This Week’s Program Review: SurfMargin

Before I get into the program, lets take a closer look at the admin Charles Goldstein. When I first started corresponding with Charles about a year ago, he left me with the impression of a person who is “other” centered. This struck me well, because these days most people tend to identify more to a “self” centered nature. He is not shy about meeting his members in person either. They have already had a few member conferences, and anyone who has met Charles in person, would probably agree with me on that statement.

I would like to quote Charles here, to give TSL readers a better idea of who is behind SurfMargin.

I left the British Army (1968) and went into business for myself, I learned very quickly that the only way to succeed is to provide a service that people want and can rely on. Being honest and dealing straight is a way of life for me. Had it not been I would not have been able to succeed in anything, because I have a conscience which would keep me awake at nights and I’m too old and experienced to go without my sleep.

Someone mentioned that word “experience” earlier. I have a good two years experience in this business as a member of many autosurf sites and I, like many other people, lost money and made money over that time, but I became appalled at the way the market was being dragged down by so many cheats that I decided to research the market more closely and take the plunge into running my own site. Which happened last August with my first sites making there debut in October (Multistreamonline.com and Surf.multistreamonline.com).

The reason SurfMargin started was to provide this industry with something people could count on, and after a year (when the rest of the autosurf industry remained volatile) SurfMargin is still here AND still paying. Yes, a little behind after the miscalculations of December… (I know it does concern a lot of people including me, but I still upgraded, because they ran into a situation early summer ‘which was a lot worse’ and still came out of it with everyone PAID and even stronger!)

I believe the strength in this program is in his partners, such as Ray, as well as his son who lives in Singapore who has a Masters in Marketing and has taken interest in his fathers business. They set out to break the elusive 1 year, and 1 million dollar in advertisements barrier that so many programs of this nature never even come close too… And they achieved both.

Charles and his partners also have some plans in place for new merchants, and franchise opportunities, as well as some other “irons in the fire.” BUT, The most urgent of matters right now is getting things caught up. As we approach the second half of the month, the money they invested should free up and we should see things get back to normal. I am hopeful it will and if it does, they will once again be in one of the top program spots on The Safelist.

Payment Updates

5HitsDaily has consistently paid me within 24 hours of request since Roger took over the site in October. (Paid Jan. 8th, and Jan. 14th)

DragonAutoSurf is one of the industry’s longest running autosurf opening September of 2004. (Paid Jan. 9th)

BabyDragonSurf has also been a solid performer. This is owned and operated by Jeff’s sister Chee. (Paid Jan. 11th)

GMS/V-Lane Traffic

MrsVIP, V-Lane Traffic did a series of conference calls the past few days to make some major announcements. This is a program that I have a lot of confidence in to begin with(I trust MrsVee 100%, so much so that I believed in her vision for something better and became one of the original investors… she and her team have not let me down!), but when they announced their successes to the memberbase, it really hit home on what kind of opportunity we are looking at here, absolutely an amazing opportunity!

This call went into detail on how GMS/V-Lane stays profitable and stable, plans for growth and productivity, and what new opportunities they are going to make available to members in 2008.

In less than a year this company has already grown into a multi-million dollar company, and is getting stronger as time continues to pass… where most programs in the Paid-To industry get weaker with time. Unlike a lot of other programs, they are taking this capital and really putting it to use to make it grow, and are successful doing this. They are also backing up all the talk with documents for the memberbase proving that they are indeed doing what they say they are doing. The flawless payment history is impressive, but people want to know that it will continue to be a safe place.

GMS/V-Lane has strived to distance themselves from the reputation that the “Paid-to-Surf” industry has tied to it… they use no monitors, and are not catagorized as a surf. They are set out to shake off the baggage “Paid-to-Surf” brings, and are achieving this… they are more known as a Business Opportunity. When I first spoke to Vee on the phone last year about her idea, and she shared the passion and vision for this program with me… I was hopeful that she would achieve it. Well I can honestly say, that I am so excited to have gotten in on this opportunity when it began, and more excited to see Vee and team accomplish what she has set out to do.

This program is the true leader of the pack. For those interested in signing up for this great opportunity, send me an email at admin (a) thesafelist.org to set up a time we can talk on the phone, and I will personally answer any questions you might have, and help you with the sign up process. (I have never offered to do this with any other program I have come across online in the past, but I believe this can help a lot of people and am willing to do it in this case.)

Invest-N-Surf

Ubaid the admin of INS had some problems with his hosting account which lead to the site being down yesterday. Members that missed surfing yesterday will not miss out on earnings. I must say that he has handled it very well by working around the clock to get everything caught up. As members, we can sometimes take those efforts for granted… so thank you Ubaid.

