Get paid for liking stuff!
About a month ago I read an article on WassupBlog where my fellow Aussie, @AussieSire was writing about a new “word of mouth” advertising mob, called MyLikes. I’m normally quite skeptical of things like this, but this time I thought I’d check it out. I signed up that day, and a month later here is what I think…
What Is It?
To quote their “About” page, MyLikes is:
MyLikes is a word-of-mouth advertising platform that allows the long tail of influencers on the web to create endorsements for products and services they like. We are attempting to change the way brand and discovery advertising is done on social media and other places on the web where influencers have a more engaged following, by letting the influencers (who are the ones who understand their audience the best) choose and write endorsements in their voice. By paying the influencers on a cost-per-click basis, we incentivize the influencers to make these endorsements as relevant to their audience as possible.
OK, so this is PPC advertising. You can use it to monetise your Twitter stream, FaceBook wall, website/blog. But what sets MyLikes apart from all of the other advertising crowds in town is control. You have a lot more control over what is published. In fact, you write the ads yourself. You get to choose what you will promote, sorry, I mean “like”. You get to choose when and where. MyLikes, themselves, puts a hard limit on the number of “sponsored likes” you can publish in a 24 hour period. That limit is one! I reckon you’d have to be a special kind of anal retentive to think that one ad per day was spamming. 
Is There More?
Yes!
From what I can gather, they are trying to foster a community of publishers (that’s people like you and me) who will put in the effort to let those around them know about stuff that they like. Now that’s pretty easy really because it is human nature to talk about stuff with our friends. There’s no reason why we can’t talk about the things we like. We also tend to gravitate to people who like the same sorts of things that we do.
What MyLikes wants you to do is just to tell your friends about what you like, and to do it through them. They then crunch the numbers and data on the stuff you are liking and use that to match up advertisers to you and your audience. No they don’t go behind your back and start spamming your friends with ads. The match ups they get from analyzing your likes are offered to you as sponsored likes that you can send out and get paid for. Obviously, the more things you like, and by “like” I mean genuinely like, the better the system works.
Hold the phone! Didn’t you just say that there’s a hard limit of one per day? Yes, I did. But that is one “sponsored like” per day. MyLikes have two types of likes: A sponsored like, which is the PPC you get paid for; and an unsponsored, or “normal” like. You don’t get paid for the latter, and there is no limit (that I can see) on how many you send out. They use the data and trends extrapolated from your normal likes to fine tune what they are offering you as sponsored likes. This benefits everyone. The advertisers are willing to pay more for their advertising because the target audience is no longer a blind random cross-section of people, it is finely targeted. Your friends and followers will see ads about things that interest them. And you’ll make more money.
In my opinion, if this was all that MyLikes had to offer, it would still be worth your while to check them out and give it a go. But I haven’t told you about their referral programme, or their contests yet!
Referrals
Once you sign up with MyLikes you will be given a special URL that you can publish anywhere you like to have people sign up under you. They don’t pay you any sort of subsidiary income or percentage of what the people you refer earn (my fingers’ are crossed that they might do this in the future), but they do pay you a $4 referral bonus for each person that signs up under you. Yes there are conditions to be met before a referral qualifies for you to be paid the bonus, but those conditions are pretty easily met.
Breaking News: I’ve just found out from @AussieSire that even if the person you refer doesn’t meet the bonus qualifications when they sign up, once they have met them you then get your bonus. That is sweet! That is integrity!
They also occasionally have other referral incentives as well. For instance, right now you can win an Apple iPad if you refer the most number of people. Though I think that incentive is almost over.
Contests
These guys also run contests all the time as reward for effort. The contests are usually of the form of “Best List Of…”. You see, you are able to categorise your likes into “lists”, and occasionally they run a contest to see who has the best list of whatever… Favourite glee songs, or Must-have gadgets, for example.
The prizes for these contests are pretty cool. They are nearly always a cash prize. Anything from $10 to $200 (that’s the highest I’ve seen). It’s not always a cash prize, sometimes it is a Amazon gift card, or a Visa gift card. Sometimes the prize is a cash donation to a charity. And as if that wasn’t enough, just for participating in one of their contests, MyLikes donates 20lb of carbon offsets in your name.
Show Me The Money (Getting Paid)
Hands up if you have used Adsense? Keep your hands up if you think it completely sucks. I have been using Adsense for going on 3 years now. I’ve done the math based on past performance and I have calculated that I will get my first ever cheque from Google when I turn 73 (I’m 43 now). In the 3 years I’ve earned roughly $4. That’s for the entire 3 years. Adsense doesn’t pay out until you earn more than $USD150.00 in a month (luckily it is cumulative). And they pay you at the end of the following month. So even if you are lucky enough to have the traffic required to generate enough clicks, you still gotta wait at least 2 months to see the money.
What does MyLikes do?
They too have a threshold before they will pay out. It is $2 in a week. Yes, two dollars. Every Friday they transfer everything you have in your “account” above $2 to your Paypal account.
But maybe you already have enough income and don’t want any more money, or maybe you are just a nice guy who wants to do good. MyLikes has you covered… instead of being paid, you can choose to have your earnings donated to a charity of your choice. I haven’t looked too deeply into this, but I think you can donate a portion of your earnings or all. Not too sure though.
What’s The Down Side?
Yes, I’m sorry, but there is a down side to this. When you first sign up the quality of the sponsored likes that you are offered is fairly poor. So poor, in fact, that I nearly gave up on it. Then I learned more about their “system”. You do need to work it, and put in a little bit of effort. The more “normal” likes you make, the better everything else becomes.
