by Michael Ray

Created on: May 10, 2009   Last Updated: May 22, 2009

Ok. I'll admit I tried this one! Start Your Own Search Engine. The ads read start your own search, make tons of money and I'll personally guarantee $125 in your account within' 24 hours.
It all sounds very good, as most Internet affiliate programs do, but the proof and reality sometimes lies elsewhere. I signed up and spent about an hour signing up for all the programs that were "required" to make tons of cash. These involved various paid to click programs and an account at GDI so I could host my new search engine. Now GDI gives you the first week free, then charges you $10 a month afterward but I figured with $125 in 24 hours and more to come I could handle it.

The ads state that the founder of this program not only will pay you the $125 but will also advertise your site to get it up, running and profitable. 24 hours later, the first of a few truths came out. There was indeed $125 in my account, along with the notice that I must have at least $200 to request a payment. Ok, this was supposed to be a big money maker so I'd try to raise the other $75. And try and try and try. GDI indeed charged me their monthly $10 fee after my first week, but at the time I still wasn't worried. I promoted my search engine and GDI for a solid month on traffic exchanges, email lists and anything else I could come up with. I then logged into both accounts to see how much progress had been made. Nothing, Nada, Zilch, Zero.

After 30 days my original $125 was still there but not a dime more. Now I'll admit that it may take more time than 30 days but in my unemployed, broke status I just couldn't afford to pay GDI or the founder of the program any money so I shut it down. I continued to use GDI as it was already paid up for 30 days and uploaded a site of my own for awhile, (another affiliate program that brought no results). Now, yesterday I was just going to delete the site and cancel my account with GDI. Not as easy as it should be though. I deleted all the files I had uploaded and went to cancel my account. With GDI you can't just click CANCEL and be done with it though. You have to make a phone call to cancel. They call it security. I went back to the site later and discovered it had files in it again. The search engine that I had deleted was now back on my site! So if it's my site, and I'm paying for it, who's uploading files to it?

I also tested one of these people search engines yesterday. I should have done it before I started but had dollar signs in my eyes and couldn't see straight. There are lists floating around as "proof" of payments in this system. They're used for advertising purposes. I took 4 names from one of these affiliate marketers list and plugged them into one of their own search engines. 3 out of 4 did not show up in the people search!

All in all this was not a good program for me. Perhaps I gave up on it too quick, but if you can't spare $10 every month there aren't many other options.

One last note, if you're considering starting you own business start with a traffic exchange. You can join one for free, surf and literally find hundreds of affiliate marketing, MLM and other online businesses. Traffic Swarm seems to have a large amount of followers and you can view a small text ad before deciding whether you want to visit a site or not. From Traffic Swarm you'll also be introduced to other exchange programs and you'll easily be surfing hundreds of sites a day!

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