In the last 30 days.

No, this blog isn't that successful but this Web 3.0 company claims to be.

On another note: 50 Ways To Help The Planet.

It's fun to use websites like GetYourselfFired.com, The site is designed to go "viral" in that its sole use is to post your face to an incriminating photo that you e-mail to your friends via the Tell A Friend feature and while they do have advertisements, the only other pages on the site are GetFiredTips and WorkStressTips so there's little content on which to base an opinion.

There is advertising there for a site called ItzBig.com, an anonymous job search site that appears to be an online head hunter.

So I did a little research and learned that GetYourselfFired.com is the work of Mark Scholes and Third Rail Creative, an advertising company based in Austin, Texas which is also the home of itzBig, Inc., a very successful head hunter.

Is GetYourselfFired.com a creative form of advertising? Very much so. Is it legit? I'd bet it is. But I can't help but worry about what GetYourselfFired.com does with all those e-mail addresses given to them by users.

Back in 2006 when the idea of getting paid to post to one's own blog was first becoming widespread I decided to give it a try in hopes of earning a living.

Of the five or six companies that I signed-up to write paid reviews for two of them, PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com seemed the most promising even though the concept both pitched wasn't quite what they pitched. You see, a review reflects having actually tried a product or service but both of these companies (like all the others) expected you to write reviews based on your perception of a product or service based on the customer's website and nothing more.

In the beginning the pay was good with lots of high paying offers from PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com offering me $100.oo (or was it $200.oo?) per review. I wasn't 100% comfortable with the idea but as I was able to pick and choose what products and services I wanted to write about I gave it a shot. But after less than 6 months I found myself sick to my stomach even thinking about doing paid reviews.

It wasn't that the price had gone down (even though it had) but the fact that the advertisers continued to get closer and closer to the bottom of the barrel that caused me concern. I was no longer being asked to participate in product branding (the only noble form of advertising) but was relegated to being a pitch man for products and services that I simply could not trust. And while both companies imply that all reviews are to be honest and forthright they have both developed systems that allow advertisers to rate the bloggers who pitch their products so there's little doubt a negative review will result in fewer offers at lower rates of pay.

I haven't written a paid review in almost one and one half years but I retained my logins and still get updates from ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com. Why just tonight I got an e-mail from ReviewMe to write a "review" of a coupon site for the grand total of five whole dollars. That's right, what once guaranteed $100.oo now pays only $5.oo.

So why do I still keep my PPP and ReviewMe accounts active? Because that's where I search for new Web 2.0 websites I love to trash and expose for the scum they are.

On another note: I'm not sure of the exact time and date but in roughly 2 weeks my Canadian and possibly Filipino readers will be able to catch me on Discovery Channel Canada. As soon as I know exact dates and times I'll be sure to pass then along.

No one seems to understand, no one seems to care and frankly I'm sick of it. User generated content, plagiarism, copyright infringement and spam are destroying the publishing industries and the hopes and dreams of aspiring poets, novelists, artists, musicians and those who build their businesses promoting and lifting up the creative minds of the world and nothing is being done to stop it.

This attack on creativity is coming from three sides with artists trapped in the middle. First there's user generated content websites-- most of them owned by multinational corporations with billions of dollars in their pockets. These "businesses" exist by getting their users to write, upload music, upload video and post pictures without paying those who post or those who create that content. This, my friends, is the NAFTA of the publishing industries-- the ultimate way to "earn" Billions of dollars without having to pay honest wages, or for that matter, any wages, to the persons who work and create the content with the net result being that advertising rates are driven down for the entire industry. And to add insult to injury, a huge amount of the content found on user generated sites is stolen content that almost never includes attribution unless of course the form of attribution is something called hot linking which is the theft of Internet bandwidth.

Please continue reading.

Want to know how far Web 2.0 sharecroppers will go to cover their asses when things aren't going their way. Take the comments from last night's post about Issuu.com for example:

Two commenters quickly chimed-in to refute my claims so I decided to do some quick research. Issuu.com is registered to Ripplr ApS Amaliegade 14A, Copenhagen, DK 1256, DK.

Here's the damage control commenter's IP addresses:
"Tina" port983.ds1-noe.adsl.cybercity.dk/212.242.132.108
"Heykster" 0x573c3a0a.bynqu1.broadband.tele.dk/87.60.58.10

So I did a Google search for Issuu.com to see what others have written about them only to discover 4500 pages of mostly good reviews which begs the question: Why are they worried about the opinion of one blogger if in-fact I'm wrong?

As "Heykster" pointed out in his comment, there probably is $200K worth of programming at Issuu.com but with no visible means of support their business model can only be 1 of 3 senarios:
1. To sell the content their "members" post there.
2. To sell personal info they collect.
3. To sell Issuu.com to a bigger company who will do either or both of the above.

And it's still Web 2.0 Internet sharecropping any way you look at it.

And Issuu, you really need to do some more cross platform and cross browser checking of your application.

I got an e-mail from a friend today asking me to join Issuu.com so I decided to check it out.

Issuu is another Web 2.0 "social networking" site hell bent on making a fortune off the creative works of "members" (and their personal information) without paying out a dime to those who create those works but Issuu has a more immediate issue to deal with-- an issue I'm going to explain how to hack your way around.

