Picks Camping: SL Scam or Moneymaking Slam-Dunk?
While many Second Life residents are howling over Linden Labs‘ decision to raise fees on open land (something I still don’t quite understand), I’m fuming over the latest incarnation of money-making: getting paid to list a business on your avie’s Picks page (the third tab on your avatar profile, where you can list your favorite people, things, thoughts or places).
It sounds like a good deal: a business owner pays you to list his business on your profile. You get paid regularly — daily, weekly or monthly, $5 to $20 daily up to $100 or more monthly — to give a space on your Picks page. The business owner gets the viral-marketing benefit of having his business not only advertised but subtly promoted, since people who view the pick will assume you endorse the business. Plus, the business owner gets additional traffic to his sim or business place, because you have to go to the business and click a sign in order to get paid.
My enthusiasm has waned, now that I’ve used picks camping to pick up a few lindens for a few months, because it’s both another way to game the popularity system for ranking higher in the SL search engine and another way avies get ripped off when the business owner fails to pay.
With camping, you risk nonpayment when your time is up, but the business doesn’t pay. It gets the benefit of your presence, boosting its popularity, and you are out the time you spent. Regular camping also gets taken over by bots — avies created only to harvest lindens by using scripts to find and monopolize camping seats.
The same thing happens with picks camping. The two most popular systems of picks camping — Profile Pick Reward System and Josh Van Alten’s Picks Camping scripted message boards — limit the number of daily payments. If the sytem has paid out all of the money the owner put into the board, you get nothing, but the busienss owner continues to get the viral benefit of your profile pick and your visit to the sim.
Ideally, you add the site to your Picks page and then wait a day or two until SL enters your data in the system so that the message board can read it and pay you. However, some sites also make you wait a week or longer to begin paying. So, you’re still not earning anything.
Picks camping does solve the bot problem, or at least I’ve not heard of any scripts that can fling bots from one payout sign to the next and perform all of the authorization requirements. However, the many vagaries and payout failures mean it’s not the perfect answer to moneymaking for SL residents.
An avie at the Fashion District sim's Picks Camping board
October 31st, 2008 • 
Evansmom Goodspeed • 
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comment | November 1, 2008 at 06:32 | individual comment-link
Go back the day after and you should get paid by picks camping, the limit is there to assist management of the system. A sensible owner will always have that amount of Linden dollars in their account on any given day.
comment | November 4, 2008 at 13:57 | individual comment-link
Yes, I agree … but my gripe is that if they don’t reload their accounts, they still get the site visit but the avie gets nothing. Thanks for your comment!
comment | January 1, 2009 at 20:27 | individual comment-link
Here is another problem, observed with the JVA system: I added the pick and clicked the sign. I came back 48 hours later and clicked the sign. It directed me to return in 1 day. I returned more than 24 hours later and clicked the sign. It told me that I had already been paid, and to return next month! I checked my SL transactions history, and there was no payment from that location or the owner of the sign.
I contacted the owner, who told me to delete the pick, add it back, and try again. I did that, but got the same result. I sent a notecard to Josh Vanalten, but have not received any response yet.
I have JVA sites in picks and have not had any problems with them. One of them is even owned by the same person as owns the one with the problem.
comment | January 1, 2009 at 20:28 | individual comment-link
PS: It’s actually Jonash Vanalten.
comment | March 2, 2009 at 07:51 | individual comment-link
JVA system has many faults & failures.
The system fails to correctly count 30 days (all too often it count to 33 instead), no indication is given when last payout was made so it will ban an AV for removing a pick after 30 days or sometimes upto 33 days from last payment.
As already mentioned above, the system can require an AV wait upto 7 days when returning for second click, that second click won’t count if payment for that day is at max (sorry we have reached maximum payout), and it will be 7 days from that second click regardless of how long since first click.
Many times the system will tell say you have already been paid when it never gave you a bean.
System Bans are permanent across all JVA systems so an AV can delete ALL JVA picks that HAVE paid them (banned anyway so why not) this means upto 9 payers lose out because of the JVA system banning AV’s, all too often falsely.
Jonash Vanalten NEVER replies to IM’s requesting a ban be looked into regardless of the known long term faults of the system he sells.
The PPRS system is much better giving more info to it’s users but still hass a few minor faults in the power it gives to the owners to use it as a fraudulent tool.