Steve at brip blap tipped me off to Revolution Money Exchange. This is Steve Case’s attempt to weaken the PayPal monopoly by doing the same thing with lower fees. I don’t know if it will take off, but if you sign up by April 15th you get a $25 sign up bonus. That was enough for me to give it a go.
You get $10 for referring other people by April 15th, but unfortunately the referral link contains your email address. Since I didn’t want to put my email address out there for spiders to harvest, these links aren’t affiliate links. Of course, if you want to add my email address to the end of the link before signing up, that would be nice! (Update: encoded the link with tinyurl.)
I did a quick search to see what people were saying about Revolution Money Exchange, and they seem to like the idea in general. The biggest complaint is that they require your SSN, but what bank doesn’t? Some people also said they wouldn’t feel as well protected as they do with PayPal. I’m sure each service will have its fans and critics, but I’ll just collect my $25 while I wait for them to duke it out.
Why don’t you use a php redirect to cloak your referral link? This way, you will save your e-mail and earn some bucks as well..?
Cheers!
MindBlogger’s last blog post..4 common misconceptions of the blogosphere that will RUIN your blogging
Actually MindBlogger, I just learned about tinyurl the other day, and I wonder if that would be the best way to do it. I’m not sure if spiders can decrypt tinyurls though. In this case, it’s not really important to me to have a working referral link, because it’s a limited time deal and I don’t have a lot of traffic.