Pay to Click – Is it a good formula for a social networking startup?

The trend ‘Pay to click’, whereby one expects for good profits by paying the user, started at the time when there was the big crack in the Wall Street. The first time I noticed it in India was around 2 years back when an email hit my inbox. “Read your mails and get paid, register today with Rupeemail”. I went and got active for a day and lost interest – who would love to read mails and mails of ads that don’t really appeal to you? Well, that was the end of my experience with ‘Paid to click’ websites, though many more knocked my inbox time and again. But a recent status update by one of my friends about a social networking site got me thinking on this once again. The line said, come and join the new social network, where you can micro-blog too and get paid. It wasn’t making sense. It wasn’t a site with surveys or a site where hordes of ads are flung on you, rather it was more of an Indian Twitter named Foziy.com. How can they pay people for just posting statuses and commenting on each other?

Before I pinpoint the mistakes, take a glance at the way the site offered the monetary incentive for every activity. With just one ‘HI’, we get 0.2 cents. Some of us also have the habit of re-posting other’s comments or even commenting back at any given comment. Even for that one earns 0.1 cent. Infact, the person on whose comment you are commenting gets 0.1 cent.

Now, if you simply follow a person you get 0.1 cent per follower as well as the person whom you follow, who has actually done zero activity, gets the same amount. What is the logic behind rewarding people for no work of their own? For creating new groups you get 0.4 cents. For joining in other groups you would get 0.2 cents. There is also one referral programme. For each referral you get $0.25.

Definitely, they have retained the catch in the minimum payout which is $100. But considering their ease in distributing cash, if a person literally takes to minting money, there would be another five whom he would be helping to mint equally, as a result they would have ended up having many in the line claiming cash after a considerable period. Not sure how would they have paid it, considering they just had Google Ad sense ads displayed all over and if a website’s strategy was to run a business on Ad sense, the existence of the business would be at the mercy of the Almighty.

The e-business strategy is gaining momentum especially with too many web based businesses roping in the Venture Capital money in India. But just the word internet will not bring in any money. When a wholesome number of social networking websites teeming the internet business world, why do we add on another one.

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Afterall, there would be hardly anyone who would be comfortable with a social network which is scattered across the web in different sites and considering their ease with the present biggies, hardly anyone would be open for shifting the base. In a recent casual conversation with a Venture Capitalist, I got a better insight on the same. It’s no point redoing the same model, instead, now it’s the time to leverage on the horizontal approach. For instance, the currency providers within the Social networking games or introducing new payment models, as PayPal’s India reach is weakened considering some recent regulations. These are some of the most upfront ways to get into the social networking game and then move on with new innovations.

Now, with regards to Foziy.com, the site no longer seems to remain as it automatically directs the user to a domain name sale page. Hope, with a new entrepreneurial mindset and tactics they will be back in the game again.

Flat or 6 pack - Get the perfect abs in minutes

Sipping the morning coffee in front of the TV, and you chance upon ads, which pretend to give out the real secret learning from the experts to maintain your fitness. For instance, gulp down the wholesome figure toning cornflakes or avoid the real sugarcane sugar. Well, they count but for that right fit it’s not all. The expert tips are not meant for you to just sit in an arm chair with a bowl of the secret ingredient to make those extra pounds disappear. Rather mingling of the food habits with some exercise tips is most essential.

Going by the learning from the experts, exercises that test your resistance works the best. Relax your body with some brisk walking and hit the gym to try out the various machines as there are many benefits of resistance training. In today’s inactive life, where you spend more time in front of your system or the idiot box than on physical chores. Hence, it is important to ensure more physical activity via exercises like the lat pull down or even push-ups, as you act against the natural forces. So, tighten your spirit and race for the fit body or those 6 pack abs.

As a matter of fact, you don’t have to strain

your whole day to get the perfect abs, it’s a less than 10-minute job, yes just 8 minutes. So, for the 8 Minute Abs, all you need is a plain floor and yourself. Lay on the floor with a deep breath and set your mind for a rigorous exercise without a break for the next 8 minutes, after all to flaunt some set abs within minutes you have to really earn it through your efforts. Maintaining constant strain on your abs is the key. Begin with some basic abdominal crunches, by placing your hands behind or beside the neck or crossed over the chest. Bend your knee and slowly begin to curl your shoulders, without the support of your back, towards the pelvis. Continue the same movement for atleast 40 times to get the body accustomed to the movement and then move to the next level. The same abs movement with a twist, whereby you can start turning your torso in a way that your left elbow turns towards your right knee and your right elbow turns towards the left knee. Continue the same for atleast 25 times and just feel the difference. The perfect abs has just started to show up.

