Qustodian is a new service that allows you to receive personalised offers, promotions and news from those brands and businesses of greatest interest to you. It does this via your mobile phone using the mobile internet and an optional App, which you can download to your phone when you register. Not only is the Qustodian service free, you can actually be paid cash when you use and interact with the service. You decide which messages you want to receive and when. They are sent to an inbox, separate from your SMS or email, so that they do not get mixed up with your personal message or become intrusive.
Here’s how it works
A Yoad is your digital personal profile of things that you like and dislike which we will use to make sure that you only receive messages from brands and retailers that are relevant to you. Why is it important?
You can find your Yoad on our website, where you can update your interests and specify which categories you want to receive messages for or not.
See also “Why do I earn money for this?”
When you create your Qustodian account, you create things of value:
Your Yoad (and permission) is valuable – which is why many global internet companies and retailers are profiling you using their own systems. Why should only they make money from your profile? We believe that it is time we started to make money from our own profile data, so we will help you to create your Yoad and make as much money as possible from it, from both receiving direct payments as well as offers for money off on goods and services that you want.
We estimate that you aggregated profile data could be worth up to 3% of your total income!
So, you earn money from Qustodian because brands and retailers are willing to pay to communicate with you and we believe you should get to keep some of this money.
When you interact with a message within the Qustodian service from a brand or retailer who has paid Qustodian to communicate with you, you will receive cash credits into your Qustodian account. You can also earn cash-back when you purchase selected deals and for giving your opinions on recommended apps and other products and services.
Payment for each message may be linked to a variety of interactions, such as messages being received or viewed, responses provided to questions and offers redeemed. Credits will normally appear in your account within 24-36 hours of your interaction, but this can be much quicker (except if you selected the ‘not flat rate data’ option when registering, in which case your synchronisations will be weekly, including your credits).
Qustodian will pay a percentage of the net revenue received from brands and retailers to communicate and interact with you. To find out the level of remuneration for any particular message, please refer to the message’s particular terms and conditions. Qustodian also sends un-remunerated messages for recommended products and services that match your interest but for whom Qustodian receives no revenue from the product or service.
The percentages you will receive are as follows:
50% of the net commission revenue (after discounts and fees) paid to Qustodian for purchases made by Qustodian users in response to those deals provided via our offers channel for which cash-back is available and notified within the deal.
The income that Qustodian will earn for each message sent to you will depend on the market value for these messages. As this is a new service, the market value is relatively unproven, but we are confident that the more members we attract and the more Yoad information we have, the more money we will all be able to make from this service.
To find out the level of remuneration for any particular message, please refer to the message’s particular terms and conditions.
Joining and using the Qustodian service is absolutely free and will always be free.
Note that in order to use it, you will need to be able to access the mobile internet from your mobile phone and you will be responsible for the costs of the mobile internet access (in the same way you pay your broadband fees from home to access web services). We recommend that anyone joining Qustodian has a flat rate data plan (a standard cost per month), so that they avoid any additional charges from their mobile operator for accessing our service.
Note that we have optimised our system to minimise any operator costs by:
We are a group of business people from the UK and Spain who have spent many years working in the mobile communications, media and mobile marketing industries. See “about us” for more information and links to our personal pages.
Qustodian offers a range of different message types to give users a broad spectrum of content that you could opt to receive:
Here’s how it works
Messages are single or multiple pages of text, pictures and videos providing information about your favourite brands and retailers. They may include offers, vouchers, quizzes, competitions and surveys.
The Qustodian Daily Deals channel is a great way to get offers from major daily deal companies, whilst staying in control at all times.
Using Qustodian for your daily deals means:
You can view your Qustodian messages using our mobile app or by logging in at http://m.qustodian.com
When using the Qustodian App on your phone, you are able to set within the App options, how you will be notified when you receive a new message. These options vary depending on which handset you use, but are all or some of:
Thus, you decide which of these options to choose using the configure alerts option in the App (except iPhone which has a separate notification settings menu), including having no notification at all, so that you can simply check every now and again to see if you have new messages.
If you do not use our App, but choose to simply access the service over our mobile internet web page, you may receive an SMS occasionally when you receive a new message.
Note that if you use our App and have selected ‘not flat rate data option’ you will only synchronise with the back end weekly and therefore only receive weekly notifications.
You’re the boss! You decide how you are notified of new messages (see “What will happen when I get a message?”) and that can include no notification at all. We specifically designed our service to use the mobile internet and Apps so that we do not annoy you, by using your personal SMS and MMS messaging services for commercial messages.