You see, Issuu is another of those sites who want all your e-mail addresses so they can e-mail your friends "for you."

It was at that point that I almost didn't finish the sign-up process but as this chic is really, really hot and really, really smart-- 2 qualities I love to see in women-- I felt driven to follow through. Yes, even at 51 men are sometimes motivated by... But I said she's really, really smart.

Anyway, as a lot of my three or four thousand e-mail contacts are folks I deal with on a professional or political level I didn't want to give Issuu anything that might force an issue and because Issuu's sign-up process gives you no way to opt-out of giving them your entire address book I decided to see if I could work around it.

It was really too simple to hack Issuu and thwart their information retrieval plot. Instead of giving up my address book I simply went to the Issuu home page and logged-in using the user name and password I had entered in the aborted sign-up process.

Then I went to my Issuu friends page and deleted Issuu as a friend while keeping my hot friend.

My next move will be to turn Issuu to a tool I can use to promote myself and others without giving Issuu my creative works and personal information. You see, believe it or not I get paid for this stuff but I don't get paid enough to give it all away.

Oh yeah, here's a really good idea-- not. Zimbo.com says they'll promote your blog but if you knew the real costs you might not be so quick to give away your intellectual property for what might be a few more readers.

Allow me to cue you in on some lessons that were rather hard learned and were some of the reasons I chose to become an indie publisher.

Back in the Web 1.0 days writers could sometimes make a lot of money posting content to the web. While new to the game I sometimes earned $300.oo for a few hours working from my home but when the Dot Com Bust came to pass the same companies that had once paid me well resorted to pay schemes that were little more than scams. One of these companies went so far as to become an agent for all the writers they had previously been paying. Only problem was they didn't bother to inquire of any of us as to whether or not we wanted or needed agents. They had thousands of works that we had yet to be paid for and simply started trying to sell them without ever consulting we authors as to what we thought would be a fair price for our works. And the prices they quoted for our work were insulting to all of us.

So along comes Web 2.0, Creative Commons and Internet sharecropping all over again.

In the case of Zimbo what they want to do is get you to give them the entire content of your blog in exchange for a few readers. Look, I value readers as much as anyone but if you want to build an online "publishing" empire then I expect real money for my efforts. Zimbo wants the right to add your content to their Wikizines where they can reap what they hope will be huge profits while you sit at home writing for free, As a mater of fact Zimbo already claims to have "Thousands of online magazines at your fingertips."

So what are you giving up besides your content? For starters: Google Page Rank. When search engine robots see the same content on more than one website they assume that content to be spam and lower the Page Rank of the sites that are sharing content. Your site's loss in Page Rank also means you lose readers.

And why is lost search engine PR not a problem for Zimbo.com?

Zimbo.com is owned by Schlund + Partner AG, a multi-billion dollar company and Europe's largest domain name registrar. This is one of the wealthiest companies in the world and they plan to remain that way by not paying you for your intellectual property, and thousands, if not millions of you are already letting them get away with making you their slaves.

Finally, a real Web 3.0 company to write about.

If you're a musician struggling to make your way into the "industry" there just might be another way. SellABand.com is a service that allows people who believe in indie music to invest in bands they believe in. With as little as $10 you can buy a share of a band's newest album and help that band up the charts. When a goal of $50,000 has been reached, SellABand.com will produce, market and distribute that album splitting the profits equally between SellABand, the artists and those people who believe in those artists enough to invest at least 10 dollars.

Now if only someone would do the same with book publishing...

ClixSense is a company that pays readers to click on advertisements but unlike most of those pay to click sites, ClixSense doesn't fill your inbox with spam. I know because I joined ClixSense a year ago and have only gotten 1 e-mail per week for the entire time.

Besides paying you to click on ads, ClixSense also pays you for signing-up other users. That said you'll only earn a few dollars a month so when Team Blogsboro was chosen to launch the Yellow Dog For President campaign I decided to see if there was a better way to use my ClixSense earnings that lunch once a month.

By converting my earnings to ad views I was able to launch Yellow Dog's campaign but I found there's an added bonus ClixSense doesn't tell you about, Maybe they know it and maybe they don't but ClixSense gives you more page views than you actually pay for. Three times now I've bought page views at a penny each and each time my own internal logs indicated numbers around 10% higher that the amount of earnings I converted to page views.

Good businesses always give their customers more than they expect.

Also, my experience with having upgraded to a premium membership has been positive.

There's not a day that passes that I don't hear from some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert or someone trying to sell us advertising as a way to make our websites popular and profitable. Only problem is: They want to get paid for their services before our websites become popular and profitable.

But you see, we're broke.

So that got me to thinking... I know how to make a website become popular, it's the profitable thing that I've yet to grasp... I know ways to make our website gain a larger readership but I fear using them will increase our costs to the point we're forced to pull the plug because we can't pay the bills so I throttle back on my promotional efforts. There has to be a better way.

For all you folks claiming to be Web 2.0 gurus, I've got a Web 3.0 idea that will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Remember how satellite TV and cell phones used to cost a fortune but now they give them away with a contract? Devise a way to make any website both popular and profitable with ZERO up-front costs to the publisher/blogger and you'll become the next Google, Microsoft or Amazon.

I can see it, the tools are out there, nothing new is required... All you need do is simply figure out how to put them together.