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GreenZap goes after PayPal

Thread title: GreenZap goes after PayPal
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06-05-2005, 04:45 PM
#51
stoavio is offline stoavio
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Well they've launched and impressively, there are some really cool features (check out ZapMap). However, there are still some questions and conerns. Just wanted to update you guys.

-Mason

06-05-2005, 04:46 PM
#52
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What are the questions and concerns stoavio?

06-05-2005, 05:08 PM
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I have $157 withdrawable money with them, but I'm not going to be handing over my bank details to them until i know its not a scam.

My Opinion

The way I see it, is that it is a very complicated scam created by a group of about 5 people, much like the nigerian scams we all know about.

One of them will be a designer, who designs a site that looks highly professional and very believing, and much like a trust worthy site. There will be one that handles the press, writes press releases, and generally spreads the word of greenzap.

There will be a programmer who makes all these neat looking features like the "ZapMap" and some of the clever effects on the site.

The plan is, they turn up one day, start issuing out a referal service where you can make $25/referal, then they become what looks to be a trustworthy site. Some people will pay real money to get a gold account, which will also require bank/credit card details. Some will just attempt to withdraw the "hundreds of dollars" they have made which in turn just gives away their details, and some such as myself, shall sit on the money and see what happens. I foresee this becoming the biggest scam of the decade, thousands of people will sart loosing money (maybe in a few years) and then greenzap will just dissapear.

I don't have any evidence to back this up, however one major concern I have is that they claim they will work on ebay, amazon, and all these other major companies, yet these companies themselves have disclosed no information about it whatsiever. If it is legit, that is not the correct way to go about handling a upcoming payment/banking method.

06-05-2005, 05:34 PM
#54
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Just to answer points raised about the value of e-mail lists.

The lists you find on eBay and elsewhere are inevitably one of three things.

Ancient - and therefore 99% worthless but at least avoiding some spam laws/regulations.
Fake - using generators that spit out words@domains.com e.g. hobnob@aol.com and therefore any that turn out to be correct are breaking spam laws/regulations.
Trawled - using software that, in effect, spider Web sites for any and all e-mail addresses, so much the same as fake lists they break spam laws/regulations.

A legal e-mail list needs ideally to be double opt-in or at least single opt-in. The first part of the opt-in process involves checking a box agreeing to receive e-mail... not unchecking a box if you don't want to receive anything - this is called opt-out.

To make the list double opt-in an e-mail is sent to everyone registering containing a uniquely coded URL for the user to confirm their membership and/or desire to receive e-mail.

Targetted opt-in lists can be very valuable through renting, though costs have come down quite a bit now. The more data a list contains the more potential value for targetted advertising.

When I was at freemoney we rented our lists for as much as £350/000 with good targetting, e.g. 30-50 year olds earning over 30k a year that had at least one credit card and had bought goods online before. With 10,000 members fitting this criteria this was a quick 3.5k for a single mailout.

Less targetted mailouts still commanded around £150/000 - and remember, this is to rent not to buy.

Take a look at a company like myoffers.co.uk - Their core business model revolves around their e-mail lists and it anables them to maintain a nice office in a nice location and to employ 25+ staff, (there was that many people working there last time I met with them anyways). Their list numbers in the millions so lets say they rent it out for an untargetted e-mail at £100/000... with just 2m that's worth 200k just for a single mailout...

Of course it's not THAT simple. Advertisers don't often want to send 2 million e-mails at once, (though some do), so list income is made up in smaller chunks.

Then there's CPA deals, which are bad for list owners/brokers. CPA = Cost Per Action/Aquisition where the advertiser gets to send out millions of e-mails and only pays on results, which although heavily in the advertisers favour still provides revenue for lists.

There are some huge companies out there whose sole business is list ownership or brokering. Take Claritas and Consumail as examples - initially they just brokered the lists of others and still made a very nice income from their commisions. Experian is another example of an absolutely huge company that makes its money from personal data - your personal data.

There's also Market Resarch, which we, (freemoney/vpanels), pioneered as being viable online and which can bring in some very nice revenue. One company used to pay us £4 - 12 per complete depending on how specific the target audience was. MR also had much better response rates... With direct e-mail advertising you can expect a response rate of <1% for untargetted mailouts and <8% targetted. But with MR we sometimes had as much as 35% respond with 90% of those going on to complete the survey they'd been asked so we could send out 10,000 e-mails and get a return of upto £37,800 though in practice there would always be a cap on the number of completes required - usually 1,500 or less... It is widely accepted in the MR industry that you will get the same results, +/-2%, from asking 1,000 people a question as you will from asking 10m, so long as your panel demographic is a broad enough representation of the population.

So basically, what I'm saying is that a double opt-in list IS worth a lot of money and the more data attached to it the more it is worth.

06-06-2005, 12:55 PM
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YoungCoder, I’m in the same boat you’re in. I’m sitting on the money waiting to see what happens with GreenZap. I’ve been keeping a close eye on things and I’ve done all the researching there is to be done on the company. I’ve read both sides to the story, I’ve read all the press releases and listened to all the phone conferences and interviews and I’ve even spoken with Mr. Damon Westmoreland on the phone. If GreenZap somehow pans out, there might be a little money in it for me because I’ve built up a long downline. If it doesn’t work out, I’m out nothing. I haven’t spent any money nor have I committed to anything. I simply signed up and that is it. Some people are worried about their personal information but I am not.

Robson, the unanswered questions and concerns I have about GreenZap stem from the rewards program. If you open your ZapMap and look at the network you’ve built and the network you’re apart of, you’ll see that all of the members above you have downlines of 400+ people, some are even in the thousands range. How they can afford to pay this I have no idea. I worked up an example last night but didn’t save it – it included theoretical figures but used simple formulas to calculate potential earnings. Also, for the life of me I can’t figure out how my Cash and WebCash balances are being calculated based on the individuals in my network. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of others as well. GreenZap has done a pretty poor job explaining how all of this works and as we all know there has been some precarious information unearthed about the company.

Anyway, as I said, I’ll just sit on things and see what happens. If it works out, cool, I’ll be a few hundred dollars richer. If not, oh well, I haven’t lost anything.

Thanks seen.to for the good explanation on bulk email lists. I didn't know any of that before.

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