February 2009

Update: Are you trying to recover your poems? In April 2018, Poetry.com appeared to have stopped working.

Nearly a year and a half later, the site is still down, but there is now a splash page in place.

I’m not sure what happened to the original Poetry.com, but if you tried to visit the site in the past, you would have seen the following error:

“Error establishing a database connection”

This is actually incredibly easy to fix, and the fact that it has remained there for years leads me to believe that Poetry.com has been abandoned, taking all of the poems posted there with it.

How to Recover Your Poems

I’ve come up with an idea that I think MIGHT work. I say MIGHT because I do not have any poems posted there and this is just all speculation.

Please, if you try this method and have found it to work, leave a comment below to help pass the news along to others.

Try this: Open up Poetry.com at Archive.org

Archive.org takes snapshots of every single page on the Internet. They have approximately 461,880 pages saved from Poetry.com over the past 21 years.

I suggest picking a date near the mid 2017 as they were the most likely to load for me and see if you can find your public profile.

You WILL NOT be able to log in to your old account. Remember, this is just a snapshot of what the website looked like at a certain point in time. It is NOT a functioning website. The search feature will NOT WORK either.

You can also try opening poetry.com/poems/ to see the full list of poems.

If you happen to have a URL bookmarked where your poems were once stored, plug that URL directly into Archive.org instead.

This will be your best chance at recovering your old content.

I’m very sorry that you may have lost your hard work. I do hope you’re able to recover it.

Please let me know how it works out in the comments section below.

The rest of the article is the original article published here in 2009.

The most successful scams are the ones that appeal to your emotions.

They assure you that you can be better off than you currently are. Success, fame and fortune is just a click away.

Odds are you will be clicking away some of your money while receiving nothing in return.

Poetry.com is no different.

The Scam Behind Poetry.com

Poetry.com allows you to submit your own poetic material for consideration in their international poetry competition.

In order to enter the contest, you have to also include your name and address.

Within days of submitting your poem, you will receive a letter in the mail praising you and your poetic ability.

Now to an unpublished author or someone looking to get started in this line of work, receiving a response is quite an accomplishment in itself, but to receive a response not only praising you for your work but naming you one of the best authors to ever submit a poem is extremely flattering.

The letter will also inform you that you have been chosen by a select panel of judges to be published in the next volume of poems put out by Poetry.com.

This is where the upsell begins as it all goes downhill.

In order for your work to be published, you have to purchase the book.

This isn’t stated, but it is indeed true.

Naturally, if you’re an aspiring writer, you’ll want to purchase a copy of your first published work.

Hell, you might end up buying a copy for your parents, significant other, friends, etc. The only thing is, the book costs anywhere between $50 and $75 or more if you want your poem on a single page.

After some time you will be given the option to buy a CD that includes your poem in a reading and you’ll even be invited to a convention where you’ll be awarded with some cheesy trophy or plaque.

Again, this is all at your expense.

This probably doesn’t sound all that bad right?

Wrong.

It’s terrible.

Poetry On-Demand

Poetry.com only sells these books to the people who submit the poems for their inclusion.

The books aren’t sold anywhere else in the world.

Anyone could write anything at all and Poetry.com will hail them as the next Shakespeare and tell you you’ll be included among prestigious poem anthologies.

Previously, 20/20 did a news report where they had a class full of second graders write poems for the site.

Every single poem was accepted by their judges.

Poetry.com is making between 50-60 of these books per year with about 6,000 poems in each.

Given that the book costs about $75, they are making over $22,000,000 per year on book sales alone!

They give away one annual prize of $10,000 per year or about 0.0004% of their annual book sales. These guys are disgustingly cruel.

Fun with Poetry.com

Just to prove my point, I submitted this lovely piece entitled ‘Bird.’ It is a Steve original and I fully expect to win the $10,000 contest prize.

A bird sits on a windowsill.
Howl goes the wolf.
The bird flies away.
A pie replaces the bird.
The wolf steals the pie.
Pie wolf and bird meet in the woods.
Pie is had. All is good. The world is happy.

Immediately upon submitting my poem I was hit with an upsell. I could have my lovely poem engraved on a beautiful plaque for just $39 plus shipping!

What a steal.

I didn’t want to jump the gun and get this bad boy engraved right off the bat. I want to wait until it wins the $10,000 prize.

Since I chose not to purchase the plaque, the only other available option was to view “Special Offers” that were personally chosen for me.

Of course, this was all garbage as they were trying to collect my personal information to sell to companies.

Continuing past the special offers leads you back to the main page. There is no substance behind Poetry.com.

The site exists to gather as much of your personal information as possible in order to try and sell you garbage.

I’m anxiously awaiting my acceptance letter. I’ll be sure to post it as soon as I receive it.

In the meantime, see how you can actually get paid to write poems instead.

It’s been about a year and a half since I wrote my first Project Payday review. Since then, it has grown to be quite popular. In fact, it’s the fifth most popular post here at I’ve Tried That. I have since been called a number of names for not actively trying the program, but still offering my opinion on it. Well, we decided to take a deeper look into the program. To do so, we brought in Cheryl to act as a secret agent for I’ve Tried That. Her article is a brief look into what you receive when you sign up for Project Payday. Cheryl has agreed to do a followup post later on with more details on her specific earnings. Stay tuned.

