2. What do all the facts and figures shown mean ?

Realistic potential monthly income from own usage and signing up 10 people

Virtually all of the viewbars available today pay between 10cents and 50 cents per hour, where the higher hourly payers tend to have a low monthly limit on the number of hours the bars can be used. Thus over-time the bulk of your earnings will come from signing up others.

The monthly figure is arrived at by taking into account ALL of the variables listed about the view-bars, and we take realistic hourly usages, for instance we estimate an active user will use the Cash Fiesta bar for no more than 15 hours per month due to its inherent problems, whereas an easy to use bar such as DeskTop Dollars usage will be in excess of 80 hours per month. Also estimated is the potential earnings from signing up 10 peoples, note this revenue is not immediate, but allowing these people to go on and sign-up others themselves, depending on the bars specifications it could take between 4-7 months for 10 sign-ups to generate this amount of revenue. For an in-depth explanation, please see Section 3 - How much money can I make from my own surf time and the people I sign-up.

Note : Our estimates are based on just 10 referrals, being the number that an averagely active person is likely to sign-up within a month or two of starting. In reality there is nothing stopping you from signing up 100 or more people !, The more people you sign-up the greater your potential income.

Max hours per month

The current maximum hours per month that you can personally use the view-bars for. Time limited viewbars such as Alladvantage tend to change the number of hours every so often, so make sure to check back for the current limits.

Number of Referral Levels

The number of levels of referral's you will be paid for, where Level 1 are your direct referral's (the people you signed-up), level 2 are the people they signed up and so on. Usually the companies give a % of the income earned from your referral's, Level 1's typically tend to be 10%, level 2, 5% and gradually decreasing with each level that your network extends to. You can view the current state of your referral networks at each of the companies websites.

Match referral surf time

Whether or not you are required to match the number of hours or points earned by your referral's to get the maximum % for their earnings.

Yes = Means that you have to match the number of hours that they surf, i.e. If they surf 50 hours but you only surf 40hours , this means you will only be paid for 40 hours of THEIR surf time, or receive 80% of the amount you could have received had you surfed 50 hours, this becomes more important as your networks grow where the referral income can be many times that of personal surf income. Also note, you are not required to match the total for all users, but rather each individual user or an average of all your users. Companies with low time limited programs tend to be more beneficial to those with large referral networks.

No = You are not required to match the surf time of your referral's, thus if you so desired, focus the whole of your attention on gaining referral's and earn off their surf time rather than using the program yourself, though with these types of programs, remember that your referral's may also be thinking the same, leading to less income for all. So initially this may seem like a good thing not having to surf for income, but the companies that actually require a person to surf will generate more income.

Residence Requirements

Whether a program is limited to a particular country or available globally. Usually most programs are available globally, though some may not be paying globally, and just allow you to accrue points until the company expands into your company.

How easy to earn with

We rate the bars according to the ease of use, some of the viewbars have elaborate protection to protect themselves against cheaters, which also makes them quite difficult for even honest users to earn with, i.e. Spedia, is a difficult bar to earn with, whereas Paid For Surf is what we would call an relatively easy bar to earn with. This is a very important consideration, because not only will it effect how much you can personally earn, but also effect how many of the people you sign-up will actually use a particular bar and how much they will surf. Also taken into account is the size of the view-bar on the screen, and whether or not it can occupy the same screen space as other bars. Percentages - A bar over 80% is increasingly easy to earn with, 60-80% medium difficulty, less than 60% hard to earn with.

Payment options

The currencies that you can receive payment in. Most of the bars pay in US $'s only, which means bank charges for users from other countries, some do pay in local currencies such as Alladvantage.

Active for earning

This is the probability based on past performance, that the bar will actually be active for earning when you start it up. Some bars such as alladvantage are very reliable and available for use the majority of the time, whereas other bars such as GetPaid4 seem to spend much more time down than online and so is an important factor in the bars overall rating. The higher the % the greater the probability that the bar is available now.

Software / system stability

We rate the viewbar software on how stable they are individually and on the system as a whole. For instance. The GetPaid4 bar is more crash prone than other bars, and for some reason the Goto-World bar tends to make other bars more crash prone rather than itself. Individually it may make little difference, but once you start running 5 or more bars at a time then the viewbars stability rating is an important factor. The higher the % the more reliable and less impact on system instability.

Time / points recording

This is a rating on how much of your actual surf time you can expect to be credited to your account, set against what you personally expected to be credited. Some companies such as Spedia have so many rules / complex checks on validating surf time, that the actual time recorded tends to be much less than one expected, whereas others such as Paid For Surf account for virtually every minute that you use the bar, and then there are those view-bars, that are just plain unreliable in recording time accurately, one bar that comes to mind is Surf2Web.

Website / account access

How reliable the viewbar companies websites are, and also the probability that you will be able to log into their accounts. Usually website access tends to be more reliable then the viewbar usage, but there are times when eventhough a viewbar may be working, you will be unable to log into your account, this is most likely at the very end or beginning of a month, since that is when the companies usually total up the hours / points from the previous month.

Receive Payment

This is the probability that if you signed up today, how likely are you to receive your first cheque, the first % is for US residents, the second for international members, usually the US residents are more likely to receive payments, since the minimums are lower and differences in rules.

