So at the moment the Mentalism Facebook Page is at 284 members, which isn’t too bad I suppose, but not enough to sell anything. It is steadily growing, so I guess that’s something. I got a Twitter private message (or whatever they are called on Twitter) from Bill Crosby, giving me some tips on it, and he basically showed me a video (and a mailing list) which shows how to milk Facebook with minimal effort. To tell you the truth it didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know for a 30 minute video, but it pointed me in the right sort of direction which is a good thing, and it told me what not to do. Basically what I got from it is that smaller fan pages with a more targeted audience is better than larger fan pages with a less targeted audience. It also gave some tips on engaging with your audience, but as a fan page which teaches people tricks to try on their friends, I think I’ve got that nailed down for the moment.

Anyway, I’ve got an idea for a new fan page which I’m starting while writing this, which will sort of act as a place for me to invite people to Lockerz. I will call it “Getting stuff for free“. Now everybody wants free stuff, so I think thousands will join it, and after a few posts explaining what Lockerz is, some people will be shouting “Scam” but some people will be begging for an invite! This will leave me with loads of PTZ, and hopefully enough to prove Lockerz works. Anyway, onto Lockerz in general.

I’ve got one little problem about Lockerz: if you remember in my last post I talked about how the display was apparently not working. Well it seems it’s more of a PTZ glitch than a display glitch because at the moment it says I’ve got 6 PTZ. I got 2 for inviting my little brother yesterday, (which showed up on the display, after the 10 PTZ I got previously that didn’t, and still haven’t showed up) and then 4 PTZ today (2 for signing in, 2 for completing a daily), but it’s still only saying I’ve got 6 PTZ overall. I’m hoping they fix this soon.

Another concern I have is that people have been saying stock will be restored on the 15th, but they also say that it usually runs out in seconds/minutes depending on how popular it is. So the first hurdle is getting the PTZ for that product you want, the second hurdle is being online when they restock, and the third may well be having the faster internet connection. I’m not quite sure what time they restock, hopefully they’ll update the news sometime telling me, but if not, I’ll be refreshing rigorously at midnight on Wednesday night.

Oh one more thing regarding Lockerz, you can’t redeem NTSC items (so all electrical items) if you live outside the US, so to cover this they’ll be giving amazon gift cards worth roughly the same. That sucks a bit, but at least they provided an alternative.

That’s all for now, if you would like an invite to Lockerz to experiment with me, comment below with your e-mail address.

In my last post I talked about how I’d be joining the site Lockerz to see if it lives up to it’s claims and the hype. I’ve had a little play around with it and found out it’s still in the beta stage, and launches fully some time in Autumn (or Fall for you yanks), however it’s being released in stages. A lot of the site is coming soon, but the main feature (PTZ) is up and running. So lets get to it, what do I think so far?

The first thing that happened when I signed in was I was given 2 PTZ for signing in, then prompted to play a game for PTZ. I won 6 PTZ for this (if I remember correctly), then I went to the Redeem section to see how valuable PTZ are.

My first impression was “Wow, these are quite cheap, if I save up for a while, I’ll have myself Apple TV!” That thought was followed by the realization that the top prizes were all Fresh Out. A closer look had me realize that it wasn’t just the top prizes that were fresh out, there wasn’t one thing in the Electronics section that was actually in stock! In fact I checked the other two sections, and the only thing that’s actually in stock is a god damn scarf for 300 PTZ!

Even the charity donations were out of stock! But this is just the Beta stage right? Let’s not make assumptions too quickly. Here’s what the FAQ said.

“Okay, well it’s past that date but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you plan to restock… for now.” So I explored it a bit more, and clicked on My Locker.

“Okay, the notifications part is still coming soon, I don’t mind, at least I can see how many PTZ I’ve got… wait, what? 0 PTZ? Didn’t I just earn like 8?”

I quick glance at the news section told me that it’s a Display error, and apparently my PTZ are safe, but we’ll see. Next I wanted to know the ways in which you get PTZ. Then I found this.

