05/08/08. Interview with the admin of TrustyPig

BEWARE! THE SITE IS DELAYING PAYOUTS!

Today I’m excited to introduce you to the admin of a new yet already very popular online project – TrustyPig. The admin managed to create quite a unique autosurf based on a profit-sharing model. This model is not that popular nowadays but I believe with his efforts it will be able to regain its popularity.

TrustyPig is an autosurf where you have an opportunity to earn up to 130% of advertising rebates on all your upgrades just for surfing the necessary amount of sites daily. As in other profit-sharing programs the daily percentage will depend on many factors and mostly on the upgrades made by the members on the previous day. This will assure the stability of the program in the long term. You can read my complete analysis of TrustyPig program here. And below you’re welcome to read my interview with Costy, the admin of TrustyPig program.

“1. Please introduce yourself to my readers and tell us if you have any experience in administrating online programs.

Hi Paul, thank you for giving me the opportunity to take this interview. I’ll use this occasion to say hello also to all your blog readers and to congratulate you for this blog which I think is very well structured and organized.

What can I say about me… My name is Idita Constantin but everyone calls me Costy. I’m a 35 years old husband and dad with 2 great kids and I work as an Insurance Agent.

I cannot brag about myself and my online marketing knowledge as I first dipped my feet into this industry one year ago. But I do however have strong knowledge of marketing in general as I’ve graduated from the Academy of Economic Studies here in Bucharest, the most prestigious university of economics here. I was in charge of running an import-export company for 3 years which gave me the chance to accumulate a great deal of experience in management and business in general.

This is my first online project and it is precisely because of this that I’ll give the best I have to make it work.

2. How did you come up with an idea of opening your profit-share autosurf? Why didn’t you just open a regular 10% for 15 days or similar program?

Good question. I made an acquaintance with this industry very recently. However I started to study it a long time before I actually began working on this program. I read forums, articles, blogs (yours included), and I came to the conclusion that a lot of projects that had been launched were doomed from the beginning. What is the reason for me to say this? Because the persons behind them didn’t think them over well enough before starting the actual programs and they grew apart from their initial target: the traffic exchange.

I started the whole thing with a clear idea in my mind that I need to make TrustyPig a real traffic exchange program and to make it as simple as possible so that anyone could use our system and benefit from it. I do not plan to change the industry or to bring things unheard before like other people try to say when they first open their program. I prefer to take Einstein’s saying for granted and to keep things as simple as possible.

So I planned very carefully this traffic exchange program in a way that is intended to help my members get the maximum exposure for their sites and, in order to stimulate them to join the program and buy Advertising packs I even created a bonus system.

This way, every member that surfs at least 50 pages daily will get $0.10 as a reward and the members that decide to advertise their sites in our surfbar rotator will get as a bonus also the so called Ad-Packs rebates that vary from 1% to 13% daily. These Ad-Pack rebates must not be considered as some kind of ROI, but as a bonus that the system offers to our advertisers.

And I’ll come back to your question to stress one thing: I’ve chosen the profit share model because I find it the most closely to the ideal concept of correctness.

If I would have offered my members fixed daily ad-pack rebates the program would have eventually collapsed if the funds would have become insufficient and I could then no longer keep my promise to the members. But this way our system administrates the funds efficiently to offer the daily rebates constantly. And moreover, a site that offers fixed daily ad-pack rebates (like the ones with 10% for 15 days for example), wonder far away from the traffic exchange concept and are more close to the HYIP arena. As to using this system the members understand clearly that the main purpose of this program is the traffic exchange and not investments of any sort. We also do not pretend to make any investments and we state clearly our statute. The members must always keep in mind that the rebates they receive are bonuses that the system offers them for their status as advertisers on the Trusty Pig.

3. What is the plan TrustyPig offers to its investors? How much can I earn daily? How does profit-sharing model actually work in TrustyPig?

I will start with a small but important correction. The members that join TrustyPig are not investors for the mere reason that TrustyPig is not an investments site.

Our members are advertisers and are divided into 2 categories: free advertisers and paid advertisers.

Free advertisers can benefit from almost all the functions that the advertising platform offers with small limitations. They may view ads daily and receive $0.10 for this but they cannot advertise their own sites.

In order to be able to advertise their sites the members need to pay a $10 fee. Once they paid this fee the members are able to promote their sites the site’s platform. Of course the members can pay more if they want to have a more special statute and to receive bigger ad-pack rebates, but the minimum amount they need to pay is $10.

Upgraded advertisers benefit from a bonus system that TrustyPig offers. They can this way earn daily up to 13% of the amount they paid when they bought advertising the only limitation being that the ad-pack rebates bonuses cannot go over 130% of their upgrade amount.

Our program systematically controls all incoming and outgoing funds to ensure that our opportunity remains stable and well managed at all times.

4. What is the minimum and the maximum to upgrade? What payment processors do you use and do you plan to accept more payment processors in the near future?

Any advertiser can buy ad-packs with a value starting from $10. But we do have a maximum amount allowed to be upgraded. Any member may upgrade up to $10.000 in ad-packs.

The members may buy advertising using AlertPay, AlterGold, LibertyReserve and SolidTrustPay.

We opted for these payment processors because their integration in our system was easy to make but as we grow we’ll consider adding other payment methods. The solution that most of you will think of is bank wire and it’s included also in my future plans.

5. What are surfing requirements in TrustyPig? What will happen if I miss my daily surfing? Can free members be paid for surfing?

Each member may surf up to 100 pages a day. To be considered that he has surfed enough to earn his daily bonus he must surf at least 50 pages a day.

In case a member surfs at least 50 pages a day he’ll earn automatically $0.10 as a bonus.

Paid advertisers that surf at least 50 pages a day will receive also ad-pack rebates of up to 13% of their purchase value. But please do remember! This thing doesn’t happen immediately, the ad-pack rebates will be added at midnight server time daily (somewhere between 00:01 AM and 00:15 AM server time). At that time the script calculates a series of fields and then credits each upgraded member with the bonus required.

If you miss a surfing day that’s not a problem, you don’t lose anything. Your upgrade will be automatically extended until you reach 130% of your ad-pack purchases.

6. TrustyPig has rather complicated cashout rules. Can you tell us about them in detail?

Although they may seem complicated at a first glance things are quite simple. There are 2 types of cashout: normal cashout and express cashout.

The normal cashout it’s done in 5 days from the date of the request for the paid (upgraded) advertisers and 15 days from the day of the request for the free advertisers. This type of cashout it’s the normal one, the default and that’s why there is no fee involved.

The express cashout is a special type of cashout that is processed faster. This way, the paid advertisers will wait only maximum 2 days to get their cashout processed while free advertisers will wait only maximum 5 days. Because the money reaches the members’ accounts faster this type of cashout implies some costs, the member will pay a fee of 2% up to 4% if the amount to be withdrawn is larger than $1000.

7. What script do you use to run TrustyPig? Is it secure and safe enough to handle things properly? Is TrustyPig website DDoS-protected?

While I was doing my research for TrustyPig and I was studying the traffic exchange industry I came across what I thought was an interesting script, a complete one. That was the Rollersoft one. So I decided to use it for my program. But after a few days the script required some serious mending because of some security breaches that Rollersoft forgot to repair. I hired a programmer that was very professional and had very good knowledge of this type of thing and who fixed all the security problems. I also notified Rollersoft of this problem and they recognized their mistake and fixed the problem on their own.

The site is hosted on a dedicated server powerful enough to keep the site up in any conditions. It’a Xenon Quad Core with 4 Gb of RAM and 100 Mbps uplink speed.

8. I know that you restarted TrustyPig program a couple of days ago. What really happened to the database and the script that forced you to do that? How can you be sure that those issues will not happen again in the future?

Yes, the script had that security breach that I mentioned above and an intruded managed to compromise the database so we had to restart the program. As I said above, everything was fixed and secured by an experimented programmer and these problems will not hassle us again. The site was tested with Acunetix and no other important security breach was found.

9. What advertising strategy do you use to make TrustyPig a well-known and popular program among online investors? Do you rely mostly on forums and monitors or on word of mouth?

I think that both options that you mentioned describe well the path that I’ve chosen to make TrustyPig known to the public. We rely on monitoring services but we do have a strong presence on all the major forums. Since I launched the program I already made some acquaintances and friends that were really happy with my plans for TrustyPig and that took the mission to promote the program to their friends and people they know.

We also have a rewards program for those that promote TrustyPig which of course contributes well enough to the growth of the program.

10. What is the reward a member will receive if he promotes TrustyPig? Tell us more about your referral commissions system that is quite unique in my opinion.

