The CashDuck Blog

Two exciting changes for CashDuck!

2011-07-01T18:16:00.002-04:00

1 - As of July 1st, CashDuck is now being run by its new owner, Keith!

2 - From now on, payments will be made on a weekly basis!

I'm really excited to give you guys this news - CashDuck has a new owner, Keith, who is now officially in charge. He's a great guy with a lot of experience who is going to do you guys right. Most of CashDuck's features will remain the same, with Quackers, Disney Dollars, feathers prizes, and great contests as usual. There's one important change that I think you will all appreciate - payments are going to be made on a weekly basis. Instead of waiting more than a month to be paid, payments will be sent out each Saturday. So no more waiting!

I've really enjoyed my time as the owner of CashDuck and I know that our members are some of the greatest people anywhere. I'm moving on with other projects, but I will stop in to check on CashDuck many times, I am sure!

Early payout and new contests for March!

2011-02-24T21:28:00.001-05:00

I got paid a little early, so I thought I'd pass it along.. happy early payouts day, everyone!

Next month I'm going to break it up a little and have three ten-day contests, so that everyone gets a shot at winning. Plus, after a 28 day month, a regular one just feels really long. At least to me. So hopefully this will make it a little more fun!

I thought the banner ads were getting boring, so...

2010-11-14T09:24:00.002-05:00

Traditionally the banner ads on CashDuck have been for informational purposes only. However, that's really boring, and I don't know about you but the fact that these handful of banner ads have been seen over a million times kind of says something. :)

So I have decided to allow members to put up their own banner advertising on CashDuck. I know lots of our lovely ducklings run your own blogs, websites, or have your own small businesses. So if you would like to show CashDuck what you've been up to, you'll need a 468x60 banner.

You can use either Paypal or your internal balance of cash or feathers to pay for the banner. Rates are $1 or 20 feathers for 2000 ad displays or $2.50 or 50 feathers for 6000. Please note that advertising for other GPT sites is NOT allowed and all ads will be reviewed before they go up.

If you're interested, click the little "Advertise Here" link under the banner ad and follow the instructions. I'm really excited to see what we come up with. :)

Why CashDuck isn't an instant-payout site.

2010-11-07T19:33:00.002-05:00

I recently had a longtime member ask if CashDuck was going to become an instant payout site. CashDuck has never offered instant payouts although in the past there have been differences between cash and gift card payout speeds. The basic reason is that I don't get paid by the advertisers until the end of the month after the month in which you completed the offer. So all of the activity from October offers will be paid to me at the end of November, when I will turn around and pay it out to you. The longer reason is that some of what's going on in that period of time is that the advertisers are reviewing the leads, especially for trial offers, and checking for any bad addresses, fraudulent credit cards, etc. Now this is not a significant problem for CashDuck, although we have been hit by fraudulent users in the past. But a good portion of the reason that CashDuck doesn't have a lot of problem with fraud is because if someone intends to sign up for offers with stolen credit cards, this will be found out before they get paid and they won't get paid for those offers. If you have an instant payout site, it not only means that you can't avoid paying the fraudulent users, but also that people who intend to use bad credit cards and bad addresses will actually seek out your site and do offers there much more often. To avoid losing lots of money, you end up paying everyone less, since you're taking on a lot of risk that you'll lose money on the bad seeds. And this kind of carries over even to freebie offers like surveys, where you're almost never going to get a reversal. This is why most of the bigger GPT sites are still on the monthly payout system.

A few examples of how much less instant-payout sites have to pay (these are all prices from one particular site that I know of.) Most of their offers are in about the same proportion to what I pay out, these are just a few that we are both running.

ID Promise (30 day trial, $1 cost): CashDuck - $11.50 and 5 feathers, Other - $4.55

Identity Guard (30 day free trial): CashDuck: $14.00 and 5 feathers, Other - $5.95

eFax (30 day free trial): CashDuck - $9.00 and 3 feathers, Other - $3.15

Quiz Jungle - Spongebob: CashDuck - $0.70 and 1 feather, Other: $0.30

Daily Survey - Absolute Rewards: CashDuck - $0.40 and 1 feather, Other: $0.18

It's a brand new day!

2010-10-03T23:06:00.002-04:00

So as you may have seen, CashDuck is now fully open and ready for you! There is an earnings contest going on right now for Disney Dollars prizes, Oct 1st through 15th, and a referral contest through the end of October too! I'm very happy to see so many familiar faces and get such nice messages from members old and new.

News from the last week!

- I have added a Daily Clicks section - this is great for getting that last few cents you need for a cashout, and will add up over time. There are a limited number of clicks available each day, so stop in early!

- Many trial offers now have higher payouts, since I was able to negotiate a higher rate on them with the advertisers. More in your pocket!

- Most of the offers I've put up are new, so I've been pruning those that don't seem to be working properly (ie, a few people have done them and they haven't credited.) But also, if you see an offer that seems to be directing to the wrong thing, or is expired or a broken link, please report it! As always you'll get a feather for helping out and making the site better for all of us.

Coming soon...

2010-09-06T00:07:00.002-04:00

Just as an FYI for anyone who is stopping in before we are ready to go live once more.. CashDuck will be back soon. I am looking forward to greeting experienced and new ducklings alike!

Referral contest is tied up!

2009-04-29T21:49:00.001-04:00

The referral bonus prize has so many people that are very close that I have decided to split it into separate prizes. There have been some issues occurring when the referral did a daily survey so this seems fairer to everyone to have a shot at some extra bonus money.

The month-long completions contest and the daily-survey jackpot are still going on, so there is a chance for everyone to get great prizes!

Nefarious doings over at CashDuckGames

2009-02-25T21:14:00.002-05:00

Apparently someone has decided that they dislike the availability of free games at CashDuckGames.com and has hit the site - presently the games don't seem to be loading and registration isn't working. Plus, this lovely person loaded a bunch of porn videos into a (thankfully restricted) folder. I am working on getting that fixed. Hopefully that will not involve having to upgrade the software and lose the player registrations already there, but if I do have to do that, I'm going to spring for the newest version which has a mind-boggling number of games.

Manual credit daily surveys going down.

2009-02-01T16:54:00.002-05:00

The manual credit daily surveys have been around for a while, but with the auto credit surveys doing much better, no one seems to be doing the manual ones. :) So those have gone down today. In their place on the menu is Contest Standings, which I'm sure people are looking at more frequently!

Yummy goodness in the mail.

2009-01-31T17:55:00.001-05:00

I frequently do offers myself - I did the Fruit Roll-ups free sample offer a couple weeks ago and got my free sample today. They are much better than I remember them being as a kid. :)

New year, stuff going down.

2009-01-04T00:05:00.000-05:00

Don't be too alarmed if you see some dead links - there's always a lot of offers that expire at the turn of each year, so just report them and you'll get a feather as always!

Congrats to the winners!

2008-12-01T14:47:00.002-05:00

Lots of contests and lots of winners!

Referral contest winner - mamajudd with a whopping 148 new users. She is a dynamo! The runners up also were pretty darn impressive - tisha1103 with 33 and waterworld86 with 24. There will be another referral contest next year, but I think we all need a breather for a bit. :)

Jackpot winner - lyraclark! There is another jackpot this month for $20, and you get entries by completing any of the the daily surveys. There's always a new topic so check them out!

Completions contest winner - lyraclark with 139, and in second and third we have cgduckie with 80 and dmsdbt with 78. Everyone got nice cash prizes in addition to earning for all those completed offers.

Earnings contest winner - lyraclark with $109.23, and in second and third we have dmsdbt and bathoryssucessor.

Big stuffed ducky raffle winner - meggie! Congrats and enjoy.

