So why making a slow buck on the internet?

I spent a lot of time in casinos in my younger years.

"Are you a betting man Drebin?"  "Only when I order out."

No I am not a gambler but I found the whole thing fascinating.  The money, the action, the people, the business, the marketing, the attitude...I became a student that tried to understand all of it.  Also if I could figure it out maybe I could make it pay...but that didn't happen.

One thing I did learn one night while watching some blackjack at Ceaser's Palace is that those playing at the $100 table where playing in exactly the same way as those that were playing at the $1 table at the Frontier down the street.  In other words the game was the same, the rules were the same, the players were the same, the only difference was a matter of scale.

This was at a time when the 'morons that be' figured they could devalue the dollar and it would improve the balance of trade, but there was a lot more wrong that needed fixing before any meaningful change would happen on that front.  We wanted the Japanese to buy a Chrysler or two but it was cheaper for them to buy the Chrysler building than the car...but that is another story for another time.

The point here is that if you want to win at blackjack you need to learn the rules, tips, tricks and strategies to win at blackjack.  If that is your intent then spend whatever it takes while in the learning stage but by all means spend wisely until you have it figured out.  Remember that the beginning player at the $1 table was learning the same lessons as the beginning player at the $100 table; the final bills for that education just had different totals at the end of the day.

Once you have it figured out then you move in and prove it.  Once you have proved it then you scale up and reap the rewards of your efforts.  If you try to do this out of order it can be vary costly both in time and resources and you might run out of one or both before you reach your goal.

For those that are interested in investing in stocks or commodities or whatever, it is often suggested to the student to begin by doing paper trading.  This is where one goes through the motions of doing the activity in simulation mode first...act as if you are making the trade by recording a buy and sell on paper...no real money changing hands.  You can measure you results positive and negative and determine if your skills are sufficient to make things work in the real world.

Once you are comfortable with your paper trading and the results on paper are giving you a pretty good idea that you are actually able to trade profitably then you get an account and do it for real but at an affordable level, this will validate your efforts.  If your account grows, and not just from injections of fresh capital, then you have something that works for you and you can begin to scale up.

If it isn't working your results will tell you this to.  If it isn't working it is time to stop and go back one step, figure out why, fix it or change it and try something different, then move forward again.

So the paid to click sites I referred to is a no cost, time only effort to step into a lesson plan that can help us learn how to make a buck, internet or otherwise.  Just like the player sitting at the $1 table we can learn some of the lessons and principles that work no matter what level you are playing at.  It is these lessons that I will try to address with future post.

As there isn't a great deal of followers to this blog at this point it might just be me teaching myself but if you are willing to tag along I hope you enjoy.  A smart man learns from his mistakes while a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.  With that said there are some lessons that can be learned from others but there are many lessons that can only be learned through doing.  I can read all about running a marathon but until I actually run one I will never truly know.  That is the reason to offer up the referrals I did.

By the way, I don't intend on running a marathon at the moment but you never know.  This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

Finding hope for capitalism in a game on my tablet

Roy H. Williams of MondayMorningMemo has talked about an 80 year cycle that takes our society from the extremes of a me generation to an us generation every 40 years.  We are approaching the apex of an us generation which would explain all the political correctness of socialism at the moment.  So I was pondering on how will society change back to something more moderate when it seems that socialism is all that is taught in the schools and talked about in the media and legislated in our governments.  Have the roots of capitalism been abolished and replaced with the entitlement mentality?  Has the drive of the individual to become the greatest individual they can become been weened out and replaced with a submission of will to serve the common good however the overlords dictate it to be?

Socialism along with it's more forceful cousin Communism are some of the least effective economic models for a nation even without addressing the moral issues of abolishing free agency.  Take a moment to think about how "well" this world would run if every aspect of your life operated by the same bureaucracy that runs the post office or DMV.  There would be no incentive for efficiency or innovation and therefore there can be no growth.

My vision of the future was growing rather bleak when I happened to find hope in the unlikeliest of places...the games I downloaded on my newly acquired tablet.  Within those games are the elements of capitalism.

At first the elements went unnoticed as I was still learning how to play the various games but then I realized that they were there and hopefully were instilling themselves on those that took the time to play the games.

