Another One Bites The Dust (instantagora.com)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	instantagora.com
Date:	12/12/00 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see review

Disadvantages: see review

Final Update: The InstantAgora site is no longer with us. Should they ever come back online be very wary because they were around for at least 2 years, promised much but never did open their 'Exchange Centre' so any time spent on the site was wasted. Better to put your efforts into more reliable websites...

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~~Original Review~~

Instantagora.com is a site which again allows you to get paid for you opinions like Dooyoo does...however, it would appear that they pay you for just about everything else you do on the site as well. Just about every action that you make is accompanied by a point bonus for doing so, whether this be posting an article, leaving a message on the member forum, reviewing an online merchant, hosting a chat, playing games on the site etc. you will receive points for doing so. These points can then be exchanged in the exchange centre for cash and vouchers. At the moment, the exchange centre is yet to go live, but as they promised it would be ready December time it is to be expected that this will follow any time soon...I at least have faith that it will do so, but otherwise perhaps wait until this happens before committing your time to this site.

At the present time(although we all know this is liable to fluctuate...downwards) Instantagora offer rewards of:

15 points for a merchant review...at present for the completion of a small form which details your experience with an online retailer. You get 10 more points for adding helpful comments to the rating.

25 points for reviews of books, recipes, restaurants and movies(which is to be added to soon). Again this is simply a case of filling in a short form. Again 10 more points can be gained for adding helpful comments.

1-5 points for posting on the message boards

50 points for starting a hot-topic(20 or more posts) on the message boards.

5-10 points for participating in a
survey.

15,25 or 50 points for submitting a story, opinion or article in one of the categories, points being awarded dependant upon how helpful, original etc. the submission is.

0-10 points for commenting on an article although the comment must be helful and relevant to receive these points.

5 points for reading email - the receival of which is opt-in and not necessary to take part in the rest of the site.

X amount of points(usually 25-50) for trying out free offers. This is the usual registration thing, where you sign up for a free newsletter and get bombarded with emails for your trouble so you'll either want to ignore this section or, to take advantage of this, set up another email account to take all the rubbish that you have no intention of reading
- although this does have to be the same as the one you registered at instantagora with to receive the points.

You can also receive points for referring friends to the site. You receive 100 points for each direct referal as soon as they reach 100 points on the site and 50 points for each indirect referal once they achieve the same. After that, you receive 10% of the referal's points and 5% of the indirect referal's points from that time onwards.

They claim that they intend to have each point totalled at around $0.01 when their referal centre is launched so therefore you will receive $10 for every 1000 points. These points do not have to be exchanged for cash but can be instead be used in agora auctions, exchanged for gift certificates, agora shopping sprees(whatever they are) and put into competitions.

Overall the site itself looks a little untidy and I found it difficult to navigate until I got used to it. However, it offers a wide variety of ways for you to get paid for your opinions and participation in the site looks like it might be quite profitable should it carry on as it is and open its exchange centre. The community itself seem
s a little sparse at the moment but I expect this is due to the fact that the exchange centre isn't open yet, but there are a number of Dooyoo regulars to be found there as well so perhaps things will pick up soon but erm, well y'know, there are better alternatives and IA don't seem to be putting too much effort into getting their name spread around...

Summary: