In an earlier post I described why Gomez Peer could be a suitable passive income opportunity for Australians. However, I've since decided to uninstall the Gomez Peer application. My reasoning is as follows:
It's been about 10 months since I initially installed the program and I am still yet to be activated, despite having over 230,000 minutes of online time accrued (160 days) and over 72,000 minutes (50 days) of processing time (i.e. about 30% of my online time was spent processing - see below). Although they state that "account activation depends on how well your system characteristics match our current testing needs", I'm not sure how factual this is. In the time since I've had the program running, I've lived in three different places (some distance from each other) and had two different connection types (DSL and Fibre). Additionally, I would consider a 30% rate of processing time to online time to be evidence that my characteristics match their testing needs (though I have no hard data to compare against). I have attempted to make contact with the company to seek a timeframe for activation, however the contact form on their website doesn't appear to work, nor did they respond to a Facebook message left on their page. This has reignited some of my earlier skepticism.
While I knew that this avenue was only ever going to offset some of the running costs of my computer, I have since decided that I'm just going to modify my behaviour (i.e. turning off my computer when its not in use) rather than leave it running 24/7. A quick Google search for "software to turn pc on off automatically" nets a wealth of information on how this process can be automated. I'm considering just having it turn itself on for a few hours in the morning and evening on weekdays, and I'll turn it on when I need it on the weekends when I have the time to wait for it to boot up.
I think there is a certain danger of giving into the sunk cost fallacy with this program. That is, it's very easy to say "I've got all this online time/processing time now, maybe I'll just leave it running just in case I get activated". I think it's worth assessing the up and downsides though: The upside is quite small - a passive income stream tied to having your computer being on and online - while the downsides are larger in comparison - the longer your account is pending, the more potential income you forgo while continuing to pay the running costs of your PC to remain ready to undertake processing. If the activation process had of been quicker, it may have enticed me to stay with the program - however, the experience has made me realise that I'd be much further ahead if I just turned my computer off when I'm not using it.
I've now removed the links to download Gomez Peer on my blog and in my earlier post.
No comments:
Post a Comment