Diary of a Blockchain Fan – November 14th 2021

Nodle – Where’s the Money?

So, I’ve been running the Nodle app on my spare mobile for a little over three weeks now and I have earned the grand sum of… diddly squat. Yep, that’s a big fat zero that has rolled into my wallet. Now, while I wasn’t expecting to earn enough to buy a shiny new Porsche, I was thinking I’d earn a few coins here and there. Enough for a drink up the pub, perhaps, or maybe a chocolate treat from the supermarket. But zero? Well, no, that wasn’t something I had seriously considered.

To be fair, I do live in a rural area and I had thought that I might not pick up much, if any, traffic with my mobile simply sitting in the house. Indeed, with this in mind I even went so far as to try leaving the mobile in different rooms around the house, including upstairs, to see if that would make any difference. When it didn’t and the income dial remained set at zero, I took it on the chin and decided I would just have to make sure I took the mobile with me whenever I went out and about.

Seeing how I still mainly work from home these days, following the impact of the funny virus business, and I don’t do a huge amount of shopping, either online or in the flesh, I had to exercise some patience. In the meantime, I started taking the mobile with me when I went out for walks, often around the village, as there are several businesses here and I thought they might have kit that wanted to hook up to the IoT. But, alas, the dial continued to remain at zero.

Then, two weekends back, I found it necessary to make a trip into the local town. Now Banbury isn’t huge, but the population is around 50,000 and there are oodles of businesses there, so I considered my chances of the Nodle picking up some business to be high. So, off I went, the mobile in my backpack. I was there for around two hours and covered a fair bit of ground, mainly in the town centre but it also included a trip to a unit on a retail park.

By the time I got back home, I was feeling certain the Nodle dial would finally have moved on from zero and eagerly retrieved the mobile from my backpack. The dial said… zero. Sad face time. I was genuinely surprised by this and re-checked the app was set up correctly and Bluetooth switched on. The answer in both cases was yes. What was going on? I thought there were paying punters here, there and everywhere, except where I live.

But, I didn’t give up nor stamp my feet because I already knew at that stage that I was due to make a trip into the office the following Wednesday. Now then, the office is in Oxford and that’s a city, with lots of people, businesses and educational facilities. What’s more, the office is located on a science park. How could it get any better, I asked myself.

So, just as with the trip to the shops on the Saturday, off I set on the Wednesday, filled with hopes of seeing that damn dial shift off zero. On arrival, I once more checked the app was set up properly and Bluetooth was on, then popped the mobile back in my bag and got on with my day.

It was a very pleasant day, as it happens, not least of all because I got to meet some of the people I work with but only rarely see face-to-face and they’re nice people, so it was a pleasant experience. But all good things come to an end and eventually, I set off home, where, having fended off the kids’ demands to be instantly fed, I whipped out the spare mobile, wondering how much I’d earned. Imagine my surprise when I found the dial showing… yes, you’ve guessed it, zero.

Now then, allow me to remind you that I never expected to become a millionaire using this app. No unreasonable expectations here. But that’s two trips to some properly busy urban centres and I’ve still not picked up any traffic. So, I’ve a couple of questions for you. Do you use the Nodle app? If you do, then do you earn anything from it? I’d love to hear what experience other people have when using this app so I can work out whether or not I have simply been unlucky. Maybe I went to Oxford on the wrong day of the week; perhaps all the Nodle traffic is processed on Mondays and Fridays. Or maybe Banbury is a wasteland in the world of Nodle. Ironically, data is what I need and I’d be delighted if you’d share some of yours.

Until tomorrow…

Renaissance Man

Why this Diary?

I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.

The Usual Disclaimer

Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.