Project Payday Review - What's an IFW ?

Project Payday Update Sept. 2007 (opens in new window)

Note: 2009 Update. Project Payday no longer accepts Canadians. American users only so if you are interested in this type of work and live elsewhere I suggest you look at CashCrate as an alternative or Project Payday's other program, Partner with Paul. 

In my unending quest to blow good money on get rich quick schemes found on the Internet, I came across a 'make money' program that I hadn't tried before, though I had heard snippets about it in my travels.

I found 'Project Payday' in the usual way - a barrage of mass emails sent out by all the hordes of Internet marketers who have weaseled into my wallet over the years. Never content, these parasites keep sending me more stuff to buy that will make me rich, the nerve.

Being a true "get rich quick Junkie" I am forced to read these too good to be true offers. Having seen so many versions of the same schemes over and over again, albeit some with better frills and bows, I can usually peg a waste of time in seconds flat. It's when I come to something that I haven't seen before or something that I'd heard about but fuzzy on the details that I get into trouble. Trouble is usually followed by a flushing sound as I pour more money down the toilet.

I just can't resist buying so much crap if only for the entertainment value but usually because I just have to see what the angle is? Don't you? Of course once I know the angle I shelve whatever the project was and never use it. I keep meaning to ask for refunds in the allotted time, as so many promise but I'm to lazy to get around to doing it.

So with that in mind, there I sat reading a sales page from someone called Monika St. John. Her website "Project Payday - Realistic Extra Income for the Average Joe" was pitching something called "Incentivized Freebie Websites" or IFW's for the acronym lovers.

Project Payday Sales Page

I must admit that I didn't have a clue what a IFW was so I just had to read on. It turns out that this term refers to the whole 'Surveys/Get a Free Gift' scheme I have run across from time to time but had never bothered to find out the nuts and bolts of the gimmick.

You have all no doubt seen a 'get a free ipod' promo or a 'get paid to take surveys' blurb or 'get paid to shop' advertisement. You know the spiel - sign up for a free or small fee promotion and you will receive a brand new ipod, flat screen TV or whatever. The promo you have to sign up for is usually something like Columbia House CD's or efax or a credit card company. The gist of it is that the website giving away the free ipod gets paid for each person it refers to the vendor (Columbia House pays the website for getting you to fill out the promo offer). It turns out that this isn't a scam as you might first think - I know I did. The website actually gives away free ipods - the catch is that to get the ipod you have to refer 5 or 10 friends to sign up for the new Columbia House promo as well. The website gets - lets pick a number, say $25 - every time they refer someone. They make you refer 5 people to get your free ipod. The website makes $125 and gives you an ipod that they bought for $50. Everyone wins, Columbia House gets 5 new people to bombard with CD's (for the rest of their sorry lives) the website makes a $75 profit and you get a brand new ipod.

The problem of course is that you have no intention of bothering 5 friends and asking them to sign up for a promotion. I would be far too embarrassed to contemplate this. What this means is that the website gets a lot of $25 payments for one time only promo sign ups (some people actually want CH cd's) who don't refer friends and ultimately they don't have to give away many ipods. Nice deal for the website and explains why you see so many sites offering free ipods.

So, I'm sure you are asking, how does a person make money off of all this. I am ashamed to admit that I never saw the money making angle to it until I read how in Project Payday.

It turns out that there is a very lucrative little industry here. Here's how it works:

There is a whole network of forums dedicated to people who buy and sell referrals for these free ipods, TV's, digital cameras, cash and just about anything you can think of. If you sign up to one of these forums you will find that someone is willing to pay you $25 if you will sign up for some promo as their referral. Too good to be true? Not really - let me explain things in detail.

Lets say I find a website offering $1000. to anyone who signs up for a credit card membership and gets 10 friends to sign up as well. Normally I would love to get the $1000 but I know that I will never get 10 friends to join as well. This is where the forums come in. I sign up for the credit card and then post an ad on the forum that says that I am willing to pay 10 people $50 each if they will go to website A and using my referral ID, sign up for a credit card. You do the math... I pay out $500 and collect $1000 from the website. In case you are wondering I do get the money because the website was paid $1650 from the credit card company for the 11 referrals. Ultimately this whole system is underwritten by the large corporations who are now spending massive amounts on Internet advertising that used to be spent on the old media. With 11 new card holders the credit card company will make back its investment in short order.

You can make money using this system a few different ways.

You can get paid by people by simply signing up to promotions as a referral. All money is exchanged thru paypal and is paid instantly. All transactions are carried out on the forums so anyone not playing fair is immediately targeted and his or her career is cut short. Each buyer and seller is rated by the people they have done business with (much like ebay)so you have a good idea of who you are dealing with before any transactions take place.

