Anyone who helps to wreck the advertising economy is doing a valuable public service.
America’s DIY Phone Farmers
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#12I used to do this awhile back and yes it is true. You could make around $1,000-$2,000 per month in gift cards doing it with maybe 50-70 phones. Most apps being used were 100% passive. The only thing you needed to do was restart the phone every 24 hours. The apps would run and show ads to you and just loop over and over. So what about electricity costs? for running 70 phones 24/7 in a month, that was about $10 more in power. Each phone cost around $20 which I bought off ebay. These were phones where the screen was cracked, the IMEID was blacklisted and some I think were reported stolen as well. This was maybe 3-4 years back though. Over the years, the whole thing has come tumbling down. Now you'll make maybe $100/month and it isn't passive anymore, so not worth doing it but back in the day....we were banking it no doubt about it. Also, yes I would pay tax on all of it. The companies would send a 1099.
This was the guy who showed me how to do it. I just basically copied his routine exactly:
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#13If someone's life is so desperate that doing this is worth the time investment, I can't begrudge them it. Likewise with those poor souls who survive and are thankful to eat rotting refuse from dumpsters. Perhaps the income will help them lift themselves up to the point they can pursue a more satisfying life.
I used to do phone farming. You don't understand how it works. After you setup your farming rig, all you had to do was put about 1 hour per day of maintenance into it, often times even less than that...and you would earn $1,000-$2,000 per month from it in gift cards.
All of the apps were passive, it just would loop over and over playing ads.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#14I feel like the best strategy to combat this would be to create lightweight virtualization and automation tools that could be easily deployed by anyone, thereby destroying any company that comes up with these stupid strategies. Just burn the whole system down to the ground, salt the earth, and leave it to be a weird blip in internet history. EDIT: I'm a guy who builds thing and occasionally takes a chance at trying t…
Trust me, people have been trying to cheat the system with stuff like what you are saying. The advertising companies know how to detect that stuff quickly and ban the abusers.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#15I feel like the best strategy to combat this would be to create lightweight virtualization and automation tools that could be easily deployed by anyone, thereby destroying any company that comes up with these stupid strategies. Just burn the whole system down to the ground, salt the earth, and leave it to be a weird blip in internet history. EDIT: I'm a guy who builds thing and occasionally takes a chance at trying t…
Trust me, people have been trying to cheat the system with stuff like what you are saying. The advertising companies know how to detect that stuff quickly and ban the abusers.
That's what I'm saying, the ad exchanges say they know how to detect the cheats, but they don't actually do a good job of it. And it's not really in their interest to do so. They get paid equally for ad-fraud as they do for legitimate impressions. The person actually advertise the product or service gets shafted. But as long as there is a long tail of people like me when I first got started who don't understand the issue of ad fraud (and the complicit people who sing the praises of advertising to boost the idea that it's a good path), the ad exchange will keep raking in money, just like the people committing the fraud.
It's easy to look at this as "Farmers vs. Google AdWords" or whatever other ad exchange we might consider. But Google is just a middle-man. And as long as the system works for some definition of "works", they can capitalize on asymmetric information about the ad industry to bleed money out of small actors.
With online advertising, it's exceptionally easy to end up in a situation where everyone gets paid except you.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#16Anyone who helps to wreck the advertising economy is doing a valuable public service.
wreck? Such scams is effectively similar to shoplifting, CC fraud or just an additional tax/tariff - i.e. it increases the friction and expenses in the system and the most of the burden to cover it ultimately falls upon the weakest participant in the system - usually the consumer.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#17Anyone who helps to wreck the advertising economy is doing a valuable public service.
wreck? Such scams is effectively similar to shoplifting, CC fraud or just an additional tax/tariff - i.e. it increases the friction and expenses in the system and the most of the burden to cover it ultimately falls upon the weakest participant in the system - usually the consumer.
The difference is that these apps were offered as stuff like "play games, earn rewards." "watch videos, earn rewards" etc. so I don't know how it could even be remotely related to shoplifting or cc fraud...where those are so obvious.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trust me, people have been trying to cheat the system with stuff like what you are saying. The advertising companies know how to detect that stuff quickly and ban the abusers.
That's what I'm saying, the ad exchanges say they know how to detect the cheats, but they don't actually do a good job of it. And it's not really in their interest to do so. They get paid equally for ad-fraud as they do for legitimate impressions. The person actually advertise the product or service gets shafted. But as long as there is a long tail of people like me when I first got started who don't understand the i…
Oh yeah, I get you. Yeah, that is something the ad network has to deal with. Really crazy to think how much online ad dollars are spent as well. I think most of google's revenue is directly from advertising.
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#19I used to do this awhile back and yes it is true. You could make around $1,000-$2,000 per month in gift cards doing it with maybe 50-70 phones. Most apps being used were 100% passive. The only thing you needed to do was restart the phone every 24 hours. The apps would run and show ads to you and just loop over and over. So what about electricity costs? for running 70 phones 24/7 in a month, that was about $10 more in…
We’re you able to re-sell the phones later on? At a loss, break even or even a profit?
Or was the ultra-low-end phone market only existent because of buyers for this market?
Re: America’s DIY Phone Farmers
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
wreck? Such scams is effectively similar to shoplifting, CC fraud or just an additional tax/tariff - i.e. it increases the friction and expenses in the system and the most of the burden to cover it ultimately falls upon the weakest participant in the system - usually the consumer.
The difference is that these apps were offered as stuff like "play games, earn rewards." "watch videos, earn rewards" etc. so I don't know how it could even be remotely related to shoplifting or cc fraud...where those are so obvious.
>"play games, earn rewards." "watch videos, earn rewards"
"pay money, take the bagel". Violating such a contract by intentionally and knowingly skipping or falsifying the delivery of your part of the exchange looks to me like a fraud [IANAL].