My birthday is Dec. 8th and we will be having a super awesome special on free referrals since I've been doing a TON of advertising this month. Keep your eye out for that, and there will also be a special CashDuck prize pack that you can get with your feathers (since I have got a lot of duck related stuff around my house. :)

We've got another set of completions and earnings contests this month, and there may be some extra surprises.. Thanks everyone!

Recently Returned category

2008-11-29T10:53:00.002-05:00

When CashDuck was started, the New Offers category was one that I just put new offers (and offers that had come back up) into by hand. Now, the New Offers category is a feature that actually pulls newly added offers from any category on the site, without me having to do it, which is pretty neat. It means that you always see the newest offers, but newly returned offers don't go in there because the system is counting by when it was actually added - and for some of these offers, they've been up and down the entire time CashDuck has been open! So I put in a new category, Recently Returned, for offers that are "new" in the sense that they weren't there yesterday. :)

No more stuffed duckies.. but maybe tote bags?

2008-11-25T11:40:00.002-05:00

So I was sad to find out that the company that makes the really super cute stuffed ducklings that I've been sending out, doesn't make them anymore. I've searched all over and can't find another stuffed duckling that I like as much (and that isn't really expensive.) I'd been thinking of getting another new prize in the feathers prizes - with shipping costs going up, it's very important that it be easy to mail! The water bottles were very popular, but they actually now cost more to mail than they cost to buy. My thought now is tote bags, but I'm not sure what kind. I'm looking maybe at either the polypropylene ones (basically like reusable shopping bags - they are durable and somewhat waterproof) or cotton canvas ones (softer and washable, but don't hold as much.) Any thoughts?

Disney Dollars Delays!

2008-11-19T16:37:00.001-05:00

That's awfully alliterative. Anyway, the Disney store near my house was out of Disney Dollars till today so I'll be putting those withdraws in the mail tomorrow morning.

Extra duckies!

2008-11-09T15:24:00.003-05:00

I added two of the duck cartoons to the top logo.. I love these little guys and think they add a certain silliness. :) These ducks actually came from a set of four duck cartoons that I purchased from some random cartoonist on istockphoto.com.. I did send this cartoonist a message asking if he'd be interested in doing some more ducks on commission, but never heard back. I think these ducks are kind of symbolic of the spirit that CashDuck has, and I kind of wish that this cartoonist could know how much mileage I've gotten out of those four little ducks! They are on the magnets and cards that we used to have, and they're on my official business cards and on the printable checks that I send out. Maybe someday I'll get a tattoo. ;)

Slowness issues

2008-10-28T12:58:00.002-04:00

I know CashDuck has been running a little slow, especially during the parts of the day when everyone's online - I received a notification from the guys who host the site that they are going to be working on it and it should be going much faster in the next couple of weeks. CashDuck will be taken down for probably five to ten minutes at 2AM at some point to do this - so don't worry if you are doing surveys in your pajamas and it suddenly disappears, it should be back up pretty quickly!

Christmas Prizes are here!

2007-11-11T13:59:00.001-05:00

Check out Feathers Prizes to see the new Christmas prizes - there is a Dora DVD, Webkinz reindeer, Lego or Duplo set, and a toy pack. Put in your request during November and it will be shipped approximately December 5th. (Due to limited availability, the Webkinz reindeers will be shipped sooner so that they don't run out. If you are going to get more than one reindeer, please request them at the same time.)

Any other suggestions for items?

Yet another blog!

2007-10-15T23:32:00.001-04:00

I get lots of neat promo codes from the shops featured in the rebate shopping section, so I've started a blog to post some of them. Here's the link: http://cashduckcodes.blogspot.com/

It'll be updated with new codes when I receive them, and you can search for a shop using the search box at the upper left of the blog page. Keep your eyes peeled!

Woah new things

2007-10-15T16:39:00.000-04:00

It's been a bit overwhelming so far, but I think I like most of CashDuck's new features, and they seem to be working as intended. Daily surveys may be a bit of a problem - they don't seem to be approving very well - but it may just require some more waiting and for people to get the hang of them. Teams are awesome - we have four already and some more in the works. Don't forget, you can use teams to fundraise for a local charity, or a Boy or Girl Scout troop, etc. It's not limited to big national charities.

Two cool contests going on right now - one where you get a bonus for completing offers, and a referral contest. CashDuck has never run a referral contest before, so I'm interested to see how it goes. The referral contest has cash prizes both for the winners and for the teams of the winners. So if you think you're going to go for a prize, don't forget to join (or create) a team!

Quackers will be back once I have time to work on it a little. And there's a new Kudos task, too. :)

Aaaaaand we're back!

2007-10-12T22:04:00.000-04:00

There are lots of awesome new things coming with CashDuck's reopening, so here's a quick rundown. Please check the help files for more info - if you have a question that the help files don't address, send me an email or trouble ticket.

Numero Uno Most Important - TEAMS!! This was a huge effort by Andrew, the programmer that keeps CashDuck and many other sites in top shape, so I'm really pleased with how everything turned out. Basically, a team is a group of CashDuck members who get their own board on the forum, and raise money for a charity that they sponsor. So if you'd like to raise money for a cause that's important to you, your child's Boy Scout troop, or a local humane society, you can use CashDuck to help them. Whenever you earn cash or feathers, your team's charity will get a bonus of 2% on that amount. The more people you get on your team, the more your charity will earn!

2 - Daily Surveys!! These were another frequently requested item. CashDuck now has two surveys that you can take once every 24 hours, and they are worth 10 feathers each. So if you do them every day, that's about 600 feathers a month from those alone. Add that to the whopping numbers of new offers, and you've got some serious earning going on.

3 - Conversion to a feathers-based system. The reason that I'm able to get all these great new offers is because CashDuck is now offering feathers instead of cash for surveys and trials. You will continue to be able to earn both cash and feathers from rebate shopping. The list of gift cards up right now is just a beginning - if you have a store you'd like to see gift cards to, please send me an inbox message or email, and I will see if I can get the cards. Gift cards will be sent out on the same schedule as cash payments were - ie, make your withdrawal by the end of the month, and the payments will be made at the end of the next month. Plus, if you request a bigger gift card, it costs proportionally fewer feathers. If you request multiple gift cards during one month, they'll be combined at payout time and you may receive one big one.

This message will be reposted to the forum - if you have questions, please post them there so everyone can see the answers.

I am so excited to be back - this is pretty awesome!

Working up new ideas

2007-09-11T23:10:00.000-04:00

Several people have asked me and been curious about why I decided to reopen CashDuck. (Just a note: I am under 30, and not going through menopause, as has been suggested.) First, and most importantly, I decided that the ideas that I had been thinking of for new ventures, while not originally part of my plan for CashDuck, could still be implemented through a redesign. Then everyone who was part of CashDuck could continue to participate and especially keep their referrals. Second, I really like the little community we have built up here and I don't want to lose it. It just seems like it would not be as good when starting over, as some people have been here from the very beginning. Third, part of the reason I decided to close initially was that CashDuck had grown so large that I just did not have the time to keep it up anymore, and I especially won't have time during school (I also have a full time job, that I will continue at while going to school.) I have two very-part time helpers, but a lot of the work was not easy to farm out to other people, nor does everyone have the space for a LOT OF DUCKS in their house.

So in the new CashDuck you will see a different emphasis on the offers, more opportunities to form groups and communities, and a different variety of prizes. I hope to make CashDuck something that you can invite others from your own communities into, and that CashDuck can help you meet goals for your own groups as well as earning money and prizes for yourself. You will also see a lot more opportunity for philanthropy - the breast cancer donation drive was so successful that I think that if we all had the opportunity to participate in things like that on a more regular basis that a lot could be accomplished.

So I guess we could sum it up as this: What we have here at CashDuck is valuable and unique, and I believe that we can all benefit from a little change in focus, without throwing what we have away.