Or you can be the person buying referrals in order to claim a website freebie. This is where the money is - like the example above - spend $500 and get back $1000. It doesn't take a genius to figure out a return on investment like this. It is because of this that freebie give away websites are flourishing. As long as the corporations keep advertising this system is fool proof. Everyone gets a piece of the corporate advertising budget and for once you can make money online without having to screw some poor sucker with a crappy ebook or outdated software program that wont make him rich.

What's the downside?

The only thing I don't like about this system is that I have to sign up for all these promos in order to get paid by others for my referral. Some sign ups are free and are not a problem. Most however require you to give them a credit card and after your initial 1 month free trial you will be charged a monthly fee. Think of Columbia House, you give them your credit card and they charge you a first month fee of 49 cents and send you 12 cd's. You get $25 from someone on the forum for being his referral. Good deal so far - you get $25 and pay out 49 cents. The problem is that if you don't cancel your Columbia House membership at the end of the trial period you will suddenly find yourself paying back your $25 for CD's you don't want.

This problem is not insurmountable but it does mean that this program will require work on your part. You will have to keep lists organized and remember to cancel all the promos you sign up for. None of this is hard but it is a pain in the butt.

There are more angles to this whole enterprise but this gives you a rough idea of what it is all about. If you are interested in learning more and want to pursue this then I encourage you to get Project Payday. It cost me $35 bucks but was worth it as it lays out the entire strategy for you in a simple, step by step format. More importantly it has access to all the specialized forums and websites involved in this. Keep in mind that you can do this without Project Payday but it will take you a great deal of time finding all the resources and forums. As usual I couldn't be bothered doing all that work and spent the $35.

How well does it work.

I have been doing this for about two weeks so far - admittedly not very arduously - (it is a bit of work, not hard but time consuming and I'm lazy) Let me say it does work but I don't think you will get rich from it. Not bad if you need some extra cash but it would take a great deal of time and energy to make a lot of money from this. I spent 4 - 5 hours at it for the first few days. Basically I agreed to be a referral for others and was paid to sign up for a bunch of promos. I did ten and made $250 the first day before subtracting the $36 it cost me on my credit card for signing up for the promos. I now have to remember to cancel all these promos before the trial periods end (a pain). The second day brought in $200 less the credit card charges - the third day I made about $125 less the charges. Basically each day I did less work and made less money. I found it kinda dull filing out all the promo info and now find that I only do 1 or 2 a day.

I like strategy two a lot better. I have only done this once so far but it worked out well and it made more money for the time and effort expended. A website offered $600 in cash to my PayPal account if I referred 10 people to its promotions. I offered 10 people $30 each to sign up and had my $600 before the day was done. This did blow me away as I don't remember ever doubling my money that fast on anything before. The only reason I haven't dropped everything to concentrate more on this method is that it did take a whole day to make $300. This worked out to about $50 an hour for the work I did - not bad but not get rich stuff either. Thing is, I hate having to do work so this program is more suited to stay at home moms/dads and others who have time on their hands.

My recommendation of Project Payday is that if you are looking for a get rich scheme then this isn't for you at all. I put this program more in the category of an online job. Sure, you are the boss but you will have to put in work to make money. It is nice in the sense that if you need a certain amount of money in a hurry you can simply log in for a day of work and make it. Having tested it I can confirm that it does work and it is foolproof until the corporations, who are forking out the money (and gladly doing so) change directions. This is ideal for someone who wants to make a decent amount of money working from home. For me, too tedius and doesn't offer the chance of waking up one morning too find your clickbank account has a million bucks in it. (sure this is a dream but its why so many of us are into the online get rich thing - everyday we hear about someone making a killing with some new product or simply a new twist on an old scheme).

Originally I was just going to post a few links to get you started in the right direction but have decided that it wouldn't be fair to Project Payday. Usually I don't care about circumventing people who have taken my money. This is because I rarely feel that I've gotten my money's worth. In this case I had to admit that I paid for Project Payday at 9:00 am, read it, followed the directions and had $250 in my paypal account by 2:00 in the afternoon. I couldn't say that I hadn't got my money's worth. I'm trying to remember the last program I bought that actually made me back my purchase price? Never mind doing it within a few hours.

For this reason I thinks its only fair that if you want to try this for yourself you should join Project Payday and pay for the service. Like I said you can do most of this on your own but it will take you a while to get up to steam. I would just join and get your money back using the system.

Unfortunately Project Payday is only available to American users at this time. Their sister program is still available to users in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. Partner with Paul
Project Payday