Get paid to be spammed

A crop of new Net services has sprung up that pays Internauts to view ads and read spam. As moneymaking schemes go this one's hardly going to make anyone a millionaire but it is a start. Whether you're into small change or not, if you of the belief that -- like death and taxes -- you're going to receive spam sometime or other, then you may as well get paid for it. And it's exactly this philosophy that has prompted a new breed of Net company to cut out the middleman and pay Net users for the ads they receive. Typically, these new companies pay between 40 cents and 60 cents an hour to people who run a small ad window on their desktop or use the service's Web browser. Other companies are paying net users anything from eight cents to $2.50 to read emails containing targeted advertising. The first of these new-style services to be set up was AllAdvantage. It has already signed up close to two million people since its launch on 1 April, reportedly making it the fastest growing Internet community of all time. In the US it's being hyped as the Internet's newest craze so expect it to hit Europe sometime in the new millennium. ®