Update on the return of CashDuck

2007-09-10T20:58:00.000-04:00

As you may have read in your inbox messages, CashDuck will be returning in a new form in mid-October. Some answers to questions that have been asked:

All August withdraws are going out this weekend.

If you have any cash or feathers left in your account, you will have to wait until the reopening to do anything with it.

I ran out of pens, Fourth of July ducks, and magnets, so some of those prize requests were deleted and you got your feathers back.

There will be very little going on that you can see until the reopening. I will send out another inbox message to notify everyone that the site is now reopened for business.

Yes, if I have emailed you and asked for a W-9, I will not send payment till I get it. Though I have been lax about keeping track in the past, it is evident that some people are taking advantage of this, and this will not happen in the future.

The new site will have shopping rebates and freebies, for the most part. Quackers will remain, but will have to be changed due to members abusing the game.

Update on prizes

2007-08-12T22:39:00.001-04:00

Due to the truly staggering number of prizes that are being requested, it is going to take a considerable amount of time to send these all out. I have taken down a few prizes that I have run out of, and put up the rubber duckies and ducky banks that were previously only available through Quackers. Additionally, I have had to deny several prize requests as more were requested than I had, before I could take them down. And third, I am only sending one of some of the prizes (such as the waterbottles, rubber duckies, ducky banks) to each person, so that there is enough for everyone. Gift cards are not likely to be sent out for some time, as I don't have nearly enough on hand and will need to buy more.

Ending on a high note

2007-08-09T00:29:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, I have a sad announcement to make. As of the end of this month, CashDuck will be closing.

This is a decision that I did not want to make, and even two weeks ago said that I didn't want to close. But the way things have been going, I feel like if CashDuck continues to run that things are unlikely to improve. Since the implementation of the new payout rules, traffic has really dwindled. So far this month all of the users of CashDuck combined have not earned what they did in an average DAY of April or May. I really wanted to give the shopping section some time, but I am losing money and new obstacles are thrown up every day.

I have had such a wonderful experience running CashDuck and it has changed me as a person. I've learned a LOT, and in fact partially due to my experience with CashDuck I will be applying for an MBA program. I am excited about potentially exploring other business ideas in the future. I know though that no business will last forever, and it is best now to end on a good note, instead of waiting until there is nothing left.

Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement. I have met many wonderful people and I consider myself enriched by you all.

In practical matters:

All offers will be deactivated on August 15th. Please make your cashouts during August. All cashouts requested during August will be paid during mid-September. On September 2nd, withdraws will be deactivated. To facilitate cashouts, the minimum withdraw for a check has been lowered to $5. This message will also be emailed out, and put on the forum. If you have questions, please ask them on the forum.

Moving time...

2007-08-02T23:44:00.000-04:00

I will be moving households this weekend so some of the prize mailings will be temporarily on hold. I expect to have all my CashDuck stuff moved into the new office by Sunday, and much was packed today, so I will process any prizes on Sunday and Monday that were ordered between yesterday and then.

Finally!!

2007-07-30T00:19:00.001-04:00

I ordered $1500 worth of Disney Dollars directly from Disney a couple weeks ago and they are finally here! From now on I will not have a maximum amount on Disney Dollars. If you would like to edit a July withdraw and make a new one in Disney Dollars, please feel free to do so now. :)

Away this weekend

2007-07-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

Due to a family emergency I am out of town this weekend and will not return until probably Tuesday, so no prizes or test checks will be mailed out until I return.

Also, for those of you who have not read your inbox messages lately, no, I haven't sent out most of the payments - they are being held till the 30th as the ad agencies are now paying me on the 30th instead of the 15th. They will be sent out at the end of the month.

Oh Lordy...

2007-07-11T18:49:00.000-04:00

It's been a day. Coming back from the GPT conference in Miami, my plane had to land for more gas and sat on the tarmac for four hours, since LaGuardia was backed up, where I was connecting to go home. So by the time I got there, my connection had long since left, there weren't any flights till the morning, and all of the hotels in the area were full. So I spent a wonderful night sitting outside the LaGuardia airport rereading magazines (since the airport itself was too cold to sleep in, and I didn't have any luggage) and got a couple hours sleep on the airplane. Oh such fun.

So that is why I haven't been answering emails quite as promptly as usual, and why no prizes were sent out last night. =P I did manage to get a few more Disney Dollars while in Miami, so those will be sent out, and I will do a massive prize processing tonight.

You know you're a pest when...

2007-07-04T23:01:00.000-04:00

...Disney corporate sends down new rules to control people like you. :)

Over the past few months, I have bought more than $2,000 worth of Disney Dollars from the Disney store at a mall about 20 minutes from my house. I didn't buy more than $1,000 at a time because I didn't want to tap out the store's supply. However, when I walked into the store to buy some on Saturday, the manager regretfully told me that they a) didn't have more than $100 or so on hand, and b) they were given a new store policy that no one person was allowed to buy more than $350 in Disney Dollars at a time. However, the manager did call me the next day to give me a couple of corporate contacts to try and get mass quantities of Disney dollars, so I'm going to give them a call tomorrow and see if I can't get mass quantities in.

This is good for two reasons - one, I don't have to go out to the mall and make them give me 90% of their Disney Dollars stash, and two, I could potentially order in a few thousand at a time, and not have to have the $25 per month restriction on the Disney dollars. So while annoying, I think this could be good. In the meantime however, I am REALLY low.. if you requested Disney Dollars prizes in the past few days, they may not ship out until I can get some more in from corporate. I have about $30 left. :)

Also annoying: I was all excited about my pretty new printable checks (cause I seriously have a callous on my right ring finger from where the pen rests) but discovered that the three-on-a-page checks that I did buy only work with the computer version of Quickbooks, and not Quickbooks Online which I have recently started using. So I will be using the first check off each page, and have to reorder a whole new set, and that is about $100 worth of checks down the drain. =/ The new ones are identical though and I will get them before July 30th, which is good.

I am getting all sorts of neat merchants together for the new rebate shopping section of the site which will open in late July - some of them sell some really cool stuff that I think you guys will like a lot. :) There are SO many merchants to choose from, and I'm putting up quite a variety so that there's something for everyone.

Just a reminder...

2007-06-24T19:50:00.000-04:00

If you requested a test check, you need to fill out the form that's linked at the bottom of the Test Check page once you deposit the check so I know you did it. With all the checks that are going out it's impossible for me to keep track of who's deposited it or not. I'd highly prefer it if you wrote down the check number as that makes it much easier for me to look it up, but if you didn't that's okay too.

Clarifications and more argh

2007-06-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

Just to clarify a point that there seems to be confusion on - the new noncredit refund program is intended to refund the cost that you paid for a trial that didn't credit. You cannot get the actual credit by submitting for this program. This means that:

- Free trials can't be submitted.. there is no cost to you.
- Submitting for it means I will refund you the cost of the trial, not what it would have paid if you had gotten credit.

This is intended only for offers that were trials and does not apply to Paid to Shop items since those cost different amounts depending on what you bought. If it's over $10, it wasn't in the trial category.

And now on to more argh:

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who post tutorials and contact others trying to teach them how to cheat. And then they lie to me or get belligerent. I am not stupid, and I really, really don't need that kind of business. So please see the new CashDuck rule #5:

5. Anyone whose account has had three or more reversals may have their account removed without payment. Anyone found to be cheating or trying to cheat may also be removed. This includes publicly indicating that you have no interest in the offers or have repeated offers.

(The Rules are a list of the most important rules to follow when using CashDuck, in addition to the terms of service. They are the top item in the help files.)

I really appreciate the efforts of users who find this kind of activity and bring it to my attention - I can't be everywhere on the Internet and I do appreciate knowing that things are happening. Things that are OK include favorite offers, how to clear cookies, etc. Things that are not OK include how to change your IP address and alter your mailing address, or fake having a business, or telling others that they should repeat offers. This kind of stuff just drives up the WALL.