My personal advice is that you investigate the thing you are going to like before you like it. Even the likes that you do not get paid for. Don’t like anything that you would not be prepared to stand behind. These guys will never pressure you into liking anything that you are not completely comfortable with. From what I have seen, their integrity is high, keep yours high too.
Final Word
Definitely check them out. I don’t know if you’ll make mega-bucks from MyLikes, but at the very least you’ll make a nice bit of pocket money. I concur with @AussieSire, they get my thumbs up too.
Till next time…
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Thanks for the luv mate. I like you post on the subject and I can honestly say that the more I have to do with MyLikes the more I like them. I don’t even tweet a MyLike every day and I still make money, and the fact that I get paid on a weekly basis, and I have been getting paid every week, is something that I am not used to at all.
In time as my followers grow and as I commit more time to them I’m sure that my earning potential will continue to grow.
Sire´s last blog ..How Would You Like To Win An Apple iPad?
Twitter: AussieSire
Yeah, I gotta admit that the more I look into MyLikes the more I like it too.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
An Update:
In the article I mentioned…
I’ve just found out that that is not entirely accurate. I just got my first MyLikes payment, and the entire balance in my MyLikes account was transferred to my Paypal account!
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Thanks for the info here!
I’ve never heard of them and will have to check them out. I used to do a small bit with AdSense and then got some sense and quit doing anything with them.
I for one had NO traffic to my blog and was just starting out with no clue what I was doing.
Besides, I’d rather add real value with my blog than use AdSense with it.
I can see using it for small niche sites but other than that I just don’t see a point in having it if you’re not making good enough money.
Thanks for mentioning this. I’ll check it out!
Eric´s last blog ..Get To Know Me Better: Ask Me Any 2 Questions You Want
Twitter: bluepop13
Hi Eric!
Thanks for stopping by, mate. Hope you like MyLikes.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Just signed up.
I’ll let you know what I think.
Thanks!
Eric´s last blog ..Get To Know Me Better: Ask Me Any 2 Questions You Want
Twitter: bluepop13
They don’t even have a phone number and they use Domain By Proxy to hide their information…very unprofessional. I don’t care if they did work with Google. They have no way for large corporations to contact them by phone. I wouldn’t spend a dime with this company. I don’t see any proof of who are really are! And they copied another company which I won’t name. Ex-Google people think they can just take whatever they want and call it theirs! This is a stolen idea and it doesn’t impress me.
Hello Robert!
Welcome to my little part of the blogosphere.
I think skepticism is a very good and healthy thing to have, especially in the field of internet marketing. I can’t give you any thoughts or opinions about them from the point of view of an advertiser wanting to purchase their services because I have no product of service requiring them. I can say that from the experiences I have personally had with them as an “influencer”, I have nothing but good things to say about them.
I do agree with you, Robert, in that they could probably do a thing or two to improve their professional image, such as advertise their corporate phone number (it is publicly available if you care to spend 30 seconds searching), and better domain name set up. I do not agree, however, that lack of any originality is any reason to dislike, distrust, or dismiss them.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Robert. I really appreciate it.
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Just an update. I tried them out as an advertiser to see whether it would boost visits to my sexual aids blog. I used a modest budget of $20 and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Once that blog gets a little more developed, so that it has more to offer the casual visitor, I will be using that feature again.
Sire´s last blog ..How To Save Time Replying To Comments
Twitter: AussieSire
How did you measure the results of your experiment? If it was by number of visitors to the site over and above the average number for a similar period, could you have achieved the same results (or better) by spending nothing more than some of your time on site promotion (twitter, facebook, etc.)? Or was it from an increase in profits from sales? If that, then was the increase greater than the expenditure? Or perhaps your measure was by some other yard stick. Care to comment?
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Traffic went through the roof once it took off and lasted for several days after. Naturally it can depend on who tweets the link and how many followers they have. Being a sex site it didn’t have many takers so it may work a lot better for a normal site.
I couldn’t have got the traffic by normal methods such as commenting as I don’t feel comfortable promoting that blog when doing so.
Sire´s last blog ..How To Save Time Replying To Comments
Twitter: AussieSire
So, from your point of view, Peter, you’d say that the investment was worth it? That’s great! I will keep them in mind for such a time that I have a product or service for sale. I don’t think I could ever justify spending money on traffic for the sake of traffic alone.
One more thing, mate… Was it a difficult or painful process? (setting up the campaign)
Twitter: SteveYoungs
They pay their publishers once a week via Paypal which is really fast and convenient.
They also have a great deal of advertisers with high PPC rate.
However, their ads are not optimized like Google Adsense.
Hello devizapiac!
Welcome to one of my little parts of the Internet. A quick question before I respond to your comment… Is “devizapiac” your first name, last name, or a nickname? I just want to know how to address you, and I’d really prefer to use your first name if I can.
Yes, I like their fast payment too, and even more than that is their low payout threshold. Once you hit $2.00 you get paid (as opposed to Google’s Adsense $150.00). As for numbers of advertisers with high PPC, I disagree. Yes there are a few, but the vast majority ( >90% ) are incredibly low by comparison. Also, the higher PPC ones tend to drop dramatically in rate once you begin publishing them. I had one a couple of days ago that went from $0.28 per click to $0.07 per click.
It maybe just me, but I have found that the quality of advertisers, products, and services available for promotion is VERY low, and it seems to be getting worse. When I first started with MyLikes I could easily find 3 or 4 advertisers a day to choose from to promote. Now, I’m lucky if I see one per month. The rest is complete crap that I’d never put my name to.
Anyway, thanks for commenting.
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: SteveYoungs