I initially had my hesitations, Scour initially banned and then unbanned me up and paid up. I've been quite happy with them and promoted them extensively to their profit and gain. I've been happy to do this and I enjoyed a mutual symbiotic relationship with them - earning about 3 (and soon to be 4 hopefully) payments. But unfortunately they've decided to take another route.
Instead of rewarding continued usage and contributions to the site through votes, searches and comments, they've decided they're going to just hold daily contests where the amount of points you accumulate for the previous day accounts to the number of entries you have in the next days contest. So if you earn 1 point today, you have 1 entry tomorrow in the contest. You could theoretically win everyday for a month, or more plausibly lose everyday for however long you use it.
In the previous system, you could work your way to earning up enough points to eventually cash out - even if that took months. Now you have no guarantees, judging from the previous contests they've held - it appears to be poorly done, just entered into excel and a random number generated to decide what block of users the winner could possibly be pulled from (number of entries goes out the window from what I saw). The new system, if based on this, will reward those who just enter 1 a day - since their odds are going to be higher than someone who looks to legitimately use the search engine and contribute through votes and comments.
There are many reward search systems out there, but too many run on simple metrics of sweepstakes. In using Scour, I found the results to be good but the speed at delivering the results was annoying. If not for the fact that users are rewarded with points redeemable to a greater prize, it would have surely have failed. There are numerous competitors all vying for the same demographic, and Scour seems to have shot itself in the leg for short term gains. The new system benefits them in saved cash since they don't have to worry about users accumulating points and redeeming, and only have to be concerned with the daily /weekly contest.
Very Plausible Example:
Current System: 50 users who reach min cashout a month * $25 (min cashout) = $1250
New System:
(weekly prize) 4 weeks in a month * $25 contest prize = $100 (net savings of $1225 for Scour)
or
(daily prize) 30 days * $25 contest prize = $750 (net savings of $500 for Scour)
They stand to gain a lot through this system, I may still use Scour - but probably for a month or two to see if winning is actually possible and whether it's feasible to use it as my default search or scrub it for more worthwhile uses of my time.
What do you think? Does Scour Suck? Is the new Scour system a Scam?
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1 comment:
I really hate the new system :( I was close to the 6,500, too. You're right about them saving money this way. I wonder if they were losing money, or if they're just being greedy.
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