Argh...

2007-06-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

For the moment, let me just say that some bad stuff is happening. I know a lot of new things have come on board this month but more may be needed. More updates later.

New payment requirements and the test check procedure

2007-06-03T13:29:00.000-04:00

There is quite a lot of hubbub about the new payment policy regarding Internet-only payment methods. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, please log in and read your inbox messages.) Fraud is increasing rapidly in the GPT world, and steps need to be taken to discourage cheaters. The biggest problem is people who are using others' names and addresses (probably taken from the phone book or a mailing list) in order to seem legitimate, then using stolen or fake credit cards to complete offers and cashing out using Paypal, which doesn't check that the name you are sending the money to is the name that's on the bank account. So in order to discourage the cheaters, everyone who hasn't already received a payment through the mail is going to need to either go through the test check procedure (which I will describe shortly) or receive their next payment by a postal mail method like a check. Anyone who has already received a feathers prize gift card through the mail has had their account marked verified as well. However, you cannot request a gift card in the future to get your account verified since that's an obvious loophole. So if you have previously gotten all payments by Paypal, you will need to request a check in June and then once you receive that, you can continue using Paypal.

PLEASE NOTE: This new rule only applies to new payments. Any request that has already been put in during May is NOT affected.

Now onto the test check procedure. This will be something you can do off the payment cycle to verify your account. You do NOT have to do this if you don't want to - you can request your next payment by a postal mail method and that is fine also. This is just an additional method to verify your account.

The test check procedure will run like this:

1. You put in a request for a test check. The check will be for $1 with a fee of $3. So this will cost you $4 but you will get $1 back.
2. You will put in a form on the Test Check page to let me know you requested it.
3. I will mail you a check for $1. I will move the first form request to the completed box.
4. When you get the check and deposit it, you will put in another form with the date you deposited the check and the check number.
5. When the check clears on my end, I will mark your account verified.

Note again that this check is sent out off-cycle, so you don't have to wait a month to get it. I will send it out within a few days of receiving the request. You must actually deposit the check and have your signature on the back in order to get verified. You cannot sign it over to another person. Once it clears and I mark your account verified, then you will be able to use Paypal from that point forward.

On another note: From now until Tuesday night at 10PM EST, referrals will cost only20 feathers!

Argh...

2007-05-07T17:06:00.000-04:00

Yet more great offers gone because people are abusing them. The $1 trials on the front page of View Offers will be going down tomorrow because the advertiser has had enough of repeated signups, quick cancellations, and fake info. Most people are pretty conscientious about only doing offers once, but as usual, it is the bad apples that ruin the whole barrel.

I am a lot more strict about fraud than a lot of site owners are (ie I take no qualms with picking out users for verification, and I'm usually right about their fraud) but I can't catch everyone. And so everyone loses out because some people are just too damn greedy.

So if you haven't gotten to try these ones yet, do it now, because they're going down soon. These are some of the best offers in my opinion - you can buy gift cards and get a 20% rebate with the program, get discounted tickets, etc. I feel like I should write them an obituary.

Disney withdrawal methods!

2007-04-28T00:02:00.000-04:00

For all you new Disneyphiles, there are two new cashout methods. You can now cashout by Disney gift card, in increments of $25 (ie 25, 50, 75, 100, etc) and by Disney Dollars. Since I pretty much ran the store out of Disney Dollars and don't want to do that regularly, if you would like to withdraw all your money in a Disney format, please do as much as possible by Disney gift card, and then you can withdraw any amount left that isn't enough to get to the next gift card increment by Disney Dollars.

For example, if you have $85, please withdraw $75 by Disney gift card, and then $10 by Disney Dollars. Also please make sure that all Disney Dollars withdrawals are in whole dollars since they don't make Disney Cents.

Also, $5 and $10 Disney Dollars are now available as feathers prizes.

On a slightly different tangent, I felt like a mobster walking around the mall with a fat wad of money in my hand... :)

Level 2 and 3 downlines numbers

2007-04-22T21:30:00.000-04:00

There was an error in the system earlier today and apparently something ate all the data from the level 2 and 3 referrals reports. No earnings have been lost, but the numbers were reset to zero earlier today. =(

New things!

2007-04-21T16:34:00.000-04:00

New features are awesome. =)

First, check out the new "I'm A Duckling" badges which are available under Refer a Member. These are just cute little badges that you can put on your blog, website, or forum signature to let everyone know where you duck - and maybe get some new refs in the meantime. :)

Second, we now have an awesome chat room that everyone can use - click the CashDuck Chat link on the left sidebar! Here you can talk about whatever you want and hang out with all the other ducklings.

Enjoy!!

Your name in lights!

2007-04-19T18:57:00.000-04:00

Or in the press, at least.

I was interviewed today by a very nice lady from the Philadelphia Inquirer about CashDuck and she wished to know if I had any users from the Philadelphia/South East Pennsylvania/Southern New Jersey area who would be willing to be interviewed about CashDuck. If you're interested, please drop me an email and I will forward it on to her. :) Thanks!

Argh

2007-04-08T01:31:00.000-04:00

The advertiser I was getting Blockbuster through (until a few weeks ago) was being very sluggish about responding to the noncredits. So I asked a few times that they address it.. and they did, by denying about half the requests and leaving the rest still pending. Argh! I don't think this is particularly fair so I have refunded $10 to everyone who submitted a noncredit about it. The new advertiser is much better about credits so I think things will be OK from here on out.

Magnets and duckies, oh my!

2007-04-07T19:29:00.000-04:00

Apologies to anyone whose magnet/card requests are not currently being sent out, because I am out of magnets - DHL says they left a note to sign, but didn't, and so they won't be here till Monday. (The woman was very confused when describing the package, because 1000 magnets does not take up much space, but dang they are heavy.)

The Easter duckies have also been rather more popular than I expected, so I had to order some more and they will be here on Tuesday. As I ordered five dozen more (I had five dozen to begin with) I think the supply will be adequate for any last minute orders. :)

Join the Puddle Club!

2007-03-24T16:15:00.000-04:00

Members with at least $250 in earnings can now sign up for the Puddle Club, a weekly email which will list all the new offers from the past week, and give you advance notice of upcoming contests and features. Referral earnings also count towards the $250 cap.

New current contests page

2007-03-23T01:25:00.000-04:00

To help you keep track of what's going on, check out the new Current Contests page. The link is next to Contest Stats in the Members top menu.

Cool new thing is ready!!

2007-03-22T00:09:00.000-04:00

On your left sidebar on the main site you will notice a new link, under My Inbox, which is Play Quackers!

I hope you all like it because I laughed my ass off when I saw the final product. :)

A few notes - you can only play once per week, BUT you will always win something. (The once per week thing is to prevent abuse.) It will reset each Sunday.

Some big changes to payouts

2007-03-20T23:43:00.000-04:00

A few big changes to payouts are in effect today, to affect payments for next month.

1. No minimum on Paypal payments. Zip zero nada.

2. Amazon minimum lowered to $5. Cause every bit counts. (Still no fee.)

3. Check fee is lowered to $1.

4. ALL payments, starting next month, will be made on the 15th and 16th, or the next business day thereafter. This means all checks, all gift cards, AND all Paypal payments will go out at the same time. Paypal payments will still be made by Mass Pay, which means that you have no fees (since I pay them for you) and No Waiting! (Next month, the 15th happens to be a Sunday, so this will happen on the 16th and 17th in April.)

New things on the horizon...

2007-03-19T20:29:00.000-04:00

A cool new.. um.. thing will be coming to CashDuck in the next week. I can't be more specific or I'll give it away. =) But it will be totally awesome, and is the reason my house is filled with prizes!

