Grind by Eric Walters Read Free Book Online Page B

shots of you three skating on their board.”
    â€œThey want to sponsor our page?” I asked, not believing my ears.
    â€œJust a small ad to start, and a link to their home page where people can order from them.”
    â€œAnd they’ll pay us for this ad, right?” I asked.
    â€œThe standard fee. A penny a hit.”
    â€œA penny? That’s nothing!” I scoffed.
    Nevin looked confused. “Over ten thousand people visited the site last night. That works out to over one hundred and twenty five dollars.”
    â€œThat can’t be right,” I said.
    â€œBelieve me, I’m hardly ever wrong when it comes to math,” Nevin said. “We all made over thirty dollars while we slept. By the end of today that amount will double or triple.”
    â€œYou mean I could make a hundred bucks today?” Wally asked.
    â€œThat’s right. And make it while you were sleeping and sitting in class and eating lunch.”
    â€œAmazing,” Lisa said.
    â€œAnd if we could have that many hits every day in a year, we’d all earn close to four thousand dollars each,” Nevin said.
    â€œThat’s even more amazing,” Lisa said, as we all started counting and spending the money in our heads. Making money would make my father happy and let him know that skating could be serious.
    â€œBut the hard part isn’t getting them to look for a day but to keep them looking, day after day after day,” Nevin said.
    He was right. I felt deflated, and then I remembered what Bam Bam had said. The secret was to keep putting on new stuff.
    â€œIf we update regularly, people will come back to check on it regularly,” I said.
    â€œExactly,” Nevin agreed. “And our sponsor — and they are our sponsor if you all agree — they said they had some ideas on how we could do that.”
    â€œWhat sort of ideas?” Wally asked.
    â€œThey didn’t say, but I’m sure they’ll be good. First things first, though,” Nevin said. “If we agree to their sponsorship, I’ll put the ad up and make the link right away so we don’t lose any more money. Each of those hits you see is free right now.”
    The hit wheel continued to click up.
    â€œDo it,” I said, “and do it now.”
    â€œYeah, hurry,” Wally agreed.
    â€œMe too,” Lisa echoed. “The sooner the better.”
    â€œI hoped you’d all agree. You head off for class and I’ll take care of everything. And remember, as you’re sitting there you’ll actually be earning money at the same time.”

Chapter Twelve
    â€œIt’s definitely started to go down,” Nevin said.
    â€œHow many hits have we had altogether?” Wally asked.
    â€œIn the past week we’ve had over ninety thousand hits.”
    â€œAnd since we’ve been getting paid for the last eighty thousand at a cent a hit, that means that we’ve made over eight hundred dollars, or two hundred bucks each,” I said.
    â€œBut the rate of hits has been declining. We only had four thousand visits today. Our peak was four days ago, and it’s been going down each and every day,” Nevin said.
    â€œBut we’ve been adding new material,” Wally said.
    â€œObviously not good new material,” Nevin said. “We have to upload something that people will want to see.”
    â€œI’ve been thinking about some tricks,” I said.
    â€œTricks are good, but I’ve been looking at the comments in our guest book and talking to our sponsor and it seems pretty clear what the webcrawlers want,” Nevin said.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œFor starters, the most popular video clip we have is the one where you’re running up and over the security car,” he answered.
    â€œSo you want me run up another security car?”
    â€œNo, of course not. You’ve already done that. I was thinking more of a police