January 25, 2009
Book trading/review sites taking off
Lots of people are figuring out that you can recycle books. You can get even that new release for free on a trading site. And books on your shelf are a potential asset in economic hard times. It looks from the Compete.com data that Goodreads.com, PaperbackSwap.com and Librarything.com are winning and growing fast while Shelfari, Bookins, Bookmooch, Bookcrossing, Allconsuming.net (early leader) and others languish. Books are also a growing category for some of the generalized sites like SwapTree which seems to be kicking SwapThing’s ass.
I need to integrate some into Kashless. Which are your favorites?
Posted by Martin at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 1, 2008
Is free really free?
I signed up to be notified of “free” offers through FatWallet a couple weeks ago. Since Fatwallet free section is really an extension of a shopping engine, I expected most of the “free” offers to not really be free. I have not been disappointed.
For example today, someone posted a “free” reusable grocery tote from Stouffers. Over a dozen people wrote to say thanks and that they signed up. The “offer” was rated high on FatWallet, so I checked it out. Stouffers is doing a standard lead generation campaign. They want people to sign up for their “dinner club” and enter their Stouffer’s dinners they eat to earn “points” which can be donated or used in “Auctions” for fabulous prizes. You get 100 points for opening an account. That account costs you your full name, address, valid phone number, and five demographic profile questions about your household and eating habits. For that you get 100 “points”. For the month of December, the kind folks at Stouffers are offering to “give” a free meal (value $0.07) to Feed America for every 20 points donated. So basically the 100 points Stouffers gave you cost them $0.35 cash. And they got a valid name/address/phone/demographic information and the right to call you (in the TOS they get you to waive your no-call registration) and spam you with any offer they like. The best $0.35 Stouffer ever spent.
Oh, the tote. They say that for every 20 points donated to Feed America, they will deliver one grocery tote 6-8 weeks after Dec. 31 while supplies last. Let me guess how many totes they have. I guess less than 10. And a tote costs $0.99 in the store, in bulk probably $0.30. I bet I don’t get a tote even though I donated all my 100 points.
I wish there was an easy way to provide transparency to these kinds of offers.
Posted by Martin at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 17, 2008
The web is a crazy place
So in searching for valid interesting free offers, I came across one where a person offered 5 minutes of compliments. Now that is interesting. How would that work? Well I had to reply. The person friended me on Facebook, then sent me this note:
Thats an awesome chair !
Nice hair cut!
Great painting in background!
Love the style that you choose on what your wearing
You seem like an awesome person!
You live in WA! and thats awesome!
You are republican! + :)
You own an awesome website!
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.deepgreencrystals.com%2FYou are a CEO and Chairman of something! That always says something!
And you have a sweet name!
Hey, it was free and put a smile on my face. Now that is cool.
Posted by Martin at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 10, 2008
ROI calculation on “Free” Mike and Ike contest
Mike & Ike Candy
click stock up, spin the wheel until you win
500 given each month
http://www.mikeandi
Ok, I went over there and the spinny wheel is kinda cute. It is like a vegas slot machine. But I pressed "spin" 100 times and never won. Lets do the math. 500 winners per month. That would be on average 6 winners per day (assuming a 30 day month), with 24 hrs is about one winner per 4 hours. You can click the button about once a second if you are diligent. That means that there are 60 sec x 60 min x 4 hours =14,400 clicks in the four hour period and they award one of them the prize.
Now this is simple math assuming there is only one person clicking solid for 4 hours. And that the machine awards one every four hours. It also doesn't account for other people clicking. They may not, they may award one every XX clicks. It is impossible to know their algorythm. All these factors just make the odds go up against the player. If the site is playing by the conservative rules, you should be able to sit there and click for four hours and be gauranteed to win a box of candy.
Now what is your time worth? Lets say $20/hr. That means about $.33/minute. $1 of your time is about 3 minutes.
Summary:
Prize: $1 box of candy
Cost: Up to 4 hours of time and 14,400 clicks of the mouse.
BreakEven Calculation: Click for 3 minutes, if you haven't won, move on, you are loosing money.
Posted by Martin at 7:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 14, 2008
Free is a very good price
A corollary to conserving resources, reuse of resources, is to get something for nothing. Yes sometimes Free is a very green price. So I have become a bit obsessed with the depth and breadth of free offers. Now I am not talking free things that actually have a cost like Radio and TV. The cost being your attention. Free email with ads. Some minor attention payment is fine, but major attention sucker like Evite is too much. So what is out there that is truly free? Or free "enough" with minimum attention cost?
Therefore a new category "Free is a very good price". Here you will find not only reuse commerce but also offers from companies of free stuff. I will post stuff that I think are actually attractive offers. Where the "cost" in attention or contact information is small enough to be worth the free item.
One of the first to catch my eye was 000webhosting.com. 250MB disk space, 100GM data transfer and zero ads. All the stuff you expect from web hosting but no costs. They support it because they know you will need more space, more domains, more email, whatever. So you will upgrade. These are very effective offers. Just like the drug dealer. The first one is free. Razor and Razorblade. I like. And many times the first one maybe all you need.
Posted by Martin at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack