Subvert and Profit

The recent Digg honey pot attack, while it was a hassle and did some damage, has left Subvert and Profit essentially intact.  We lost a chunk of users, either to banning or to our new policy of only allowing trusted users to vote, but many of them have switched in a new Digg account.  We are still running advertisements at the same rate… in fact, our trusted users are now happier because they have more things to Digg.

By falling back onto our trusted users, we ensure that our operation will continue without honey pot attacks in the future.  This may slow our growth until we expand to our next site, but it is definitely worth it.

If you have been banned and have not yet entered your new account on your Digg user page, here are the very simple steps:

• Delete your browser cookies.  On Firefox this is Tools >> Clear Private Data, and on Internet Explorer this is Tools >> Delete browsing history >> Delete cookies
• Download Tor if you don’t already have it.  Tor anonymizes your IP address, so Digg cannot associate you with your old account.  Then download the Torbutton extension for Firefox.  You should really just use Firefox for Subvert and Profit work.
• Create a new account on Digg.  You know the deal here.
• Enter it into your Subvert and Profit user page, and you’re set!

The attack has been good for us, since we were forced to think deeper about strategy, both for the present and going forward.  Stick around with us: we’ll be sticking around for a while.

We are pleased to introduce referral links. You now have the option to either send an email to your friends through our site, which will include your link, or post the link yourself into an email or on your blog. Bloggers, we’re looking at you.

Remember, we pay you 20% of your friends’ earnings forever! This does not affect your friends’ earnings. Our users earn anywhere from $3 to $10 per week… do the math yourself, and you will see that this could be one of the most lucrative affiliate programs on the Internet.

To see your link, log in and visit the Digg user page. The link is simply http://subvertandprofit.com/social/ + your Subvert and Profit username.

Thanks for Subverting - it’s time to Profit!

We’ve been promoting stories onto the front page of Digg for almost two weeks now, and we have surprised even ourselves at our effectiveness.  To protect our users, we can’t release too many details, but here are the most important tidbits:

• Not a single user has reported being banned from Digg
• The average user makes $3.50 per week, while top users make about double this.  This should increase as we get more advertisers.
• Not a single advertiser has been dissatisfied with our service.
• Our quality control on advertisements has worked amazingly.  Only on one story was there a single comment that suspected Digg-gaming due to the content of the story.  We quarantined the users on that story for two days, and nothing ever came of it.

So, what’s next?  We’re going to pick up the volume slightly on Digg, and then look beyond.  We don’t want to hurt Digg by promoting too many stories to the front page in a day.  So where are we looking?  Stay tuned…

If you are an advertiser or a user, feel free to post your experiences with our site, e.g. how much you’ve made, how many visitors you got to your site, etc.

Subvert and Profit!

Update: Digg has calmed down, so we’ll start back up immediately. 

And we thought we were creating a stir on Digg by selling votes. Promotion of advertisements will cease for the night, or at least until the very intense rukus about the leaked HD-DVD hex code dies down.

Check out Digg right now to witness a real example of Internet anarchy!

For a while Digg was censoring its users and banning their accounts and IP addresses, but this appears to have stopped, as the front page has been completely dominated by stories about the code for hours now.

Advertisers: we’ll be ready to get you on the front page of Digg as soon as this dies down. Things have been going very well.

During the first three days of our operation, we have placed a good number of stories (both paid and random) on the front page of Digg. As far as we can tell, none of our users have been banned. We have kept almost all of our users busy.

Many of you have been asking when you can expect to see money in your account. We place money in your account once we have verified your activity. We try to verify all Digging activity for a day all at once, and we should be doing this within the next hour. *Update* Since our Ruby on Rails server decided to crap out tonight, we will verify your activity once it is up again.

A few of you encountered a couple minor bugs in the system. Thanks to your feedback, these bugs are now gone.

Operation will only get smoother, cleaner, and faster from here.

After a week of awesome blogosphere coverage, we are approaching critical mass of users. What’s most interesting to us is that 10% of people who visit our site register for an account. Things are shaping up for an awesome launch.

We’ve decided to grease your palms even more for helping us build this site. We’ll now pay you 20% of the income of any user your refer to this site. This offer is amazing. You could actually make hundreds of dollars per month just by getting all of your friends to Digg for us. What’s more, there is absolutely zero cost to you. Do it!

With all this good news, we are almost ready to launch. We won’t give a date, but it may be this week.

Subvert and Profit!