It Is McLovers Not McDonald’s – Believe It or Not

I am wondering, if you came across a site that had the golden arches, Ronald McDonald, and the logo “I’m lovin’ it!” on it, what would you think? McDonalds!? Well, it turns out you might be wrong and the correct answer be McLovers, or at least that is what the site www.creamaid.com/mclovers.html claims.

What is this entire buzz about!? The idea is really simple – you go to a McDonald's, buy an item on their menu and take a picture of your McDonald’s experience. Then you rush home, sit in front of your computer and write a blog post about your pictures. Along with your pictures, you attach the competition’s widget to your post and wait to see whether your post will be selected to earn a $10 prize. Even if your post is not among the winners you still have chances of winning some money if someone participated in the competition through your blog. Actually, you get $5 for every referral participation.

Who stands behind this? That is a good question to ask, unfortunately, I do not have a good answer for. However, if you make the effort to read all the information on the webpage, you would find out that the site is made using CREAMaid.com platform. So what is CREAMaid.com? As the company’s homepage claims, this is a service to help you:

“1. meet other bloggers with similar interest by simply writing blog posts.
2. even make money while doing that.”

The way to achieve this is by initiating a CREAMaid Conversation. Well, that looks like anyone can kick off a conversation, doesn’t it? If you are really devoted and click on all available links you might eventually find that this is not quite right. Why not? It turns out that by “conversation” the creators of CREAMaid.com mean a “promotion campaign”; “conversation starter” stands not only for the person who begins the “conversation” (as previously defined) but also for the person/organization that pays the money to the person (people) whose post(s) have been selected.

I do not know who the conversation starter in this case is, but one thing is for sure – they must be big McLovers if they are willing to pay all the royalties and referral fees for the contest. And all this out of good heart and love for McDonald’s. Believe it, or not.

And one last thing. I just went to McDonlad's homepage and - guess what?! They have a picture of a couple and the man is... holding a camera and taking a picture of them having a great time. What a lucky coincidence.