You will receive messages from companies who want to send you messages based on a match with the information you provide in your profile as well as recommended products and services for you from the Qustodian team. These companies will never see who you are (anonymous), but they will know that you have stated a preference to some aspect of what they do. The more accurate your Yoad, the more relevant these companies will be. You will also have the option to select (and de-select) specific brands, retailers and local companies from whom you actively want to receive messages.
Yes. Our service offers a ‘not interested’ option for every message that you receive. If you select this option, you will be able to say whether it is because you do not like the company or the category (or ‘other’ option). You will not receive more messages from either that company or within that category depending on the option selected. If you change your mind at any time after that, you can always visit your Yoad online and uncheck any blocks you may have added.
This can happen for a number of reasons:
We do not send campaigns every day to all users. It depends on the type of audience that advertisers want to communicate with. Also the interest levels you have specified in your Yoad will affect the range of messages that you receive.
It is not our aim at Qustodian to send vast numbers of adverts each day that might annoy our users. The service is not designed specifically to be a way to earn money quickly and easily but rather a way for members to receive high quality campaigns from top level advertisers and as well as discounts or contests that we believe may be of interest.
All campaigns and contests are published with an expiration date, the length of which may vary. If you do not log in to the app over a longer period of time, you may miss some messages as they will have expired.
You may also delete messages using the delete function within your app (trash can in Android and hold icon in iOS).
Unfortunately we cannot resend a message that you have deleted. For this reason we ask members to take care when reading messages and not to delete a message unless you specifically want to.
The Qustodian service will work on any phone which is able to access the mobile internet, ie. view web pages. In addition, we have created Apps for those phones that support downloading applications which use the following operating systems:
When you register for the service our system will detect which mobile device you are using and automatically recommend the relevant application for download. All you will need to do is click the link and the application will be downloaded automatically. Alternatively, you may choose to download our App from one of the various App stores provided by phone manufacturers and mobile operators.
The Qustodian service will work on any mobile network, provided you have access to the mobile internet from your mobile phone and that your mobile operator does not restrict your access to available websites (very unlikely).
If you do not find your phone in our list of supported handsets, we recommend visiting http://m.qustodian.com/download using the browser on your phone. This should recognize your phone and we will redirect you to the correct version of the application.
If it still does not detect a version for you, let us know and in the meantime use our mobile service by visiting http://m.qustodian.com.
Our application is configured to connect to the server when you open the app or service to check for new messages. If you have stated in your Yoad that you do not use flat rate data, the application will only connect once a week following your last login.
If you have logged that you have flat rate data, then the app will automatically connect daily and also when opening the application.
If you are roaming, the application will only connect to the internet if you have enabled the “data connection while roaming” facility in the general settings menu of the phone.
Flat rate data is a pricing plan that charges you a flat fee per month for accessing and using the mobile internet from your mobile phone. An increasing number of mobile operators are providing these plans and if you would like to use Qustodian or any of the many other services available on the mobile internet, then we would recommend you contact your operator to find out what options are available.
Note that anyone using an iPhone or Blackberry or regularly accessing email from their mobile device is already likely to have a flat rate data plan. If you are unsure, please contact your mobile operator.
Whilst you can still be part of Qustodian if you have a pay-per-use, pay-per-download or pay-per-day data plans for your mobile, you will need to keep a very close eye on the costs of using this and other internet based services.
Yes, but please be aware that you are responsible for your data costs for using the service so we recommend that you be on a flat rate data plan (see “What is flat rate data?”)
If you identify a problem with your mobile application, please email us at support@qustodian.com specifying your mobile number and any details regarding the issue you are experiencing.
To use Qustodian, we need to confirm your identity. We do this by sending you an SMS when you register.
If you do not receive an SMS or delete it by mistake, log on to http://www.qustodian.com and, after entering your username and password, request a reissue of the confirmation SMS.
Please note, the registered mobile number must be a live account and cannot be a virtual account or a call diversion service.
If you're still having trouble confirming your account, email us at support@qustodian.com providing the mobile number that has not been confirmed and any relevant details (not receiving the SMS, the link does not work, etc.)
If you have forgotten your password, click on the following link: http://uk.qustodian.com/forgot and follow the instructions to get a new password.
Once you enter your phone number and answer the security question, an SMS with a new password will be sent to your mobile phone.
When someone joins Qustodian as a result of an invitation from you, that person becomes part of your affiliate network on Qustodian. You benefit from this on an on-going basis as every time they read an advertiser paid for commercial message, you will receive 16.7% of the net revenue generated from reading that message
It is easy to share Qustodian with your friends, either by SMS, on your website, blog or even using Twitter or Facebook.
For your friends to appear in your network, they must have clicked on the invitation link that you sent them. This link may take them to the Qustodian site or the app store to download the app. You can check if your invitee is in your network by logging in to our website and checking the following tab “Invite/my Network”. It can take a few hours for this to be updated.