I have narrowed my recent game time to three games in particular, The Simpsons Tapped Out, Star Wars Tiny Death Star and My Muppet's Show.  All of these games are considered Freemiumware (a combination of free and premium software) in that they can be had for free and played for free but there are extras that you can buy with real money to advance the game a little faster or gratify your vanity.

Within these games there are usually two kinds of currency whether they are called credits, or bux, or vegetables or donuts.  One of the currencies is easy to get and is the basic measuring unit of the game while the other is much more difficult to get but there is always the opportunity to get more in exchange for real life currencies i.e. you real life wallet.  As an added feature of my gaming experience, I make it a point never to use real money in the virtual world .

The games become an analogy of life as they are played.  You are asked to perform certain task for which you earn credits.  These credits can then be used in the game to obtain the next level, a new character or an extra power or decoration.  These will in turn help you earn more credits and at a faster pace in order to obtain more new things that are better, faster, cooler than the last thing and almost always at a higher price.

These are mini simulations of life played out in a somewhat benign way through a computer screen.  Instead of berating our kids for wasting too much time playing video games perhaps we should be playing those games with them and then having discussions with them to help them see the lessons there to be had, lessons we may have missed or forgotten along the way.  The longer you play the game, and the more games you play, the better you will recognize the rules of the game and learn how to play it well.

As the next generation grows up on a diet of these types of games they will provide the energy to reverse the cyclical societal momentum we face and let the pendulum swing back towards a more moderate approach in our lives.

And with that thought my hope was restored.  I remembered that good can be had even in times of extremes.  It is that hope that drives man forward, to challenge the odds and the mandates and give it a go anyway.  It is that spirit that will overcome the oppressive nature of a collective society.  It is that spirit that we should foster to grow and survive not only in ourselves but in others.

I will discuss further some of these lessons I have seen from playing these games and doing the paid to clicks.  Maybe they haven't been such a timesuck after all.  For now this is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

How I do Swagbucks

It's Swagbucks turn.  So what is Swagbucks?  It is a web site where you can get paid to do some of the typical web surfing stuff like doing searches, playing games, watching videos, taking surveys, and being exposed to a boatload of advertisements while getting a small reward for doing so.  This is the one site that can really add up if you are willing to put in some effort and time.  Just be careful that it doesn't take up too much of your time as it can become far too addicting.

Like all of these sites, the first thing to do is to find and collect the easiest points, or low hanging fruit first.  Only after this is done do you start spending your time on the points that take a little more time and a little more effort.  This will help control how much time you are willing to spend as the margin of return to time spent will let you know when you have done enough for that day, and you can put it aside and work it some more on the next day.

The easiest place to start is the daily poll; one quick point and your on your way.  The next item is the NOSO or No Obligation Special Offers.  Quickly load the page and hit the skip button that moves you finally to a captcha that you enter to earn your two points.

Next pick a game to play, one that doesn't take too long to lose and then repeat as you will get one point for every two plays.  One of my favorites is the Swagasaurus Run as I can cycle through it about as quick as any of the games.  Of course if you like the games you can still enjoy them just realize that they will eat into the time that you are building your Swagbucks points count.  Unless they are doing a special day deal, there is a limit of 10 plays for 5 payouts of 2 points each for a total of 10 points per day.

Next thing to check out is the main page for any easy special offers.  Look for the small point offers as they are easy to do, don't require much effort, and they don't require you to register for anything or give a credit card to buy anything.  You will want to check out the main page every time you refresh it as some of these offers will refresh with the page and let you get paid for them multiple times.  There are different offers for different times of the day.  Also look for the Radium One tab on the Special offers page for many of the same types of things.

As you get familiar with the site you will begin to recognize which items are worth doing and which ones to avoid.  If it is an item to avoid you can hit the X in the squares upper right hand corner to delete it from appearing each time...at least for that day.

Some items will have a big point payout but that usually means you have to sign up for something even if it is a free trial something.  The trouble with free trial somethings is you forget you signed up and you get a monthly bill on your credit card for that something that you forgot to cancel.  If you can make yourself a list and keep track of when your need to cancel by dates are then you can pick up some major points this way.  I can not and I know it so I don't even bother with these.  And if you do the insurance quotes you have no one to blame but yourself if you get the occasional phone call...