Now is the time for the twiddling of thumbs

2007-03-11T12:41:00.000-04:00

It seems like the days right before the 15th, when I get the bulk of the money and can start making payouts and transferring money and ordering cards, are longer than other days. The 15th is always a busy day for me - all the cards get ordered, and all the checks are written. So I'm looking forward to that.

Unfortunately, the other thing that goes on just before payouts are reversals - usually though if I don't feel that the member did anything wrong, I don't reverse the member's credit. So far this month I have gotten at least 10 Foreclosusre.com reversals and 4 Advertising Web Service reversals, and lots of CallWave signups were put "under review".. hopefully there won't be too many more reversals, but the bulk happen between now and the 14th, when the invoice is finalized.

Limited Edition Duckies!

2007-03-03T15:17:00.000-05:00

From the 3rd through the 17th, get a cute St. Patrick's day rubber ducky! Click on Feathers Prizes to see a picture. They are only 15 feathers so everyone should get one. =)

Upgrade to CashDuck Central

2007-02-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

Or, the Big Nest. :)

This weekend I decided that my little space that I do all my work from was getting cramped - most of my space is taken up by mailing supplies of one kind or another, or my boxes of prizes. So I went out and got myself a new desk!

Here is what it looked like before:

The thing in the lower right corner is a bookcase full of envelopes, log books, and a box of ducks. One thing not featured in either photo is the linen closet, of which an entire shelf is taken up with spare duck boxes, referral cards (I just ordered 5000) and index cards (which are put inside gift card envelopes to prevent others from being able to tell there is a card inside.)

Here is what it looks like now:

The shelf on the right is now covered in mailing supplies, and I feel all organized not having to strategically stack things. :) You can now see my box of ducks at the bend of the desk next to the black letter tray stack. There are also about 20 more ducks in a box in my living room, as well as a box of about 30 water bottles plus a stack of cut pieces of packing material.

I am tired of the crap

2007-02-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have seen some derogatory posts about the new GPT Owners Alliance that has been formed. Apparently Christina of DealBarbiePays believes we are sharing member information, although she also says we won't let her in so I am not sure how logically she can claim to know what we are doing.

Here is what we are doing.

We are trying to come up with some kind of standards to which GPT sites can be held, to help weed out people who are going to cause you grief in the future. (If you were a member of MadCash4u.com when it suddenly disappeared with your money, you know what I am talking about.) Member site admins will be required to register with us (and give us their home address and phone number) and be held to a standard of conduct in order to keep their standing. We have a forum on the site, and can be contacted, so if you have a serious problem with a site, you can let us know and we can see if there is anything we can do - or revoke their membership, if it is serious.

Another thing we are doing is putting our heads together. This does not mean that we are going looking for people to kick off because one thing was accidentally repeated. CashDuck has processed close to sixty THOUSAND offer completions since its inception, and has over 3500 members - who even has time to go through all that and match it up?

Yesterday was a good example of why I am glad for this program. Another admin was talking to me about a user she has who had a number of trials reverse for no understandable reason. It turned out that her husband has a membership on CashDuck and had done some of the same trials. Since they are on the same IP, the advertiser regarded the wife's as duplicates. Neither of us thought that this was done on purpose. So we just each sent a note to our member saying please be careful in the future. Now, if the husband had been the one to have several trials reverse, and I didn't know this was going on, he probably would have been asked to cashout and then inactivated so he couldn't do any more offers here. But since we were able to get together and figure out what was happening, things were OK.

Contrary to statements made by others, the only information we are sharing is your username, and occasionally your first and last name. Most sites collect mailing addresses and everybody collects email addresses, so it would be pointless to share those, and would also not actually get us anywhere. The majority of fraudulent users that I see are using fake or stolen credit cards, or are using proxy servers to complete offers with a US IP but are actually from outside the United States. Frequently these fraudulent users are using a name and address from the phonebook, which may result in problems for the person whose address they have taken. So we feel it is really in everyone's best interest to remove these people as soon as possible, for that reason, and for the secondary goal of not pissing off the advertisers so that they don't pull the offers and then no one can do them.

I also learned today that Christina of DealBarbiePays has decided to remove all other site admins from membership on her site, citing a conflict of interest. I would just like to point out for the record that she evidently saw no conflict of interest when she held memberships on most other GPT sites you have ever heard of, and so did her husband.

If you would like to know more about the GPT Owners Alliance from someone who is actually part of it, please contact me.

New withdrawal option

2007-02-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

Starting this month you can now get your payout as a Walmart gift card! The minimum is $10 and will be ordered from Walmart directly.

If there are any other places for which you would like to see a withdrawal option as a gift card (preferentially if they have a free online gift card option like Amazon does), please let me know!

Finally!!

2007-01-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

I ordered the CashDuck water bottles that won the contest about two months ago and got them about six weeks ago. Then I found some great packing material in which to mail them (tubes would have cost more than the bottles themselves!!) and ordered a roll. Which OfficeMax did not deem it necessary to deliver for a month. Until I called them up and yelled at them. And then magically it appeared five days later. Wow, what a surprise!

I'm normally a very friendly person, but I do a good bit of yelling on behalf of my ducklings. =)

Weeding 'em out

2007-01-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

Periodically I go through the offers and remove ones that don't seem to be crediting. So don't be worried that the number of offers has gone down, because I pretty much only removed ones that had 0 completions, or fewer than 10 if it was from an otherwise popular category. I'd rather take it down, than have only 20% of the people who complete it actually get credit, because that's frustrating for all of us. =)

Remember there is a nice prize for the top earners this month! You can find out if you're one of them by clicking Members and then Contest Stats. I've extended the 5% prize out to ten places and bumped up the other prize values. Good luck everyone!

Check cramp!

2007-01-18T22:50:00.000-05:00

I wrote 53 checks (well actually 55 if you count two that I messed up and discarded) and I have that funny ridge on your finger that you get from writing too much. =)

Checks will go out tomorrow - everything but Paypal should be on its way. Paypal will occur early next week.

Now to stamp and return-address all these envelopes..

Oh The Excitingness

2007-01-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

I have been spending some time over the past two weeks doing some reconciling to get everything balanced from last year. Which, let me tell you, is AWFULLY exciting - I bet you can tell how much I love comparing one list of numbers to another. It's GREAT.

I will also be sending out 1099s on Tuesday, when mail resumes - only 13 people required one for last year, as "last year" means earnings from September, October, and November. December's earnings, since they're paid in January, belong to the 2007 tax year and thus do not concern me at the present.

I am also working on a cool new referral program which involves physical cards, and a bonus for your referrals!

Ordered 1099 forms

2007-01-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

I just ordered my 1099 forms so if you earned over $600 last year (you know who you are!) you should be getting one in a few weeks. Happy tax season everyone! (Man, I am so glad I am at home working on CashDuck and not working at H&R Block. =)

Trimming the deadwood

2007-01-01T21:21:00.000-05:00

I have a list of people who didn't sign up under somebody - this is where free referrals come from. Unfortunately a lot of people sign up and then don't come back.. so I spent a good hour today removing people who didn't come back from the list. Hopefully this will mean more earnings for people who request referral prizes - the list is a couple pages long now and I'd like to trim it a little more by giving them away as prizes, which is why it's at 35 feathers now. =)

I also went and obtained more $5 Walmart cards today - I got dangerously low for a few days! I will also have more $10 cards coming as soon as I can get into the post office - I got a PO box and today and tomorrow are post office holidays so I can't actually retrieve them till Wednesday.

Note about prizes

2006-12-21T22:47:00.000-05:00

I will be out of town for several days and thus away from my boxes of prizes! If you request a prize that has to be mailed, it will be mailed after Christmas. If you request a prize that is ordered online (Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, Circuit City, PetsMart, ThinkGeek), it can be ordered while I am away.