There are various reasons why one of your friends may not appear in your network: they received an invite from someone else before they received yours, they joined by independently visiting www.qustodian.com without clicking on your link, etc.
If you have a query regarding your network and adding friends to it, please email us at support@qustodian.com with your mobile number, your friend’s mobile number and details of the query.
It is not currently possible to invite contacts from countries other than where you are registered.
You can check your balance at any time by clicking on ‘my Yoad’ on your app or by logging into your online account at http://uk.qustodian.com/ and clicking on the “my Balance” tab.
Your balance is not updated immediately when you read a message. Your phone app needs to send us information that you have read the message so we can process it and then respond to the app.
This process may take longer if you have set your account to “not flat rate” data as your phone may not sync as often. In this case you can speed up the process by going to the application menu and selecting "Download messages".
It may also be the case that our server is temporarily doing other tasks and this may slightly delay the processing of the commissions. Rest assured – the transactions will not be lost. It may just be that your balance takes a little longer to update. At really busy times, payments can take 24-36 hours to be added to your balance.
Finally don’t forget that that not all message are paid, such as internal Qustodian messages, recommendation messages or Daily Deal offers.
If a few days pass and you think some of your commission has not been accounted for , please drop us a line at support@qustodian.com, providing your phone number and details of the missing payments.
You can withdraw cash from your Qustodian account whenever you wish, provided that you have reached the minimum threshold amount for withdrawal.
The minimum threshold is £10.
In order to request a payment, log in to our website and make sure that you have updated either your bank account or Paypal details within your Yoad. Then go to the “my Balance” tab and click on the link below the total, to request a payment.
We also offer the opportunity to donate to your balance to one of our partner charities.
When you request a payment, we give you the option to donate your balance to one of our partner charities, rather than transferring it to your bank or Paypal account.
If you make such a donation, we will share your name, address and email address with the charity. If you wish that your money be donated anonymously, please email us at payments@qustodian.com to request this, confirming your name and the mobile phone number you used to register with. Upon receipt of your email, we will remove your details from the list of donors.
Payment requests, made throughout the month, are processed and paid on the first working Friday of the following month. If that Friday falls on a public holiday, the payment may be delayed until the following working Friday.
Once a payment has been processed, the money should reach your bank or Paypal account within 2 working days.
If you have not received your requested payment within 2 working days of the expected payment date, contact us at payments@qustodian.com, providing your mobile number and any other details so that we can investigate for you.
The amount sent will be the confirmed balance you have on the date you made the payment request.
You can update your payment details at any time by logging in to our website from your PC and going to “My Yoad / My Data”. You can update your details at the bottom of the page.
Our entire business depends on you, our members. With happy members who engage with our service and maintain their Yoad up to date, we will all earn a good income. With unhappy members, you will leave and we will fail. Thus our business is totally dependent on gaining and retaining your trust.
And we pledge to:
Your data is the investment you make into the Qustodian service - it is critical to us that we look after it.
You must be 18 or over to join Qustodian.
We may offer our service to younger people in the future, so watch this space.
As indicated in our by the Legal Terms, each person (member) can only have one Qustodian account This is because it is our duty to ensure to our advertisers that we are not duplicating message views, i.e. if they pay for 100 message views, 100 different people should see the message.
In order to prevent misuse of the Service, which will have an adverse impact on all other Members of the Service, the following restrictions are applied to Members, Accounts and use of the Service:
QUSTODIAN will monitor use of the service and should we detect any cases of misuse or abuse of the system that contravene these restrictions then we reserve the right to immediately suspend or deactivate without warning any member or members within their network associated with that detected abuse.
The Qustodian service is designed and created for use on mobile phones, so we cannot guarantee that you will be able to view Qustodian correctly through your PC or that it will be available at all.
If you have received an email alerting you to the possible cancellation of your account, this will be due to the fact that we have noticed some behaviour contrary to our Legal Terms and Conditions, typically access to multiple accounts by a single user.
Depending on the severity of the case, we will either give a first warning or will directly freeze or terminate the account and voiding any payment.
If you have any questions on this topic, please email us at support@qustodian.com and we will be delighted to answer.
We rely on your good faith and that, if at any time, you have infringed on our brand image due to ignorance, you stop the activity immediately and respect the brand image, copyright and intellectual property of our company.
Things you can do as a user:
Things you cannot do as a user:
You may de-subscribe whenever you choose. To do this, log on to your account and click on the ‘My Yoad’ / ‘Service Configuration’ tabs and follow the instructions. You can also delete the application from your mobile phone (although this is not absolutely required as it simply will not be used if you delete your account).
We have a number of different email addresses which you can use depending on the topic: