Some Updates on NowDollar
Posted by rabbit on July 8th, 2006
PAYMENT RECEIVED
I received my first payment from Nowdollar on Wednesday. I made the withdrawal request after surfing on Tuesday morning. For those of you that do not already know, there are two main days in which payments are processed each week - Tuesdays and Fridays. If you make a request for a withdrawal on Tuesday morning (before 1 PM EST or GMT 9h00) then chances are that you will be paid the same Tuesday or the day after. The same applies for Friday withdrawals. There are two rules in place for withdrawals:
1. You can only make a withdrawal request for payment once per week (for Tuesday or Friday payment)
2. You must have a cash balance of at least $35 to make a withdrawal request
SWITCHING FROM EGOLD
About 10 days ago a decision was made by Lance, the admin of the program, to switch away from eGold payments as of July 18th. Members would be able to upgrade using eGold, but would have to withdraw either via Alertpay or Virtual Money. Since the announcement over a week ago, I signed up for a Virtual Money card and have already received a number. I have not received a physical card in the mail as yet though.
Yesterday a new announcement was sent out by the admin stating that they will be keeping e-gold as a deposit and withdrawal option after all. Still, only those without an Alertpay or Virtual Money account in their Nowdollar profile will be able to withdraw to e-gold. Since I already have a Virtual Money account, I will only be able to withdraw to the virtual money card. I will still be able to upgrade using e-gold however. I signed up for an Alertpay account as well and may use this instead of the VM card. The fees to receive and send funds using Alertpay is cheaper than the Virtual Money Card. I will write a comparison article about the two later.
VERIFICATION
Members of Nowdollar will soon be required to send in verification and tax related documents in order to continue with the program. A few months ago I abandoned Alientrust for this very reason. Still, with all the junk paid to surf programs out there right now, I am considering sending in what is required when the time comes. Why the change of heart? Well I figure it is a good thing when these entities are trying to legitimize their business. Alientrust and Nowdollar are doing all this based on the advice received from their legal team as well as U.S authorities.
Those who think that privacy is a big deal or do not want to pay taxes on their earnings will not like this decision. However, I personally have nothing to hide, and would rather pay taxes than keep losing my money to the fly by night Paid to Surf operations that keep popping up daily.
UPGRADE PACKAGE CHANGES
Members will no longer have to worry about missing a day of surfing. The reason for this is that the expiry of upgrade packages is no longer dependent on the date. Instead, the expiry is dependent on the number of days that you surf. This means that you can upgrade today and go on vacation for two weeks and your upgrade package is still valid when you come back. Your upgrade will only expiry after you surf for 15 days. This is a nice feature, because it allows us to miss surfing days without losing out on our returns.
Accompanying this change was an unofficial announcement that Sundays would be a non-surfing day. This means that members will not be allowed to surf on Sundays. Apparently they will be using the day off to do site and database maintenance. Still, last Sunday I was able to surf, and there has been no official announcement from Lance himself as yet.
INCREASE IN MAX UPGRADE
The maximum upgrade amount has been increased from $7000 to $9000. Some are saying that the increase is because Nowdollar is running out of money. But it seems it was at the request of one of their forum moderators. You can read more about it here. I doubt there are a lot of people that have maxed out the original $7000 limit already.
ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW-UP
In my original post about Nowdollar I mentioned that some had reported seeing big name advertisers in the surf rotation. I also mentioned that I would report here if I saw any myself. While I did saw a few, it is hard to say whether the advertisements were paid ones or were put there by members themselves (or even the admin). A skeptic could say they were planted there by the admin (or even some members themselves) to add legitimacy to the program. Anyhow these are the links I have seen thus far. Check them out and judge for yourselves:
Sandal's Resorts: http://sandals.com/main/grande/gl-home.cfm
Starbucks: http://www.starbucks.com/ourcoffees/default.asp
Disney World: http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/parks/parkLanding?id=EPLandingPage
I also saw one for McDonalds but forgot to copy the link for that one.
keywords: Nowdollar | Alientrust
July 8th, 2006 at 7:57 pm [ Quote ]
Excellent synopsis on NowDollar Rabbit…I would like your “gut” feeling about the maturity and the “staying power” of this site given the aforementioned changes/improvements.
In particular, I’m not sure if the $9,000 limit is a **good** thing. Hard to read into it. I’m always looking for warning signs. Don’t know if this construes one.
I think this blog is well-written. Not superficial - yet not that deep either. Most of the information I already knew - by reading NowDollar’s forums. Rabbit put it into a nice narrative format. Now if we could only go a bit deeper…
Great job though…no real criticism….just casting my net far and wide to glean any tidbits about NowDollar that would make me sit up and take notice. I’ve lost too much in this industry following my “heart” rather than cold salient facts. No regrets, but I’d like to recoup my losses in something tangible. Trying to ascertain if NowDollar is the diamond in the rough.
Cheers! And thanks…
Tom
July 9th, 2006 at 8:52 am [ Quote ]
Hey Tim thanks for your valuable feedback. My gut feeling is that Nowdollar will be around for some time to come. Raising the maximum upgrade amount is generally a yellow (if not a ref flag). However, the admin has said from the beginning that the maximum would be raised over time. Adding to this, it is doubtful that a lot of people are already maxed out. While the program has been around since February, it only has about 4,000 members — a lot of them joined after the collapse of Compactsurf last month (including me). With the crashes the past few months, people are more relunctant to max out in a program.
As for the details — you are correct, a lot of the items I mentioned can be found in the Nowdollar forum. However, not a lot fo people have the time to sift through the different program-specific forums to see what is going on. It actually took me quite a while to write this article has I had to sift through my crowded email box as well as the forum to find out whats going and summarize here.