I told you they’d be a referral system somewhere deep in all of this. This seems to be the most rewarding, and actually feasible referral system I’ve seen though. I needed more info on the Z list.

Even though I lol’d hard at the “Set a new standard of cool” bit, you can’t deny the prizes sound pretty enticing. Double PTZ? That means half the amount of time spent! So my next step was to see how many days it would take to get the highest prize if it were in stock.

Okay, assuming I win 6 PTZ every day in the game, plus the 2 PTZ you get for logging in, and the 2 PTZ you get for answering the daily, let’s see how long it would take to get enough PTZ for the Samsung HD TV, assuming it’s in stock. That’s 10 PTZ per day, so that would mean if you made this every day you would have 3000 PTZ in 300 days, just less than a year.

This took me by surprise, just under a year logging into a website and taking 5 minutes to post stuff. That would mean if I invite 20 people today, (assuming I start with 0 PTZ) which offers 2 PTZ each, and thus earning me double PTZ, it will take me just under 146 days to get that HD TV. That’s without extra referrals. It seems too good to be true… so it may well be too good to be true. Right now the only problem I’ve had is the display error which now states I have 2 PTZ (from inviting my little brother) but not the PTZ I got from the game.

So my first impression of Lockerz is that it may well be possible, but let’s just wait and see. To test it out, I’ll first save up for the cheapest (PTZ) item which is any iPhone decal, although it may not be available, in which case I’ll keep saving up until an item that I can afford becomes available. If you, like me, are an experimentalist, and want to see it for yourself, comment here and I’ll be sure to e-mail you an invite.

I’ve seen a lot about Lockerz on forums, which usually results in the post getting deleted and the user getting banned for spamming, however I’m going to take a look at what it is, and whether what it claims is true, or reachable. One thing I’ve noticed is the way people publicize it. It’s an obvious attempt to get people to sign up so I think there may be a referral scheme hidden somewhere in this but let’s just wait and see.

Okay, so I just signed up. I’ll update later with information.

Recently my friend made a Facebook page called “I hate it when people unexpectedly go offline” which, at the time of writing, has 179 293 fans, but if you want to check how much it has now, click the link. Now when I saw his page grow so quickly (it’s about 5 months old) with little effort on his part, I thought to myself “with instant access to so many people, there’s gotta be a way to milk it…”

Well after a while I came across a website people may know about called ClickBank which is an affiliate website in which companies (or individuals) post their internet based products, and affiliates (like me) advertise them. Doing so gives you 50%-75% of the sale depending on the product. It’s also free to sign up as an affiliate, however it costs to post your own products on there. After seeing this, I instantly thought of my friends Facebook group and told him about it. He didn’t want to do it because… well he’s lazy (I mean one status update every 2 weeks or so? Poor. xD).

So I decided to make my own fan page on a subject that had potential to be quite popular, whilst also maintaining a core kind of audience. I chose something that I was interested in so the updates had meaning. Here’s that fan page. Now while so far the page hasn’t taken off, 253 at the time of writing, it’s got quite a few people involved in the activities that I’ve posted (just look at the comments on some of the notes) without all the “first post!!” nonsense.

I do want it to take off though, because with the audience response to some of the posts, there’s a lot of potential with thousands of members. I will also try other ideas that will be more widely appealing like my friends fan page and tell you how it’s going.

Let’s see what happens, I’ll update this blog with information on how it’s going quite regularly.

So this is the start of my venture into experimenting with the money making world of the internet, let’s just hope it’s not wasted.

I’ve been exploring whether it is possible for anyone who is determined to make money online. I will be trying and testing different methods that internet entrepreneurs have all used to become financially independent and posting my progress periodically on my blog. Some things I will be testing are affiliate schemes, writing an ebook, using facebook, and being an online freelancer.

I did originally write a post introducing all my projects so far, but I think each projects deserve their own post, and I will post them in the coming days. Later on today I will start with the the idea of using Facebook as a source of income, and what’s better, your friend lists need never know.

Also, I am joining Digg, Delicious, Twitter, and other similar websites. Once I’m done with that I’ll post them up here.