We established a promotion system for the site that rewards the loyal members. This way all the members that will promote the program using their personal affiliate link will be able to gather referrals. Each of these referrals can bring him money for each ad-pack purchase that he makes. The upline will get 5% of every purchase made by that member that he referred to TrustyPig. A simple math shows that anyone can find at least 5 persons around him that would join the program. If every of these referral purchases ad-packs of at least $50, the upline will get a total of $12.5 as a bonus just because he gave a good advice to his friends.

The difference that makes our program stand out from the others is that an affiliate cannot earn from referral commissions more than 100% of his purchase amount. So if an upline that bought $10 worth of ad-packs refers a number of members that bring him $25.5 in commissions he’ll only get $10 as this is the amount he upgraded and his referral commissions’ total amount cannot be higher than that. I do know that some people might not find this measure very appealing but it has been added to discourage persons that are only interested in short terms earnings and that refer other people into the program only for the referral commissions they earn thanks to them. After all the affiliates program has been designed to reward all the members and not only the so called “referral hunters”.

11. Can you tell us more about Gift Cards and other promotions you plan to organize in the near future?

Yes, the Gift Cards are an original idea from TrustyPig that was meant to stimulate the members to participate to some contests with prizes. We only have 2 active contests at this time but in the near future we’ll add many other contests that are meant to reward our loyal users and also the new comers. I can promise you right now that we’ll also have some funny contests but also some that meant to gather the TrustyPig members into a tight advertising community and help them to know each other better. I advice all money-news-online readers to check regularly the contests page on TrustyPig site because we’ll soon be announcing some very nice surprises.

12. How do you see TrustyPig say in a month’s time from now? Do you think it will be an established and well-known program among other autosurfs?

Yes, certainly. I’ve taken a look at the other autosurfs and I honestly think that TrustyPig has all the chances to become one of the first programs of this type in the world. With a lot of hard work, seriousness and desire to succeed but also with the support from the members I’ll manage to get TrustyPig where it belongs: the top of the best autosurfs.

I myself am a winner and I will not kneel to the problems and difficulties that might arise at times. I shall go all the way and I’m sure that together with the TrustyPig members we’ll build a strong and successful program.

13. What really differentiates TrustyPig from similar profit-share autosurfs? Do you think TrustyPig can provide to its investors and advertisers stable and long-term relationships? What are your plans for the future?

Of course, TrustyPig will build a stable and long-term relationship with all its advertisers and members. We planned the system to its every small detail and put a lot of effort to get the site where it is now and I’ll continue the work with the same commitment from now on also because here at TrustyPig every member is most important.

For the near future I plan launching some other sites within the family of TrustyPig that will bring more strength to the entire network both financially speaking and also from the exposure point of view. For the future I plan bringing a professional trader to my team so that I can generate more external funds to add to the income of the program and keep the rebates rate as highest as possible. For now I’m working especially on developing the program so that many more other people will find out about it and take a part to this extraordinary opportunity.

14. What do you think about my blog? Does it provide the necessary info about the programs and their admins? Do you think it’s vital to know the admin of an online investment program?

While I was doing my research before launching TrustyPig I read your blog pretty often and I appreciated it very much. I like the concise style that you write in and also the direct approach. The fact that you are so involved in this project and always looking to get the facts directly from the top players of the traffic exchange industry (and the hyip one, although that doesn’t concern me directly).

It really is vital to know the person behind a site be it a blog, a forum, a traffic exchange or an investment site. It’s advisable in general to get to know the persons with whom you work and when you’re talking about the webmaster of a site this becomes very important because it’s harder to build a direct relationship with him.

Your site comes very well to approach this issue bringing the members and the webmasters closer and helping them to get to know each other better. I hope you’ll continue the same way because you’re doing a great job.”

I’d like to thank Costy for this detailed and comprehensive interview and I hope the profit-sharing concept TrustyPig uses became clearer to you after reading this interview. I just wanted to remind you that I really liked the program even at first sight. And the admin didn’t disappoint me. He worked thouroughly day by day on making his site popular and despite several issues with the script TrustyPig came out as a winner eventually and became even stronger after all this. Of course it’s happened because the members saw the admin’s dedication and professionalism and therefore rewarded him with their trust and money deposited. The Alexa ranking shows a big interest in TrustyPig program though it’s brand new and I hope my interview will make this program even more popular. Finally, I’d like to add that I’m proud to be a member and monitor such a quality and well thought-out program as TrustyPig and I just added it as my #1 choice on my monitoring page. I’ll see you on my blog tomorrow with more news and updates!