A Look into Project Payday

When I was offered the opportunity to try Project PayDay, I figured why not? I had nothing to lose, right? So many people had commented on the original blog entry that they were making money through PPD, there had to be something to it.

I signed up on 01/07/2009 and paid the $34.95 fee to join. I was provided with a login and password to access Project Payday’s training site with resource materials. Throughout the signup process and training I was offered the opportunity to purchase additional materials such as step-by-step video tutorials or reference books for additional charges (usually $19.95 or more), but I opted to take the traditional route.

So, what is Project Payday?

Project PayDay (PPD) is a resource for finding out how to make money by working those “Click Here for a Free iPod” or “You Can Win a Free Wii” banner ads you see everywhere. PPD teaches you how to make money by becoming a paid referral for someone who wants that iPod or that Wii, and eventually becoming someone who pays for those referrals and cashes in on the profits from these free items.

The instruction manual is clear and concise, with videos peppered throughout to make some concepts more clear. Project Payday has a 3-step process, called “methods” that claim to get you making money quickly and keep you making money.

Method 1 is where everyone starts. The manual explains that to get started making money, you must participate in a referral forum. It gives you several to choose from, and even shows you what to do to start managing trades and “going green” to earn money right away. You log in to the forum, find someone who is “buying” referral opportunities (Buyer) and selling your services. You set up a trade agreement with the Buyer through the built-in trade manager, and then they give you their referral link. You use the link to log in to the site and complete enough offers or credits to “go green” or show up on the Buyer’s list as a qualified referral. Say the Buyer wants to get a $400 television from one of these sites. If they need just 4 qualified referrals, they could pay 4 people $25 each to sign up and become a qualified referral, and they’ve just paid $100 for a $400 TV. This is where you make money – you offer to be a referral, go on the site, sign up and complete the offers required. Once you have met the requirements, you let the Buyer know, and they verify it with the site, then pay you the asking price for the referral.

Sounds easy, right? There is a catch. In order to become a qualified referrer, you must sign up a certain number of offers. There are many to choose from, including makeup, pantyhose, credit reporting services, money making services, jewelry, coffee and more. Some of the offers are free to try, while others can cost from $1 – $50 or more, depending on what you are purchasing. This is usually an introductory offer, and must be cancelled within 7 days in order to keep recurring monthly fees or dues from being charged to your credit card. These fees can range from $7.95 – $79.95 or more per month.

The trick is, you can’t cancel too quickly, or you might end up “going red” and being forced to return any money you’ve earned back to the Buyer. If you sign up for the trial offer and cancel it a day or two later, you risk losing your referral pay. Most Buyers recommend cancelling on day 6 of a trial offer, just to be safe.

It sounds simple enough: earn money just to go on a site and be a referral. Just remember that nearly every referral fee will cost you something, whether it’s a trial fee, a membership fee, or the like. And if you don’t keep meticulous records of your transactions, you can end up paying through the nose when those monthly dues and fees start piling up. A $25 referral fee on a site could end up costing you $5, $10, even the whole $25 or more.

You also can’t just stay at Method 1 forever and continue to make money. Every site has numerous offers, but all sites have virtually the same offers. In addition, some offers are actually the same company. For instance, there might be six different credit report offers on one site, but they are all the same company. Try to sign up for two or three of them and you’ll get rejected for duplication. At that point you might as well move on to Method 2.

Method 2 builds on Method 1. You’ve already signed up for several sites to “go green” and earned cash. Now you become the Buyer, buying greens from people who are working Method 1. You pay them to complete offers for you, usually a small percentage of the amount of the product or money you are receiving from the referral site. For instance, you want a $500 PayPal cash payout. If that payout requires 10 referrals, and you pay $20 per referral, then you’re paying $200 for a $500 payout, for a profit of $300. Not too bad. Just one of those a week will net you about $1200 per month in extra income.

Method 3 builds from Method 2. You go from buying referrals for cash to buying referrals for other items like electronics, which you can then sell. This method is described by Project PayDay as somewhat more lucrative than the other methods, since electronics may have a higher profit margin per referral than cash.

The Bottom Line

Project Payday itself is an information source. You find out where to go to make the money, and what to do once you get there. (Our recommendation: Your time is better spent at a free site, like SwagBucks, where they offer $5.00 just for signing up.) Once you’ve gotten comfortable with Method 1 and 2, PPD even provides a mentor or two that can help you increase your income.

PPD also keeps in regular contact with you, e-mailing once or twice a week with “special offers” just like the ones you’ve been signing up for. These are generally offers such as a $1.97 trial offer on how to make money on eBay, and PPD refunds the trial fee back to you. Of course, there is no mention of the exorbitant monthly fees that program charges (for which PPD most certainly receives a kickback).

Money can be made with Project Payday, but the work is tedious, time-consuming, detail-intensive and risky. You must provide personal information (including your phone number), thus increasing your spam e-mails, junk mail and phone calls. You must also provide credit card information to sites that may not be strictly legitimate. Failure to note the details of the offers and keep track of orders and cancellations can result in significant financial losses.

I have been working the PPD program for the last 3 weeks and will report what actually happened in my next article, including how much money I made. Yes! I did make money.

Click here to read our third and final update on Project Payday.

Cheryl is a writer in Southwest Florida.
You can read her blog at: http://www.cliopatra.net/

Here’s How to Recover Your Poetry.com Articles