Day 1: My first village member.

I signed up for Varolo. It wasn't really all that painful. Name. City and State. Email. I picked a village name. Once I had submitted that information and then confirmed my membership via the email they sent, I was taken to the 'Channel Guide' where I clicked on various things (grocery, toys and hobbies, beauty, etc.) that I was interested in. As soon as I had done that, I immediately was able to start watching ads.

They are the same ads you see on television. And they are for big brands that we're all used to... Geico, Dr. Pepper, Doritos, Calvin Klein... After watching each ad, I was taken to a page to rate it. 1-5 stars. A couple of them also had a question the advertiser wanted answered. For instance, T-Mobile asked if I had a 4g phone. You only have 15 seconds or so to submit your rating. This is to assure the advertisers that you are actually watching the ads, as opposed to starting them and then running off to brush your teeth. Which I suppose you could do if you could brush your teeth in 30 seconds.

I was able to watch 9 ads before there were no more in my queue. This is not enough... you have to watch 140 per week, or 20 per day in order to claim all of your village earnings. It's not a big deal yet, since I don't really have a village. But I was concerned nonetheless.

Since I had nothing else to do, I started poking around the site. I ended up on the Varolo facebook page where I learned that they are still in a beta testing phase. That explains the lack of ads. There are a few advertisers on the site now, but they are getting discount rates. Which means even if I had a village, I wouldn't be earning very much. I also learned that the official launch will be happening two weeks from now on April 17, 2011. So... I suppose I'd better get my butt in gear recruiting villagers!

*****

I wanted to recruit a test subject. My little brother is the obvious candidate. He likes me, so will do strange things when I ask him to. I had him sign up, using my email, of course. I walked him through the sign up process, which, again, is not that difficult. He got through all right. And then... It may be his computer, but he isn't able to watch any of the ads. It was getting late and I have work in the morning. Troubleshooting will have to happen later. But it was very frustrating to have that happen with my first recruit. We'll try to figure out the issue and I'll report here when/if we do.

I did get an email a few minutes after I left that told me I had a new village member. So at least I know my villagers won't be getting lost on their way.

*****

I pulled up the Varolo website when I got home just to see what had happened to my home page since I had a recruit now. And low and behold! There were more ads for me to watch! So I spent another 10ish minutes watching. I'm up to 28 ads now. More than the 20/day needed to reach my weekly goal.