Happy holidays everyone!

Yay candy!

2006-12-20T10:43:00.000-05:00

If you're a relatively large account with the ad networks, Christmas is a good time! I've gotten beautiful cards from several networks, a gift certificate to Restaurant.com from one, and last night received four small boxes of chocolate from another in the mail. I only do business with five networks or so, so my account is relatively large at each, as opposed to spreading the business over several networks.

It's good to be the admin. ;)

Some resolution

2006-12-18T09:37:00.000-05:00

I have worked it out with the GPT owner previously written about, and since there is some resolution I have taken down the previous post. Hopefully none of this will happen again - there are already too many people out there trying to pull one over on us GPT owners, there should be honor amongst ourselves.

The elevator speech

2006-12-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

An elevator speech is basically the business term for the ten or fifteen second speech you give if you have someone in an elevator with you - they can't get out so they have no choice but to listen to you. =) So I sometimes give elevator speeches about CashDuck to people who have no choice about listening to me, such as the checkout clerks I wrote about before.

I have a couple variations on the elevator speech, here's one:

You know how in Hotmail or whatever sites you use, there's banners at the top that say "Click here and win a motorcycle!" or something like that? Well, every time you click that and fill it out, somebody somewhere gets fifty cents or a dollar. On this site, when you fill that out, you get the fifty cents or a dollar for doing it, and there are lots of them so it adds up.

Sometimes I also say:

Well, my site collects lots of offers together in one place, like surveys and trials that you can sign up for, in one place, and if you sign up for trials or complete surveys you can get paid for doing it, and also earn points to get gift cards and things. It won't make you rich but it's a good way to make extra money on the side.

I tend to get one of two types of reactions: "Um, ok.." with a small smile, clearly they think I am off my nut. Or, they say "Huh, that's interesting" and are thinking to themselves. Most of the time people who fall into the latter group are interested, but they are embarrassed to ask you about it, so I usually just give them one of the mini flyers (I have a stack in my purse) and then they can look at it when they are on their own. People don't want to be seen as greedy and they think that it would sound like they were desperate for money if they were interested in something like this, but hey, everybody needs money!

Oh man..

2006-12-09T19:51:00.000-05:00

OK, this is why I have started to hire other people to design banners for me. (Mostly because I ran out of ideas after about four.) I got the cartoonist who draws Something Positive (a webcomic I read a lot) to design me a banner and also purchased a day of advertising on the comic - check it out on Tuesday.

Most of the banner ideas I come up with are kind of cute and silly, but I wanted something funny (and hipper than me) for the banner ad on Something Positive. Here's the options he came up with:

I chose the second one because it makes more sense and kind of mentions what the site is about.. but man, that's funny. =)

I feel like a big shot corporation CEO now ;)

2006-12-04T13:44:00.000-05:00

I got a call about an hour ago from someone who said she was from Ask.com - she had been browsing the gifts section (?) and saw an ad that I was running. I recently started doing some advertising and one of the things I'm trying out is pay-per-click advertising (which lists ads on the sides of sites like Ask.com). So it turns out she was calling me to see if I'd be interested in advertising with pay-per-click directly on Ask.com - I still am not entirely sure how she got the phone number. But I asked her to send me a media kit and she seemed happy about that.

Other places I am advertising are Google AdWords, PayPerPost, Project Wonderful, and I will be advertising with KeenSpot (a comics site) once I have an appropriate banner. Partially I want to get new business but I also know that on December 8th (when from 8AM to 8PM EST referrals will cost only 23 feathers) I will need lots of new unreferred people to give away ;)

Checkout clerks run when they see me coming

2006-11-29T09:35:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-23T22:37:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-21T15:56:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

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

The "Bump"

2006-11-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-11T20:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-07T17:44:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-11-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

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.

Another reason to turn down listing an offer..

2006-10-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

I saw a new offer on one of my advertising networks today that I thought would be good. It was a health trial offer and cost $4.95 and the user payout would be about $18. That seemed pretty good to me! I checked it out though and noticed that for payment you had to enter your checking account information. That.. is kind of shady. Basically they do this because it's much harder to stop someone from drafting on your checking account than on a credit card - a credit card company will let you dispute charges and do other things to fight back if you have been unfairly charged, but if it's drawn directly on your bank account there isn't much you can do about it. So I didn't list it because I don't want anything bad to happen to my lovely ducklings! Some things are just not worth the money.

New $5 gift certificates

2006-10-28T23:30:00.000-04:00

I've put up some more $5 certificates and will be looking for more!

General reminder: If you are nearing or think you will near $600 this year, please submit a W-9. I won't send you a 1099 unless you actually go over $600, but I need the W-9 before I can send you any amount that pushes you over $600. You can submit an online W-9 by using the link on the left hand sidebar of CashDuck.

A new policy I think you'll like...

2006-10-26T13:30:00.000-04:00

I've decided to institute a new CashDuck policy, to help ease the fears of those of you who haven't gotten into paid trials yet!

If you do a $1 trial, and it either doesn't credit normally or I can't get manual credit for you, I'll refund your $1.

Check out some of the $1 trials here!

This policy is not being put in because there is anything wrong with the crediting, I just thought that it might encourage you to try out trials if you haven't already. Now you have nothing to lose. =) So try, try away!

New Seven Feather Special!

2006-10-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

The new Seven Feather Special is the eHarlequin II offer - check it out here! For a cost of $1.99 you can get two Harlequin books, great for long winter nights.. in addition to earning $15 and 7 feathers.

Another interesting interaction with an advertising network...

2006-10-23T20:42:00.000-04:00

So as you may know, all my offers come from various advertising networks, who tell me how much they will pay me which determines how much I can pay you, and this is all set out in advance. It's rare that I have to change the payout on an offer, because this usually is all known beforehand.

So you can imagine I was very surprised to receive an email from a rep from the CCR company (they of the no-scrub offers I was so excited about) telling me that they would not be able to pay me the rate on those that they had said before, and at that rate they were actually losing money. He quoted me a rate about 1/3 lower and said "at this rate we will be breaking even" and to let him know if I wanted to keep running them at this new rate. (Which means of course that eventually they would have cut the rate even further in order to make money.) And if they cut it farther, it would go so low that I wouldn't be able to pay enough to make it worthwhile for anybody. So I said no thanks. Currently I am only running two offers from this company, and I might try to find those offers on another network and stop using this one altogether.

So why am I so concerned about this? Well, everything pretty much works on either a fixed rate, or a rate that only goes up. Sometimes (and I doubt this will ever happen to CashDuck!) if you get a high enough volume of signups for a particular offer, your rate goes up and you get more per signup. Never have I seen an instance where the more offers you brought in, the less you made. What kind of incentive would that be? So I have to wonder how it is that they decided they couldn't afford the rate they had originally quoted me. My guess is that these offers weren't supposed to be given to sites who pay users to fill them out (advertisers give us lower rates than non-paid sites) and when the company found out that they were getting paid traffic, they forced them to lower the rate.

So I don't really know what happened, but this is the sort of stuff that sometimes goes on behind the scenes!

Contests R Awesome

2006-10-23T13:45:00.000-04:00

Keep your eyes peeled for a NEW weekly contest where you can win something cute and fluffy! I will be having a large box of cute things delivered to my house later this week...

(I think that choosing ducks as a theme for the site has made it infinitely easier to design things; what if it had been Sharp Dangerous Pointy Moneymaking Site?)

WOW

2006-10-20T12:44:00.001-04:00

It is only the 20th and already all you lovely ducklings have already earned more than TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Holy cow!!!!

Check out these spiffy new features!

2006-10-20T12:44:00.000-04:00

-- When you use your feathers to get a free referral, you will be automatically sent an email with that referral's username.

-- Check out the new inbox system! Click on "My Inbox" on the sidebar and you can send messages to your friends and referrals.