The Safelist Community Forum

This past week, I realized something about the forum. Although I closed down the functionality of posting on the boards, the PM feature works great. I have received countless PM’s of where did the forum go! The Mass email feature of the forum must not get past many email filters because there were a lot of people asking what happened.

This brings up a thought on preserving the sense of community that we built up for the past 2 years… We can still use The Safelist Community as a sort of a messenger with the PM function in tact. If you are like me, the friendships that were made on the forum are very important, and this will preserve our sense of community. So feel free to use the PM feature of the forum; stay in contact with each other.

Executive Ads

I did not get in on this program back when it first launched in October, and am just now getting in to it. The program recently closed over the holidays, but Jim Williams made sure no member lost anything.

When an admin follows through and pays, I take notice and is why I am giving this a shot. It also should be noted that Jim has successfully run the program NextDay90 for over a year now.

Executive Ads has changed from the original version. No more daily withdraws, but instead weekly. Instead of 150% being accomplished in 15 days, now its 30 days. Some see this as a step back, I see it as a step in the right direction.

The program itself powered by Total Income Management Software a.k.a TIMS. Here is how Jim describes TIMS in his own words:

“The operating system controls every function of the program and it alone determines how many subscriptions are available and when. It will enable/disable advertising and subscription purchases throughout the day. It is possible that a member may purchase a subscription on Monday, and not be able to make a ad purchase for a few days. The operating systems main command function is that all subscribers must earn a profit each month.”

As stated above, subcriptions are limited. If you miss out, this is the message you will see. “Today’s member or site limit has been reached. Thank you!”

The Success Journal

Each week I am going to write about something that will help in the journey of success - covering topics in areas such as motivation, inspiration, self help, etc.

This week I want to cover the topic of Decisions. The best leaders in the world are ones that make decisions easily. The reason this is possible is because they are clear on their values, and the decision is obvious to them… therefore they not only come easy, they are made quickly without hesitation.

Take this New Year as an opportunity to get clear on your values! By doing this you will have a much greater sense of confidence & purpose and your decisions will come easier.

Studies have shown that people who are clear on who they are and what they want are not likely to change their decision, or if they do it is a gradual change. On the other hand, people who don’t know what they want are most likely to make decisions slowly and change their mind often.

Final Thought…
“He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.”- Chinese Proverb

DECIDE, and TAKE ACTION!

Bob of sent out an update this morning to all members.

Hi Everyone!

It’s nearly one week since my last email so an update of the situation is due -
sorry if it is a little long but there are several things that I would like to
cover.

Many thanks to all those who have compounded and upgraded, your help is much
appreciated.

I am making some progress with the backlog from the Christmas/New Year holidays.
There has been a good response from members offering to compound although the total
number of upgraded accounts has only risen by 7 in the past week. I have deleted a
large number of inactive accounts but we still only have about 50% of members who
are upgraded. If you are one of the 50% who has not upgraded then please consider
upgrading by $10. It will benefit all of us.

AlertPay payments continue to remain up-to-date and this morning I have been paying
those pending from 7 January.

SolidTrustPay payments are now pending from 3 January and eGold payments from 2
January.

The worse cases are only one week old which by the usual standard in this business
is still better than most but I aim to set higher standards than most!

I should be receiving some fresh eGold funds tomorrow and this will hopefully
improve the situation.

I also have a number of emails about commissions to deal with. I ask for your
patience a little longer as I concentrate on getting the upgrade payments back on
track.

Although I can’t accept PayPal for upgrades on 17SurfPro, PayPal is having an
influence on the 17SurfPro payments at the moment. Most of the advertising revenues
I receive in order to pay you arrive as PayPal funds that I transfer via my bank.
PayPal regularly check for fraudulent payments from its members and since the
beginning of the New Year I have had over 20 cases to deal with, including two very
substantial chargebacks from credit card transactions. Even though I keep a reserve
to cover this possibility - which happens all the time - it has been higher than
normal and so has had an impact on the amount of funds that are free to transfer. I
am not offering this as an excuse, it is purely an explanation of what is going on
behind the scenes. The real problem is not so much the money but the time it takes
to deal with each case - time that would be better spent working on something more
profitable for us all!

For those members who also use some of my other programs you may have noticed that
there have been some problems with accessing the sites. This issue should be
resolved very soon. Part of the solution will include upgrades for most of the
program scripts and I hope this will make a huge difference. I will explain more
about these developments later but they should have a significant impact, for the
better, on the future success of 17SurfPro.