If the short exercise, a key learning from the experts, fails to lure you, there are claims of effective 6 second abs. However, there is a catch. The 6 seconds considered is just the time for you to use an abs machine to burn out the extra pounds, but those six seconds come with a tight dietary schedule and a 30-minute mandatory exercise. Keep a strict watch on your actions as fitness is a very personal affair.

I Always Thought We are in a Smart Era... Until this..

'Smart' – the word has supposedly become a part & parcel of today’s life. Smart – phone, Smart – TV, Smart – PC, ofcourse, I’m keeping the regular societal doses of being ‘Smart like him/her’ out of discussion. So, re-routing myself to the topic, I have always wondered at the way this Smart syndrome has taken its course in our daily activities. Right From, cutting down on the morning blues like - the morning alarm, that doesn’t stops till you are dead awake, or the day’s schedules, breakfast 5 mins recipes, world news being right in your palms; To connecting to the whole world within seconds through Skype, Facebook, Twitter and if you are one of those with heavy bucks to spare not to mention the tele-presence fascination. And as we return to our cosy beds in the night, even then many of us don’t let go of our smart devices like still clinging on to the iPods to listen to the melodious tunes that work as lullabies to put us across to sleep. That’s the kind of a world we are in..

So, you must be wondering, what made me think we are no more in a smart era.. Well, it’s because of a day’s experience. Recently, may be a month back, as I was running around different interviews to get the right step ahead, an interview at an MNC amazed me. MNC – the abbreviation always connoted to me a very technology proficient environment, with defined work ethics. So, as the mail of the opening for an editorial position hit my inbox, I smilingly took to it. I reached and was immediately shown to a huge room meant only for daily interviews and was asked to be seated in front of a system. I began to fiddle with the computer trying to switch it on, but all it says – ‘a video cable is disconnected’. Tried all tricks, there was a small box, seeing which I immediately recognized that it’s a shared system, and started seeing if fiddling with that helps me switch it on. But to no avail.. So, I resumed to my original position and started gazing around, and saw everyone busy filling up some papers. It felt weird, as everyone had a system. They were giving tests for some other technical jobs.

After a wait of around 2 hrs, finally my test began. And Whoa.. what do I see, the system in which I sat, was never meant to be used.. In fact, the HR promptly handed me an introduction sheet, to fill up things which I have already mentioned in my Resume, except for the CTC. Till then still it was not quite odd. But then what came, reminded me of my school/college exams. At least, in exams they gave separate answer-sheets to write, here it was not even so. As it was an editorial test, I was supposed to re-arrange certain paras and correct the sentences and include information such as statistics meaningfully in those paras. All that I was supposed to do in a limited white space provided between the paras. And if that space was not enough, they gave me enough liberty to use the backside of the page. Which meant I have to read the para lines on the first page and redo the lines on the 2^nd page.. SO SIMPLE.. ‘I’m so thankful to them!!!” There was a quarterly report to be edited, some paragraphs to be redone, some ambiguous phrases needed to be rewritten..3 sets of question papers with around 14 pages each as a whole was to be rewritten, while aptly using my editorial skills within two hours.

I was just wondering, “Does anyone here know Microsoft Office, and a little but a life-saving tool for editorial people within it called ‘MS WORD’? What would have they lost if they simply resorted to WORD?”

Soon after the test, which I had to stretch for 4 hrs, the test materials were taken, stapled along with the resume and introduction sheet, to be delivered to the people who would review it. Was this entire manual process necessary? Had the test been taken in the Word, introduction sheet too would have been filled as a separate Word Sheet, and had the resume been obtained online, all three could have been neatly attached and mailed to whoever was supposed to review it. If this too looked too burdensome, a simple in-house software could have been used, wherein one tap at the ‘Submit’ button would have directed the documents to the mail box of all, especially when the concerned person is somewhere in US. Even all that printing of more than 50 pages for each candidate could have been avoided, considering the ‘Green Revolution’ (Yes, that’s there that Go Green is more of a Fashion statement, that corporates are resorting to, to get into the good books like Forbes or Times) but still this is definitely not a good green statement. And above all, it would have definitely made a normal tech-oriented person’s life like mine much easier.

Even now I wonder