to get an iPhone for $80
Over a couple weeks, I used the social engineering method to pay people to be my referral. I spent $260 doing this. On Thursday, I received $580 from Your Free iPhone. This is a net profit of $320. I can now go to my local AT&T store or to Apple.com and pay $400 for an 8GB iPhone. $400 - $320 = $80. Now, if I’d done a little social networking instead of some social engineering I could have decreased this $80 to $0 or even made money off the process.A screenshot of my Paypal receipt is attached below. If you have any questions about anything in this posts or need more info, please leave a comment.

Sites I’m working on now: 

YouriPodTouch4Free
360Elite4Free 

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It is just under 22 hours since I installed Vista Ultimate Service Pack 1 x64 on my laptop and I’ve just received my first Blue Screen of Death.  How I’ve missed ya buddy it’s been almost a week now since I’ve seen you.

Interestingly enough, I don’t believe I ever had a BSoD on one of my personal XP machines.

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