Don't forget that this month's contest is still going strong - third place is now at about $500. Anyone who didn't get first, second, or third place but cashes out more than $200 gets a 5% runner's up bonus!

New Seven Feather Special!

2006-10-17T15:36:00.000-04:00

The new Seven Feather Special is the Robert Allen trial - costs just $4.95 for shipping but pays $25! Check it out!

Why I don't have outside banner ads

2006-10-17T10:59:00.000-04:00

Although CashDuck has the capability of running banner ads, and there is software in place to allow people to automatically buy banner ads, I've taken it out. You can still run a banner ad, but it has to go through me first, and I won't put it up if it's for another CashDuck-like site. I'm all for people using banner ads to promote their own home businesses or what not, but I just think it's in poor taste to display ads for competitors on your own site. For simplicity's sake, I ask that if you want to run an ad, that you are already a CashDuck member and have earned some money so I can just deduct the $5 from your account. It makes it a lot simpler for my records - plus there have been a few instances of people from other sites who sign up just to run ads, and then leave, which I think is odd.

I have a few reasons really why I don't want to put up banner ads:

1. Most of them aren't very pretty. I have a certain style I like to keep, and most of the banner ads for other sites are in line with that site's style - which is guaranteed to be louder and brighter than mine. So it's visually jarring.

2. I like to use the banner ads as a way to communicate with my ducklings. Not everybody reads the forum, so it's a good way to get information to everybody in a fairly unobtrusive way.

3. I just don't need the five bucks bad enough to overlook reasons 1 or 2. The usual banner ad price is $5 for 10,000 impressions - I currently have $5 for 5,000 impressions simply because the site has only recorded a bit over 50,000 impressions and I don't want people to see the same damn ad for three months. Once the site gets more traffic, I'll up the number.

So if you've got a business you would like to promote (like design, or crafts, or whatever) then let me know and we can set it up!

New Seven Feather Special

2006-10-10T11:20:00.000-04:00

The new Seven Feather Special is the Pricestore $1 trial - you'll earn a whopping SEVEN feathers for completing this, in addition to the regular $13 it offered before. Check it out!

The very first CashDuck contest!!

2006-10-09T22:20:00.000-04:00

Announcing the first contest, to get things going! This contest will be based on TOTAL cashouts through October 31st, 11:59PM EST. There's plenty of month left, but don't dawdle! Here's the prizes:

First place: 20% of total cashouts
Second place: 15% of total cashouts
Third place: 10% of total cashouts

And a special prize for those who came close - a 5% bonus for anyone cashing out more than $200!

Remember, you have until the stroke of midnight EST on Halloween night to earn.. so let's go! This also includes your referral earnings, so refer more people and earn a bigger prize!

Mmmm, taxes

2006-10-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

A quick note about taxes - if you earn more than $600 in a calendar year, I will need to get your social security number from you and I will send you a 1099-MISC form during January of the next year. You'll need to send me a W-9 form - to get it, go to irs.gov and click on Form W-9 on the left hand sidebar. If you are close to earning $600, I will not be able to send you any money that would push you over the $600 limit until I receive your W-9. No taxes are withheld from the money I send you, so if you need to report it on your taxes you will need to pay taxes on it then.

Here's the address to send it to:

CashDuck
c/o Kira B.
1376 Forsythe
Columbus, OH 43201

Or you can scan a copy and email it to cashduck@gmail.com.

IMPORTANT - If you move between the time you send me the W-9 and the time I send you the 1099, PLEASE let me know what your new address is, or the 1099 may get lost in the mail. If you would like an electronic copy, I can also send you one.

All I can say is, WOW!

2006-10-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

You guys are terrific! When I started CashDuck six weeks ago, I decided that I would wait until October to actually start promoting the site, so that I would be able to put up all the offers and find great networks and get everything together so that it would be ready for business. Well, things have certainly taken off! I posted in one forum, and was listed on another website, and wow! We are now up to EIGHTY-THREE members, from 52 the day before! It feels like a party in here! Thanks to all members who spread the word, you did a great job! Exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point!

New no-scrub offers!

2006-10-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

I put up a bunch of new no-scrub (ie they don't check the database to see if you've done them before) offers from a new network, so check it out! Search for CCR - that's the network they're under.

I also added the option to get a free referral with 50 feathers, and a $5 Amazon gift certificate for 75, so that you don't have to wait too long to get a prize!

Haven't had this email address six weeks and already I'm winning prizes with it.. ;)

2006-10-06T08:50:00.000-04:00

POWERBALL LOTTO. Bv
POWERBALL LOTTO -wheel E-game 2006,

Date:6, 10, 2006
Ref Nr: PBL/CN/6654/CP
Dear Consultation Prize Winner,

CONSOLATION PRIZE WINNER NOTICE

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Most recently this foundation set up the NEW LOTTERY SCHEME to give out prizes based on COMPUTER BALLOT SYSTEM. By doing this the foundation seek to encourage the use of Internet for academic and business pursuits. Its major aim is to promote music, theater, art,literature,projects in the social and political arena with a focus on health, as well as science, research, and higher education.

We wish to congratulate and inform you on the selection of your email coupon number which was selected among the 6 lucky consolation prize winners Your email ID identified with coupon No. PBL2348974321 and was selected by our E-games Random Selection System (ERSS) with entries from the 50,000 different email addresses enrolled for the E-game. Your email ID was included among the 50,000 different email addresses submitted by our partner international email provider companies. You have won a consultation cash prize of US $ 500,000.00 (Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars) only. The POWERBALL LOTTO Group. BV, have approved a payout of your consultation cash prize which will be remunerated directly to you by the official Payment Agency Board.

Our DUE PROCESS UNIT (DPU) will render to you complete assistance and provide additional information and processes for the claims of your consultation prize. For due processing of your winning claim, please contact the DPU Information Officer Mr Willie Right who has been assigned to assist you.You are to contact him immediatelly with your contact details for the release of your winnings.Please see the email below:

Stampy stampy...

2006-10-02T19:37:00.000-04:00

Got a stamper and a bunch of other custom-printed stuff today.. I think this is the last of it. Now that I have it all I'm not sure why I wanted some of it (100 duck postcards?) other than that it was free. But the stamper is pretty useful - I stamped a receipt to make sure that I knew it was for CashDuck expenses.

Why I needed to stamp it three times, well, that's another story.

Yay banners!

2006-10-02T09:30:00.000-04:00

I uploaded my banners so that any CashDuck member can use them on their own site to refer people. Click here (you'll have to login) to see. They're preformatted with HTML so that you can cut and paste them. Remember that you get 10% of any first-level referrals' earnings, INCLUDING feathers, 4% of the earnings of anyone they refer, and 2% of the third-level's earnings. So referring a few people and giving them some pointers about the site could net you some nice rewards without work on your part.

CashDuck's first month draws to a close...

2006-09-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

This has been a GREAT first month. Due to a couple very enterprising ladies, I will be sending out more than $250 this month! If you've got more than $10 in your account, you can cashout by Paypal by 11:59PM EST tomorrow and get paid by the 25th of next month. I expect that I will be paying out early though, and may eventually change the payout date to the 20th. Also, you can cash out your feathers for prizes any time of the month, and I'll mail it within a week. (Or in the case of electronic certificates, probably that day.)

I also got the nice big box of CashDuck "business cards" - they're more like mini flyers. If you want to see it, I'll be happy to mail you a few! =) Send me an email with your address at cashduck@gmail.com and I'll send you some. They've got cute cartoon ducks and everything.