Factors influencing payment include - How new the company is, the newer the lower the probability. How prompt is the company in sending out payments to existing members. The minimum payment level, the higher this is the less likely you are to be paid and any other special rules or requirements to receive payment.

Minimum Payment

This is the minimum account balance that you need to have before you can request payment, the first figure is for US residents, the second for international members.

3. How much can I make from my own surf time, and referral's ?

How much can I make from my own surf time ?

This will obviously depend on how much you use the bars, estimates for 3 different levels of usage :-

1. Light User. Using the Internet on average 2 hours per day, using no more than 3 bars at any one time, and possibly signed up to 6 bars in total, the bars used are mainly the time limited ones, which have an higher hourly pay rate. 30 days X 3 bars X2 hours per day X 38 cents per hour = $63 / £42 per month - $756 / £504 per year

2. Medium level User. Using the Internet on average 4 hours per day, using on average 4 bars at a time, signing up to 8-10 bars, making use of the time-limited and unlimited bars. 30 days X 4 bars X4 hours per day X 24 cents per hour = $115 / £76 per month - $1382 / £921 per year

3. Heavy User. Using the Internet on average 9 hours per day, using on average 6 bars at a time, signing up to 15 or more bars, using a matrix of which bars to use when, some only work when actively surfing, others when doing anything. 30 days X 6 bars X 9 hours per day X 18 cents per hour = $291 / £194 per month - $3,492 / £2,333 per year !

How much can I make from referral's ?

This depends on 4 main variables -

a. The number of referral's How many people you directly sign-up, the more people you sign up the more people they are likely to sign-up

b. The number of referral levels ? A Bar with 8 referral levels, is likely to accrue referral income many times that of a bar with just 2 levels, since the people you sign-up will go on to sign others up to 8 levels.

c. The amount you earn from referral levels. Some of the program give a generous amount such as a fixed rate of 5cents an hour to even the most distant levels whereas others even though they may have a greater number of levels, at just 1%, will not generate much from even a large number of referral's Thus in this regard the fixed rate programs such as alladvantage tend to generate larger amounts of referral income

d. How easy the bar is to use / earn with / reliability. The easier a bar is to use and earn with the more likely people are to use it and thus the more you are likely to earn your %. Bars that occupy a small screen space or can be placed on top of other bars are more likely to be used. Also bars that pay in local currencies are likely to generate greater income then bars that just pay in US $'s or any other single currency. Basically for the same reasons that you will tend to use a bar.

These factors go towards determining the structure of your referral base for EACH bar, they are all different. Contrary to virtually all of the literature on how referral structures expand and grow, actual experience has shown us that they do not tend to to follow the pyramid structures given, i.e. Each level is so many times that of preceding levels.

Infact for virtually all of the bars, Level 2 referral's will tend to be your largest level, (level 1 being direct referral's), the implications of this is that the best paying referral programs are those that pay the highest for level 2 referral's !

How many referral's can I expect ?

Basically if you directly sign up 10 people to an easy to use and earn with bar that typically extends to 5 levels, over time your referral base will grow to a structure containing 334 referral's, which may sound like a lot until you compare it against the estimates the Surf companies give which would imply a structure containing 11,000 referral's !

How long will it take to reach the target referral structure ?

We estimate that on average, an active referral will take 1 month to sign up another active referral, remember most of the people you and they sign-up will not use the programs.

For your referral base to continue expanding you must continue to sign-up people, you need to develop a routine, set yourself a target of signing people up, start light with a very low target, say just 4 people per month, suggest no more than 2 or 3 bars to each person, if they sign-up to those, then look to suggest further bars to them.

We estimate the time to reach the 10 direct referral structure feeding through to 5 levels to be 5-7 months. So don't get disheartened if your referral base appears to be growing slowly, because this is also the case for most people.

4. How many surf programs can I sign-up to and use at the same time ?

There is no limit to the number of programs you can sign up to, infact you can sign-up to ALL! of the programs listed at this site, none of whom have any clause that precludes using another viewbar at the same time. Many of the view bars can be viewed simultaneously without any problems, and some of them can even occupy the same screen space as other bars, i.e. One on top of another (Surf2Web, PaidForSurf, ClickDough to name 3).

The only limiting factors to the number of bars being used are your screen resolution and the speed of you internet connection, the majority of users with a 15inch screen and a 56k modem, can use 10 bars at the same time ! Even whilst your working, you could get by with at least 5 bars on your screen, higher screen resolutions will allow more viewbars.

Click here for a recent screen shot of 10 view-bars running at a screen resolution of 1024 by 768, connected to the internet at 56k, to show that it is infact more than possible to run a large number of bars at the same time on an ordinary sized monitor i.e. 15inch. The programs running in order from top to bottom are - 1) Desk Top Dollars (Profit Zone), 2) Surf For Prizes (Prize Box), Internet Explorer, 3) Click Dough, 4) Cash Surfers (Cash Bar), 5) Alladvantage (View Bar), 6) Paid For Surf (Surf Bar), 7) PAY SU (Pay Station), 8) Jackpot, 9) Pay Bar, 10) GetPaid4 (Ad Bar). The bars in the screen-shot are earning approximately $3 per hour for own surf time alone!