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About Our Sharing Program

Emil started this conversation
Feb 10, 2011

 

Dear Aidmates,

I'm posting this in response to recent questions we received about our Sharing Program. It seems that members need a better understanding about how our Sharing works.

PLEASE, take the time to read this post slowly and carefully! And, if you still don't understand how the Sharing program works after reading this, please ask us questions directly. We are here to answer your questions.

Purpose of The Sharing Program

The Sharing Program is a way for our company to offer a small help (for paying a monthly bill or two) to some of our active members. Nothing more. No member should rely on a significant and/or steady income from Aidpage.

History of The Sharing Program

As you may know, we, at People Networks (the company that owns and operates Aidpage), decided back in 2006 that it will be a good thing to start helping out members of Aidpage who show up here everyday (or almost everyday) with small, almost symbolic, sums of money.
 
At first, it was just a test with a couple of invited members, then we opened it to other people as AID (Aidpage Income Distribution), and finally (July 2010) we re-conceived and re-started it as ARSP (Aidpage Revenue Sharing Program).

Before July 2010, our Sharing was based on the traditional Google Adsense logic where people would get a percent of the income generated on their pages. More visitors, pageviews, and clicks on your pages meant higher earnings. Everything looked fine and fair... until we noticed strange things.

Measured in visitors, pageviews, and clicks, the single biggest "star" on Aidpage became a member who posted a single post of one-sentence and stayed on Aidpage for a few days back in 2005! Most of you have seen this page - free-money-to-help-pay-bills.app-butterfly-1.aidpage.com.

We took a look at this and noticed that it was not an isolated case. Across Aidpage, there was little connection between a member's activity and the success of his/her pages according to Google's algorithms. Google's logic was probably good for it's own purposes on the web at large, but it did not reflect correctly who was doing what on Aidpage.

So we gathered data and experience - and came to the conclusion that traffic and pageviews should not be used as measures and basis for our Sharing Program. After a lot of thinking and research, in July 2010, we re-started the Sharing Program with a new setup and logic.

The New Sharing Program

All of the Aidpage revenue comes from the Google ads you see on Aidpage. This is a very difficult way of generating revenue. Despite the fact that Aidpage still doesn't cover our business expenses (it barely covers about 50%), we dedicate a portion of Aidpage's total revenue to be shared with active members. This portion is divided between participants in the Sharing Program according to a formula which calculates the "level of activity" of each member.

Less active members may get $5 a month, while those posting daily may get $20-$30 monthly. A few, super active members get monthly payouts of over $100. Shares are NOT calculated by counting pageviews and ad clicks. They are calculated according to level of activity on Aidpage, not visitor and pageview stats.

What is "level of activity"?

To calculate the "level of activity" of a member, we count the words from all her/his public posts and then we apply a correction for "quality". So, "level of activity" = "volume" x "quality"

How this "level of activity" translates into pageviews and ad clicks in my Adsense Account?

Our formula for "level of activity" produces your "share" as percentage of what is available for Sharing. This percentage defines how many times the system will serve your Adsense Publisher ID across ALL pages on Aidpage. We recalculate your share once a week.

I still don't get it. What are those other Adsense Publisher IDs doing in the source code of my pages?

As we explained above, the Adsense IDs of all participants are being served by our system across ALL pages on Aidpage. Everyone gets a number of "impressions" of his/her ID according to his "share" as calculated by our formula. All IDs are served across ALL pages randomly. If you look at the source code of any page, you may see the Publisher ID of any of the participants. Our software makes sure that everyone gets its calculated share of impressions over a period of time. Ask yourself - how come you see impressions and numbers in your Adsense account? The stats you see in your Adsense account show exactly the number of times your Publisher ID was served across Aidpage (according to our formula).

But how come I see the same Publisher ID (not mine!) every time I check the source code?

You probably see the Publisher ID that belongs to People Networks. As I said above, we dedicate a portion of Aidpage's revenue to be shared with active members despite the fact that Aidpage still doesn't cover our business expenses. What we can afford to dedicate for Sharing is still a small portion of the total revenue. That's why you see our Publisher ID most of the time. Don't forget that all the participants in the Sharing Program taken together make for only a part of the overall posting activity on Aidpage. There are many regular members and Contributors who are not part of the Sharing Program. Aidpage has also a large number of content pages (hundreds of thousands) posted automatically by our system. In other words, it is only natural that most of time the system serves our Publisher ID.

As a defined portion of our revenue, the money available for Sharing goes up and down as does the total Aidpage revenue. This means, unfortunately, that if we face a financial crisis, we may decide to lower the dedicated portion for sharing (as a percentage from our Aidpage revenue) or even suspend the Sharing Program without much warning. We may simply not have enough money to pay our own bills and we may have to shut down Aidpage. We never had to do something like this... and hopefully, we won't have to do it.

Hopefully, with the growth of Aidpage, we will be able to make a larger portion of our revenue available for Sharing. Remember, we still operate with negative margins as a business. We still function as a truly "non-profit" business.

Please, ask us questions! Again, if you still don't understand how the Sharing program works after reading this post, PLEASE ask us questions.
 