One final thing on the personal side: Many of you have been asking how my wife is
getting on and sending your best wishes and prayers, which are very much
appreciated. She is doing OK under the circumstances. Having completed a course of
chemotherapy before Christmas she is now having daily doses of radiotherapy until
the end of this month. The treatment is not too bad, the problem is that we have to
visit the hospital every day, which takes 2 hours or more and this is making her
very tired. The positive thing is that the end of the treatment is in sight so she
will have some time to recover.

If you have got this far - sorry about the length of this update and once again,
thank you for your continued support!

Best regards
Bob Peters
17SurfPro.com

Bob has done such a remarkable job with cashouts (in most cases taking less than 24 hours) for over a year now, that it kind of spoiled the member base. Lately its been taking up to a week… but when you look at the industry as a whole this is usually standard in the terms. But anytime an autosurf does something that takes longer than what members are used to, people get cautious. So only 50% of the memberbase being upgraded is probably normal, but I think things will get back to normal as members get comfortable with cashouts taking days instead of hours. (Transferring Paypal to STP isnt as fast as it used to be, I will quote an update I got from Bob on the 3rd that explains what he now has to do to get Paypal to STP.)

Most of the funds that are generated to pay you come from advertising for which
I am paid via PayPal. As I am sure you are aware, 17SurfPro cannot use PayPal
as a payment processor so I have to transfer funds to make payments.

Previously I was able to transfer PayPal funds to STP almost instantly. Since STP
has been forced to stop accepting direct PayPal and eGold transactions the process
can take a week or more. In order to fund my STP account I transfer PayPal funds to
my offline business account, then purchase eGold and use an exchange agency to
convert the eGold into STP. The Christmas and New Year holidays made this process
even longer, and, of course, income always tends to fall off around Christmas time
as we spend our money on more important things!

I think the days of cashing out within hours of payment going into pending are over for the time being anyway. This program is still one of my top picks just because Bob has proved that this program can be supported with his advertising business, and I don’t mind waiting a few extra days for a cashout. I believe the only real obstacle this program faces is Paypal… and if he can find some better way of getting Paypal to STP again, the cashout within hours will be back. So right now, I have no worries about 17SurfPro.

Couple things to report. First I want to quote a member from MMG that spoke to Charles this week. The following should help shed some light on the situation.

First off, he was sick and had a bad bad cold. We could tell that from talking to him. This was a holiday season so let’s cut him a break on that also.. he had visitors over Christmas and he DOES have a life and is entitled to one same as we do!

In November he sent his partners 30% just as always not thinking that come December almost 90% of people took their payouts and did not upgrade… he had projected and budgeted for about 50% so he totally misjudged what he felt the members would do around Christmas or he would never have sent the 30% to partners to invest … well partners had a short-term investment of 6 weeks planned for that 30% which will payout the middle of January and then Charles will get a nice return back. In the meantime he has had major cashflow problems because of dry up of upgrades and having sent that money to partners to invest.

I have also been in contact with Angus of Monitor4Surf who has agreed to help Charles with on the role of customer service. From what I gather from Angus is just exactly what was spoken above; Charles underestimated December but should be back on track Mid-January. When all gets caught up, they will be back in my top picks again.

Here is the official update from Charles himself.

As a much valued member of Surfmargin, we are contacting you to thank you for your continued patience in awaiting your cashout for your current pending amount. Please be aware that every effort is being made to pay out the total amount currently due to you. Our prior email communications have made the membership aware of the seasonal challenges we encountered which also had been compounded by the Solid Trust Pay issues that are now resolved. We are confident that now the holiday season is over, we will again see a return to normal activity and anticipate a prosperous new year for Surfmargin as we implement some exciting new plans that will go a long way to make the company even stronger and will help avoid this situation in the future.

FYI, some of the planned changes for 2008 will include the addition of new staff, improved customer service response and new multiple income stream opportunities for the benefit of both membership and our business which will help to avoid seasonal bottlenecks like the one we have just experienced. Plans are already underway to generate more income by selling mainstream commercial advertising to merchants, by introducing innovative video-voice ad technology to our site and offering members a webpage if needed for their business for a reasonable fee. A link to the Surfmargin store will soon be available with more detail about these new opportunities.

In addition, the Surfmargin marketing department will be working diligently on the expansion of our membership base by exploring networking opportunities with other successful online organizations making it possible for your advertising sites to be viewed by thousands of new viewers in the near future. Soon, we will also be providing promotional materials and are preparing specialized training for members who are interested in sharing the Surfmargin opportunity with others and will earn a lucrative commission while doing so.

