Checkout clerks run when they see me coming

At the store, I'm one of those annoying people who appears to have no items to check out, yet stands there for FOREVER while the cash register bips and boops. Why? Because I'm buying 15 gift cards at a time. The clerks see the stack and they smile at me in that way that lets you know they wish you'd picked another line. But here I am. Ring me up, babe.

Yesterday I got ten Starbucks cards and fifteen Target cards. At the Starbucks, the guy made a joke about me being a "big spender" and asked if I wanted any coffee with my $100 worth of cards. I said no, I don't really drink coffee, but my customers do! And I gave him the elevator speech about CashDuck. One of the other employees in the store actually looked very interested, so I gave him a couple of mini flyers.

Didn't get the chance to proselytize for CashDuck at the Target, since it seems like they are not encouraged to make small talk at ours, but I got fifteen $10s and one $20 as someone had requested two $10s.

This week I should also be going to Walmart to get $5 cards - I ordered more $10 cards through the website, but they don't have $5 cards there so I have to go to the actual store which is a decent ways away. I'll probably get 15 or so there, they've been very popular. I guess you guys have Walmarts closer than I do. =)

New Zip Submit offers!

Check out the great bunch of zip code submit only offers I've got up - there are 14 of them so it's pretty quick money! They will only be up for a few days, so go check it out now! You can find them on the main page by clicking "View Offers".

SWEET FANCY MOSES

A GIANT backlog of offers just got approved today, some stretching back as far as October 20th. Some got credited and some didn't so I am going to spend tonight double checking!

Cashouts are completed!

I paid out the last of the cashouts today.. whew! Now I just have to wait for everyone to deposit their check. =)

The "Bump"

I made allusion to the end of month bump that commonly happens on GPT sites (because everyone wants to get their cashouts as high as possible) and I thought I'd give a little graphical representation. This is the activity on the biggest ad network I have, which the majority of the offers come from, especially freebies.



The BIG bump occurred the day I put up the eHarlequin Seven Feather Special - it just happened to also be the first day of the bump. You can also pretty clearly tell on what day I actually started advertising CashDuck. There was also another little bump on the 18th when I put up the Robert Allen offer.

Me and Quickbooks, together at last

I decided to buy Quickbooks so I can keep all of you straight. =) I spent most of last night after getting home from work putting in all the transactions I've made so far.. it might have been smart to use it from the beginning. I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be for a well established business to switch. I had some trouble initially because the system would not allow me to put in transfer from the Amex to Paypal - they don't have any special notation for Paypal accounts, so I had to mark it as a bank account, and usually you can't make transfers from a credit card to your bank account. After marking the Amex as a bank account, it finally got reconciled. I'm pretty happy with it although I can't figure out how the hell to use a lot of the features - I've just been using the check register feature to enter transactions, so now it thinks every transaction is a check. =)

There were a rash of denials by one of the networks over the last couple of days - I had been warned but I didn't expect that many! Most of them belonged to a few users, who logged in, did a few offers, and logged out, and then all the offers they did were reversed. So they are probably using fraudulent credit cards or something like that. There were also a few offers put "under review" - ie the advertiser has not yet determined whether it's a valid lead, or they have to wait a certain length of time before the advertiser will pay on that lead. Overall, not too bad!

That sounds like something a 14 year old would say

The Limelife offers do have pictures associated with them, but they aren't the shape I like to use so I use the text instead so it doesn't mess up the page's format. Sometimes, though, there's good reason not to use the provided pictures. What the heck is this one about (it's for the Limelife healthy pregnancy text offer):



That's just WEIRD.

OK, this makes it kind of difficult for me to answer

I got this email earlier today, from someone using the email form on CashDuck:

From: administration@cashduck.com
To: cashduck@gmail.com
Date: Nov 7, 2006 4:12 PM
Subject: payment

hi. its been weeks and I haven't got paid whats the deal

If you use a fake email address, it makes it difficult for me to write you back.

And if you, the person who sent this, happen to be reading this, here's your answer.

New feature!

This new feature will be immediately evident to you when you look at your offers, but I thought I'd explain it a bit. The Ignore button that you now see under the submit button for all your offers allows you to remove the offers you're not interested in from the list of available offers. They are moved to your Ignore list, similar to how an offer you've completed is removed from the list and placed in the Approved list. If you decide later that you'd like to complete an offer you've previously placed in Ignore, just click "Delete" next to the offer name in the Ignore list, and it will move back to your list of available offers.

Something I felt I should clarify...

I have received several emails and trouble tickets that seem to indicate this isn't widely known, so I thought I should clarify...

When you sign up for an offer, say Stamps.com, the only thing I see to indicate that you have signed up for it is that if everything went fine, I will see your username show up on an Excel sheet generated by the advertising network. Stamps.com doesn't call me. I don't call them. The only contact I have with Stamps.com is through the advertising network running the offers - if you aren't credited for some reason, the advertising network must contact Stamps.com and see if you really did complete it, and then they will credit me and I will credit you. Although you are accessing Stamps.com through CashDuck, the link from CashDuck is merely a redirect and doesn't track you at all. The tracking is done by the advertising network serving the offer.

So if you don't get credit immediately, it isn't because I don't like you, or it's a full moon out (ok, it might be due to a full moon!)

It's because somewhere someplace between your computer and the Stamps.com server, or between the Stamps.com server and the advertising network's server, something got lost in the shuffle.

I don't have personal control over what gets approved and what doesn't. I really do want you guys to get credit for as many things as possible. Remember, I don't get paid unless YOU get paid. And you have to get paid a pretty good amount of money before I get paid. So don't think I'm not motivated to try to keep the offers approving as fast as they can!

The reason I don't accept noncredit requests for freebie offers such as surveys or information requests is mostly because these are almost never actually checked up on by the advertising network. The offer isn't lucrative enough for them to put the manpower into it. I do submit as many noncredit requests as I get for trials, because these have a better paper trail and an account number and all sorts of good documentation.

I can refund money - I will always refund for $1 trials if I can't get you credit - but I cannot refund you time. And unfortunately if time is all you put into a freebie offer, I can't do much about it. I strive to put up freebie offers because they're a good way to make money without spending any, but unfortunately they aren't as big a priority for the networks.

Why I take my business Amex with me whenever I go out

Things I have bought for CashDuck in the past several days:

$50 in five-dollar Walmart cards
$100 in ten-dollar Walmart cards
$30 in ten-dollar Panera cards
$50 in ten-dollar Starbucks cards
$50 in ten-dollar Target cards
500 CashDuck magnets
Fifty fluffy ducks!
Office supplies (mostly mailing stuff)
$50 in Stamps.com blank stamp sheets (to mail stuff!)
Multiple site upgrades

I will be just as relieved as you guys when the 15th rolls around.. ;) You all get paid first though, American Express can just hold their horses.