Re: OT: Feed the Hungry . . .
- From: Sue <sebrady@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:57:40 -0800
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:46:36 -0500, ThisTime <nope@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:44:35 -0500, Maude <squirrel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
. . . and kill time! www.freerice.com. Enjoy!
freerice.com is a simple website that you'll enjoy spending a few
minutes on. It's a word game, monetized by Cost Per Action affiliate
ad links, with a social justice twist. Those are just the boring
details, though, and it's probably a scam.
The site asks you to define a series of words, with multiple choice
answers, and ranks your vocabulary profficiency over time. The gimick
is that for every word you define correctly, FreeRice.com says it will
donate the cost of 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.
Is This For Real?
How does this happen? The big brand advertiser logos at the bottom of
the page are paying for the rice, the site says. Those ads appear to
be Cost Per Action ads from LinkShare. In other words, the ads only
pay when the FreeRice visitor clicks through the ads and make a
purchase. They pay quite well in those circumstances, though.
In order to track purchases, which aren't made through the kinds of
affiliate URLs you see from Amazon affiliates, for example, LinkShare
puts a cookie from linysyergy.com on your browser. I have no problem
with cookies myself, I like them, in fact - but a quick look around
the web indicates that many people find Linksynergy cookies
distressing.
No Really, Is This For Real?
The site doesn't appear to be officially affiliated with the UN at
all, it appears to have been started by a man named John Breen. Breen
launched the website Poverty.com early this year; it's a bare bones
shell of a website with a snazzy looking domain name. It could well
lend legitimacy to any number of affiliate campaigns like FreeRice.
What's the cost of a few grains of rice? Nearly nothing. Is it a
worthwhile investment in exchange for pushing CPA ads at do-gooder
word-nerds? It might be a great investment - it might be a scam.
Let's say there's 29000 grains of rice per pound (long grain white,
per Producers Rice Mill) and let's say a pound of rice costs 70 cents
(that's good rice, probably not what the UN is distributing). What's
the math? At ten grains per click, FreeRice.com is donating 20 cents
per 1000 clicks. Are they making more than that from these brand name
CPA ads? I'm willing to guess that they are. If I'm getting the
numbers wrong here, please someone let me know. At the very least, the
site has an obligation to show us how much they are bringing in - not
just how much rice they've donated.
One way or the other, it's a fun site to spend time on. It's probably
also a money maker for the man behind it.
Well, I didn't go to the site for any humanitarian reasons (sounded a
little off to me). I went for the fun of it. If I'd been concerned
I'd have checked with Snopes.
Sue
.
- References:
- OT: Feed the Hungry . . .
- From: Maude
- Re: OT: Feed the Hungry . . .
- From: ThisTime
- OT: Feed the Hungry . . .
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