Next up are the Swagbucks TV videos.  Pick a topic and go.  Watch the credit bar to see when you have earned the credit for watching that video and as soon as you have it is time to pick the next one.  Don't worry that you have just made it through the commercial and haven't actually watched the video, that is not what this is about.  It takes 10 videos to get 3 points for a total of 150 points per day unless there is a special thing going on.  I have never hit the limit if that tells you something about what this takes.  I do however use it to help build the points I need to meet my daily goal.

Oh yeah, the daily goal.  There is your own personal goal which can be whatever you want it to be but in case you can't decide let them set a goal for you.  Swagbucks sets two daily goals, kind of a level one and a level two.  Each level comes with a bonus points amount that is collected through out the month and paid in the first week of the following month.  These can add up nicely and it is a pleasant surprise when you notice your balance just took a jump and you can't remember why.

There is another points bonus that you can earn by hitting the level one daily goal several days in a row.  Seven days will get you an extra 25 points and you can get up to 300 bonus points for hitting your level one daily goal every day of the month.  Combined with the daily goal bonuses this makes for a nice bump but it can become a little stressful trying to make sure you hit it every day.  Also be ware, everyone used to have the same daily goal but now it is a moving target for each individual based on how much activity they do.  The more you do the higher the goal becomes, the less you do the lower the goal...your basic two edged sword.

Encrave is like Swagbucks TV but works slightly differently.  Some are short, some are longer combinations.  It used to pay better but it has cut back some lately, also they took off the notice of what the payout is for each viewing offer.  That means learning it by trial and error.  Look for the ones with a circle like symbol as they will go from one video to the next automatically which is nice...set it and forget it.  Sad part is you have to have your cursor on the screen to have it give you credit for viewing.  There used to be a countdown timer but they took it off.

I haven't said it out right yet but here is a good place to mention that with a little practice you can figure out how to open up and have several windows running at the same time.  This is the real way to get to the daily goals.  If you had to do this all one shot at a time you could kill off a whole day and not even realize it.  You really need to do multi tasking to make this work out well.  By the way, I am watching Swagbucks TV, playing Swagasaurus run and doing Encrave right now as I am writing all of this.

Next up is surveys.  You can be honest about who you are but be aware that if you don't meet the desired demographics you wont get in.  If you try to be who they are looking for you can get paid fairly well.  It can be like a game trying to figure out how to take on a different persona and answer survey questions in a third person in order to gain the prize.  I know one person that has been pretty successful at playing the survey game whether he needs to be a teenage game playing boy or a single hispanic mother of two.  It kind of makes you lose faith in the outcome of surveys and polls and even more in the people that pay for and act on the information that comes out of them, but don't let that hold you back from getting paid for their folly.

Last mention is the searches.  The payout is given randomly, totally hit or miss and usually pays in the 6 to 11 point range, so I don't count on it for much other than icing when I get one.  I do search and go to a site known as sc-s.com.  It stands for swag code spoilers and will let you know if any of the Swagbucks social sites like Facebook, Blog, or Twitter have a special Swag code phrase you can use for a limited time to gather some bonus points.  Quicker to use than the sites but it is all hit or miss for timing.

So when it comes to being paid (and that is the best part) just know that there are several cards to choose from where 1 point equals 1 cent and you can pick many different cards in different denominations starting from $5.  One card that can be bought at a discount is the Amazon $5 card which you can get for 450 points, up to 5 cards a month.  First place to start and the one goal you should shoot for is these 5 cards each month.  It doesn't take long to build a nice credit balance at Amazon.

Now if you think this is all small fry I must state that my friend has bought a lot of nice things through Amazon with the $1000 plus he as made in the past 10 months he has been doing this.  This is all part time outside his regular full time job.  He is driven and goal oriented and does what it takes to get where he wants to get.  Way to go.  I haven't done that well myself but I do like what I have been able to do.

If you think you would be interested in giving this a try then use my referral to try SWAGBUCKS. (or http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/c5ed) and enjoy.  It doesn't cost anything to try but your time.  I like that.  I like that.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.