These are not the plans of a short sighted, short term business. You will find many changes in 2008 but we assure you that all changes will be to strengthen our relationship with those that matter to us the most, you, our customer and member. We have been through difficult times before and have kept our word and become stronger for it. We ask you to recognize our honesty and our determination to succeed in this very volatile market by allowing us a little more patience until thing are normal once again.

This Weeks Program Review: QXLsurf

This program was originally owned and operated by NSM. Jeff of the DragonProfitShare Group took this over December 5th and started accepting upgrades Dec. 12th

Jeff is an admin with over 3 years of experience in this industry. Three years and he still has a good reputation should tell you that he is for real. He takes this business very serious; the DPS Group has done very well and is made up of a casino site, monitoring site, 3 surfs, and one private member site. I can personally vouch for Jeff’s performance as an admin because I have been in his programs for almost 2 years now!

QXLsurf is designed for long-term. 7% for 17 days. Jeff caught some cheaters “referral stacking” in the program and swiftly dealt with them which is why there are no referral commissions anymore. This is ok because I believe Jeff’s three year reputation will be incentive enough for people to take advantage of the earning opportunity. He also has a 50/50 rule in place for cashouts that are over $100. Upgrades are $10 to $1,000.

This program has all the potential for a long run, and with Jeff behind it… I believe it will!

Payment and Updates.

Invest-N-Surf continues to pay me very fast. Ubaid the admin, is also excellent every time I have communicated with him, usually gets back to me within hours. (Paid Dec.31st)

DragonAutoSurf paid me. I just spoke about Jeff above, and been with this program since 2006. (Paid Dec. 31st)

V-Lane Traffic. This is quickly becoming one of my favorites. If you are not in it, you are truly missing out. I am now over $5,000 into this program, and will be aiming to max it out soon. I will definitely be speaking more about V-Lane in the future! (Paid Jan. 2nd)

Escape. David has a solid offline business as well as NSM Monitor to back this program.(Paid Jan. 3rd)

SurfMargin. I know Charles underestimated December, but he has things getting back to normal with payments going out despite less money coming in. The ponzi model would not have survived given what they went through this summer & December, and this batch of payments would really make a statement that they are here to stay. This is the only program I put more money into than V-Lane and its because I believe in Charles ability to run a business. Things seem to be a questionmark right now as many wait for payments… my gut feeling is he will handle this the same way he did in the summer when they were behind… Not only did they catch up, they got a surge of momentum. Time will tell in this case. (Paid Jan. 4th)

17SurfPro. I also want to mention I took advantage of Bob’s compound offer. This program has been a solid performer for over a year.

Reminder: 12DailyPro

If you lost money in this program the deadline to file a refund claim is January 31, 2008. You will first need to log into the site Thomas F. Lennon has set up for 12DailyPro members to file your claim. Once you enter in all email addresses tied to StormPay, Egold, or EMO, the software will find all transactions linked to those accounts. You will then see if you are eligible for a claim. If not, you may dispute before the deadline.

After careful thought and consideration, I decided to close down the community forum and instead do a blog. The interest in autosurfing seemed to dropped off after 2006, and I made a decision back in May 2007 to close the forum for the summer. I needed the break from all the ups and downs the AS world brings. Upon returning, the forum has really been slow. This is partly because I myself do not have the time I had in the past to be on the forum… I am now involved in other things that take the time once devoted to The Safelist Community forum.

There are still loyal members of the community that stop by to post and lurk, and I appreciate everyone that made The Safelist what it is today. I feel it is one of the places people know they can go to for encouragement and success in this industry. We are a close community, and feel that it can still be this way, but now just in the form of the blog. Instead of posting topics on the forum, I hope to see comments from everyone! The friendships I have made in the 2 years TSL has been in place have been something I value very much, and I look forward to the continued friendships.

What is going to happen to TSL Community Forum?

It will still be in place, but serving a different role. As everyone who participates in The Safelist Monitor knows… you must be a member of The TSL Community Forum to vote on the monitor. So what I am going to do, is lock the forum so no posts are possible and leave one topic open explaining to people they can still sign up to the community for purposes of voting on The Monitor.

What is The Safelist Blog going to be about?

My intentions for this blog is going to have the same mission statement that The Safelist had. Dedication, Unity, Teamwork, Integrity will still be the cornerstones of The Safelist. I want to continue to be a soundboard to the industry, and help people minimize risk by sharing information. The sense of community we had in the forum can continue in the form of comments on the blog, and staying in touch with me via email, etc. We will still work together to help others succeed in autosurfs. I am going to aim to update the blog twice a week.

Over the next few weeks I will also be experimenting with different themes and such for this blog to make it feel more like The Safelist.

I hope to see your support in this new direction. Thank you to all the members for being here, I appreciate you all!