Best,

Emil Sotirov
Co-founder & CEO
People Networks

Click here to add your comment...
Mimzy
Feb 11, 2011
Well, this does clear up some things, like the way that things are calculated here so that it is not just what is clicked and such. I never looked at the code to see what was listed - never really had the itch to look.
Now Google - those charts and algorithms and such have me completely confused. I can't find much of a pattern or system in all that mess for how this or that is paid out. This site get's these clicks and gets paid for them...or a bunch of them. That site gets clicks and doesn't get paid. Another site gets paid for Mon. clicks but not Sun. clicks. It's all Greek to me how it's calculated up.

Bottom line is that I don't really have much gray matter left over to be lending to figuring it out. I've got my hands full trying to keep up with work I have coming in. As long as it's humming and trickling a little cash into that acct. I say leave it alone and let it go.

Messing with things you don't understand has a tendency to make them stop working. Call it Murphy's Law, but I prefer to not tempt that set of laws, that likes to make things more complicated and miserable than normal in life.

Thanks for offering an explanation to how this whole mess works.
Enjoy the weekend...
reply to Mimzy
PittsburghMomma
Feb 11, 2011
Thank you for sharring this info!
reply to PittsburghMomma
Emil
Feb 10, 2011
 in response to char6...   You're welcome Char... and you're right again - public posting is a healthy thing.
reply to Emil
Anonymous
Feb 10, 2011
 in response to Emil...   Ok I will. Im glad you made the public post as its easy to be swayed by others and I would hate to see the page fall apart over untrue accusations. I hope more people will ask if they have questions and not make assumptions... Thanks again and Ill post that to you soon..
take care
reply to Anonymous
Emil
Feb 10, 2011

 in response to char6...   

Please, post your Adsense ID in a one-to-one message to me... or AidpageTeam. We'll tell you when it's implemented on Aidpage.

You're right, Adsense is not the main thing to think about on Aidpage.

Best, Emil

reply to Emil
Anonymous
Feb 10, 2011
 in response to Emil...   Yes i have one, like i have stated, it was confusing to me, and someone else set this up for me. I became involved in some of the peoples lives here and my main concern was helping them with info and the being paid part just wasnt my focus anymore. As of late, there have been many questions surrounding whether or not anyone was generating income on their pages and thats why Im asking now for my own knowledge. Yes i hAve an id.
reply to Anonymous
Emil
Feb 10, 2011

 in response to char6...   

Hi again Char,

Adsense is how you get paid... true... but first, you needed to give us your Adsense ID so that we can implement it on Aidpage.

This is clearly written in our instructions - once you get your Adsense ID, contact AidpageTeam through one-to-one message... so that they can implement it for you on Aidpage.

How in the world would you be able to add your Adsense ID to your homepage on Aidpage?

Again... why didn't you ask us about not having any results on Adsense? Why not talking to us?

Anyway... do you have an Adsense ID...?

Emil

reply to Emil
Anonymous
Feb 10, 2011
 in response to Emil...   Thats why I am asking now, as I said there is alot of confusion and I assumed that adsense is how we got paid, I had no idea that it was some other sharing program but thanks for clearing up the confusion. The way I understood it, once I got my adsense id, all I had to do was add it to my homepage to generate income with "clicks and links" so thats why I never contacted anyone until now with all the different stories going around about people being defrauded, I wanted some clarification. Thanks Emil
char
reply to Anonymous
Emil
Feb 10, 2011
 in response to char6...   Hi Char,

I just checked your messages with AidpageTeam. You never contacted us about wanting to join the Sharing after we congratulated you about becoming a Contributor on Oct 28th, 2010. You did not reply to our message at all.

At that time, we also invited you to the non-public space about the Sharing Program where you could see all the necessary instructions.

Since taking part in the Sharing is optional for Contributors and you never sent us a message with your Adsense Publisher ID... or any message at all... we assumed that you were not interested.

Again... why didn't you ask us about this for so many months?

Please, give AidpageTeam your Adsense Publisher ID (in one-to-one message). We'll be more than happy to add you to the Sharing.

Best,
Emil
reply to Emil
Anonymous
Feb 10, 2011
Hi EMil
I signed up with adsense back in Sept or Oct of last year, I never made a dime on here, so is there something else that I need to do through aidpage which would generate revenue or is it only how your account is set up on adsense? Im a little confused because I know of some members that say they have earned about what you say like 15 to 20 dollars in the past 4-5 weeks but since I signed up last year, never made anything...there was a time I wasnt working and so had lots of postings and spent probably hours a day on the page, and never generated anything so I did read your post and how money is calculated, but as a active member was I doing something wrong or did I not sign up correctly or??? Im just not really understanding how someone that just signed up made money and I never did..if you can help me with understanding I would appreciate it and be happy to pass on what you say to other members. Part of the confusion i think is that too many people are discussing what they earn and maybe not being truthful and so its making others feel like its an unfair system so I think it would help anyone who doesnt understand or still has questions to ask and be done with it so we are all on the same page.
thanks
char
reply to Anonymous
Starshine
Feb 10, 2011
Hello Emil
I hope Aidpage never shuts down as it is a source for information and help for people who don't know how to find it on their own. And many people who came here before me have a wealth of information collected to help people that I hate to see that lost if Aidpage was no more.
Wishing you and Aidpage the best,
Starshine
reply to Starshine