My viewership is slowly creeping up…

Has anyone heard the story of that guy Todd who lived above a restaurant? Well basically, the Chef from the restaurant notices Todd standing on his balcony every day enjoying the sweet smell of the Chef’s food. The Chef decides to sue him for not paying for it, and in court the judge sues Todd for a calculated £3.55. Before the Chef receives his winnings, the judge holds the money in both his palms, and asks the Chef to listen. The judge shakes the cash, making a lovely jingle noise, and asks the Chef if he likes that sound. The Chef replies “Yes it’s great!” at which the judge replies “Under your principles, that’ll be £3.55 please” and he hands the money back to the Todd.

That story came to mind as I detached myself from the idea of owning music which has been present in the music industry since the technology to capture music became available. What I mean by this is when you go and buy a CD or download a track, you’re not paying to listen to it, you’re paying to own it. Listening to music is free, but still we spend money on CD’s and downloads, but why do we demand owning our music?

If you look at the days of vinyl, people bought records so they could listen to it whenever they wanted instead of waiting for it to come on the radio, or actually go see them live. There was no alternatives in them days, you couldn’t choose what to listen to, and when, if you didn’t own it. Nowadays, we are still buying music even though we’ve got free access to pretty much any song legally. Most people say they buy CD’s because it’s a physical thing that you can touch, and it’s yours, as opposed to downloading. Those who download music either do it so they can burn it onto CD, or have it on their hard drive and listen to it whenever they want. The thing is, most of these people don’t know that there are alternatives to paying to own music.

So how do we listen to music for free? Well most of you would say “Download it” either through “Limewire, torrents, or file hosting”, but you are missing the point. Downloading music is owning music, whether you are doing it legally or illegally. So let’s look at what doesn’t cost, or isn’t illegal.

Listening to the radio is free because the radio company pay for the rights. Listening to it at a bar is legal because they payed for the music. Let’s go deeper and say you wish to choose what music to listen to at any given time. Some people would immediately hit YouTube.com  into their browser. That’s also legal, however those who upload without permission could face copyright issues. We’re getting closer to the mark, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, listening to any music whenever you want. But nowadays we’ve got used to having our music ordered by albums, playlists, in iTunes or Windows Media Player. If only there was an interface which let you have access to all the music you want, but also to have them ordered by playlists, and artist/album name etc.

Well while reading this, you may have been shouting “Spotify” at the screen. If you have then there’s no point cluing you in, you already know. But for those who don’t, there’s this wonderful app called Spotify that does basically everything I’ve explained above. It’s one of the best music streaming software I’ve come across, bumping LastFM down to number 2.

Now there’s still many flaws in this concept, but I think as technology get’s better, we will see the end of music ownership eventually. Artists will have to get their money elsewhere, for instance, concerts, gigs and merchandise, and hopefully we’ll see the end of the disease that is the RIAA, and the end of crappy corporate-pushed music.

I like this theme, it’s sorta like facebook.

FIRST!!!11!1

Welcome to my blog! Not that there will be many viewers at the moment seeing as it’s the beginning of my Internet rebirth. My main aim for this post is to introduce the blog and kinda tell you what I’m going to be posting in the future, and a little bit about me so you know what to expect from, and hopefully subscribe to, this blog.

The main aspects of this blog will be along the lines of:

• Skepticism
• Personal Development
• Funny shit
• Life
• Technology
• Science
• Films
• Music
• Money opportunities
• Geek stuff

I probably missed some out but that’s the jist of what I will be writing about. If you are interested in any of the above, please take two seconds to subscribe as a sort of trial thing: if you like my posts after like a week or two, stay subscribed, if you don’t, unsubscribe. =]

Also, the header is the default so I will be changing that as soon as possible, as well as adding an About page, suggested reading etc.  So without further ado, I better tell you a bit about me.

I’m 18, a college student, studying Media, I love films, I’m atheist due to my profound skepticism and an atheist upbringing. I love all kinds of music, so if you want to suggest some songs to me go ahead, I’d be grateful! If you read my future posts you will get a better understanding of the sort of person I am.

I hope you enjoy my blog and keep reading!