Weeding 'em out

2006-09-27T13:39:00.000-04:00

I've gotten up to about 500 offers and I feel pretty happy about that - you would not BELIEVE the amount of crap that gets offered up. If I put up every offer that was available, there'd be over 2000 - but most of them would be crap. I put a little link on the sidebar about my philosophy for selecting offers and running the site. Basically, I don't take offers that cost a lot, look like they're going to scam you, cost more than you get paid, pay on downloading something, or involve porn. I'm really focusing on finding freebies (and those can be hard to find!) but I'd rather have fewer offers of high quality and low cost, than lots of offers which probably most people will look at and think aren't worth the time. So it is sometimes slow going in finding new networks with good offers. At this point I have applied for about 60 networks and only have offers running from seven of them!

A quick note about the prizes - You can request a prize whenever you've earned enough feathers, you don't need to wait until the end of the month or whenever. Your prize will be mailed out within a week after you request it. Also, if there's a prize you would like to see (such as a gift card to a particular place) let me know and I'll see if I can get it.

Are these not the funniest things ever...

2006-09-26T09:20:00.000-04:00

So I need to order some real checks (all I have currently are the giant ugly business checks that National City gave me, which don't have a name or address on them) and the first time I googled looking for check printers with duck checks (duh) I found Ducks Unlimited checks. Ducks Unlimited is evidently a group that supports ducks so that there are more of them to shoot. I'm not a big fan of the group, but I couldn't find any other checks with ducks on them. And ducks are a necessity.

Today I googled again and found these:

I'm highly amused by these checks. Screw Ducks Unlimited, I'm getting me some Duck Tape. I think I'll order one box and see how nice they are, and then if I like them I'll order more. The prices are also quite reasonable for personal checks.

Continuation of story...

2006-09-22T11:02:00.000-04:00

Of course, you know the best part of the first affiliate manager story happens AFTER I post..

Me:

If most of your offers are not incentivized then it is not worth the while to run a couple of offers since I don't know what my users will go after and then I may not make payout. Combined with NET60 payment that is not worth it. I attempted to go look at what campaigns might be incentivized but now your website is showing 0 campaigns.

Thanks for your time but I do not believe I will be running offers.

--Kira

Her:

Wow! You’re quick to give up a new business relationship.

Have a good day. We pay on net 15 btw, not sure where you are getting net 60 from.

Me:

I got it from your own site.
(url for affiliate FAQ)

When are payments made to me?
Payments are made to you 60 days after a months accrual. Meaning if you accrued $100 in January, you will be paid April 1st or thereabouts - if we have been paid in full from the Advertiser.

I don't see what benefit there is to my business if your network does not have enough offers for me to run. Not every business relationship works out. Thanks for your politeness.

I am always up front when I apply to these networks and say that I run an incentivized site - yet sites that have very few incentivizable offers approve me and then get annoyed when I don't want to run their 3 or 4 offers. At this point I estimate I have applied to approximately 50 networks, but only about ten have shown promise, and only about six are up on the site right now. Over the next week I'll be adding more as I get some questions answered about how to track.

Those crazy, overzealous affiliate managers

2006-09-21T09:18:00.000-04:00

For most every network I sign up with, I get assigned an "affiliate manager" - a person whose job it is to ensure that I make money, because then they make money. (I think most of these people work on commission.) So some of them are pretty zealous. I'm having an interesting experience with a couple particular managers, who want to make sure that I start putting up their offers.

With one I've been emailing back and forth as she wanted to know some more about my site and I had questions for her. Then I asked her which offers were incentivizable (ie which offers am I allowed to pay you for doing) and she sent me three offers - two of which I already have from other networks and one which I don't want to run. So I replied saying I didn't plan to run those, and commented that I had tried to login and look at the offers but the link on the site was not working. Today I get an email back with, why don't you want to run these offers? (Maybe cause they aren't good?) and saying that most of their offers weren't incentivizable. That's pretty much all I need to hear, because if they only have maybe five offers that are incentivizable and none of them are all that great, there's no point in holding onto that network. Plus, they have a $100 minimum cashout and they pay NET60 (which means that they pay for a month's accrual 60 days later) which I think is unreasonable. After all this is business - I'm not going to hold up payments to my users because I haven't gotten paid, but this network holds MY payment until they get paid from their advertisers (which I can guarantee you don't pay NET60.) I think that's just bad business practice. If you don't get paid, you don't work with those people again, that's all.

A second very zealous affiliate manager called me and spent twenty minutes on the phone with me telling me how wonderful his company's offers were, and how they've been extensively tested to ensure that they get really great click rates and what not - although basically I don't care because CashDuck users are going to be evaluating whether they want to click on something based on what the offer is and whether they think it's worth their time, not how great the graphics are. He spent several minutes saying how they had great campaigns and totally unique offers, instead of those OTHER networks which just recycle other networks' offers. So I "uh huh"-ed through the whole thing (which includes a lengthy chat about how great he thought New York was and how he emailed his girlfriend when she was sitting across the room) and he set up another appointment to call me this afternoon. Well, I get an email from him with a couple of their offers (no way to put on tracking variables either, which is how I know who did what offer so they can be properly credited) and he says that he'd like to see some numbers on these by the end of the week, and THEN he can tell me how much they can pay. That's not real good for CashDuck because I need to know how much they pay before I can set a payout rate for you guys! I'm not going to get people to fill out this offer if it turns out it pays 10 cents, that's not worth it. And they don't seem to have a site where I can look at the rest of their offers either. Some of these networks are very email-list focused - it's all about cost per thousand impressions and click through rates and what have you. I think this guy might have just been trying to get some more business even though his network isn't really right for the type of site I have. (Although he did cheerily tell me he thought I "had something there" and we could maybe in the future talk about how I might use their services to get more traffic. Um, probably not.)

Schweet! Sharebuilder bonus

2006-09-20T14:01:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard of ShareBuilder you are out of the loop! It's basically a site that lets you buy shares of stock or mutual funds or whatever for $4 - great for long term investing where you don't really care whether the stock was 14.98 or 14.89 that day. I got a great offer up now - open an account and earn $30. The reason this is so great is because you can find ShareBuilder bonus codes all over the web for $50 free if you deposit $50. So you can buy $50 worth of something, they give you $50, and then you withdraw that $50 and leave the rest to grow, or eventually sell. Now you can make an $80 profit instead of $50. That's pretty cool. I'm going to do this myself.

I think I might start a "Kira's Favorites" section for offers that I think are pretty awesome. This would definitely qualify. Sharebuilder is a great concept. Check the "New Offers" section to find it or search for it.

Grrrr

2006-09-19T15:26:00.000-04:00

Well, the really great network I found has turned out to be not so great. They had lots of freebie offers but I had terrible luck actually getting things to credit. Nothing would go through. Clicks were registering but not the completions. So after 2 days of not being able to get anyone on the phone, I finally got a call back from one of them and after ten minutes of me going through the offers, he says, well most of our offers are not incentivizable (ie sites that pay you for completions can't run them..) which means that they are worthless to me. The thing is that about 2/3 of the offers specifically say "cannot be incentivized" so I only ran the ones that didn't say that, thinking that was safe. Apparently they really only have a handful of offers that can be incentivized - so I pretty much am going to have to give up on this site. Which sucks cause they did have some nice things going. Oh well, I have other networks.

Having some issues...

2006-09-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

It seems that one of the networks isn't crediting things properly. This being the weekend, I can't seem to get a hold of anyone. Hopefully things will clear up...

I'm also trying to beat the bushes and see if I can get some corporate discounts on gift cards that I offer as prizes, so for the same money I can give bigger gift certificates. So, a $10 Panera card costs me $10, and I don't think they'd give me a discount, but if I can get a corporate discount from a smaller company, maybe it would cost me $5 for a $10 gift certificate, and then for the same $10 (and thus the same number of feathers) I could give a $20 gift certificate as a prize. That would be pretty cool. I'm going with smaller companies that I've personally used and think that other people would like, but I'll see what I get..