webhalyava.narod.ru is an amateur website about earning money online, known under the name "Earning Online" (Заработок в сети). Its listing in local directories places it in the Nizhny Novgorod segment of the internet: as early as 2 December 2000 the site stood in the counter.nn.ru rating, in the "Personalities" section[1], and in the directory of the nn.ru portal, which presented itself as a "catalogue of Nizhny Novgorod websites," it was listed under the section "Projects: Freebies and Earning Online"[2]. The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 27 June 2022[7].

What the site offered

No description of the site survives other than the directory listings. The annotation, identical in both the counter rating and the directory, promised: "We'll tell you how to EARN money on the Internet. The site has scanned receipts for over $300!! Lots of links to interesting freebies that actually arrived. Our own freebie mailing list. On-line freebie popularity rating. Come on in!!"[1][2]. From these lines the structure of the site can be inferred: a collection of links to "sponsors," proof of payouts in the form of scanned receipts, a mailing list for subscribers, and its own "freebie" rating.

The site is recorded under different names in the directories. In the 2000 rating it was listed as "WEB FREEBIE — over 8,400 rubles already cashed out!!" — that is, the claimed payout sum was put directly into the title[1]. In the 2002 and 2003 directory it is recorded more briefly, as "Earning Online"[2][3]. Its neighbors in the section were doing the same thing: there stood sites called "Earning Online, links, sponsors," "#1 — Everything You Need to Know to Earn Money," and a resource whose annotation listed "traditional earning methods (surfing, reading mail, etc.)"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the counter table for 2 December 2000, the site occupied the eighteenth line of the "Personalities" section: counter reading 677, rating 33.85, 36 hits[1]. Nearby stood resources of comparable traffic: seventeenth was "GSM Time" (counter 1255, rating 35.06), nineteenth was "Earn and Multiply WM" (482 and 30.12)[1]. The top of the same section looked different: first place was held by the site "Steven Seagal's Aikido" with a counter reading of 73,241 and a rating of 1037.87, second was "Martial Arts of the Planet" with 159,536[1]. Pagination of the same table went up to lines 101—120, so "Earning Online" fell within the top fifth of the section, while remaining a resource with modest absolute numbers[1]. How the counter itself worked and what its numbers mean is examined in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the nn.ru directory the site persisted for a long time and rose noticeably relative to its neighbors. On 23 June 2002 the "Freebies and Earning Online" section listed 25 sites, and "Earning Online," with a rating of 46, ranked third — after resources rated 519 and 430[2]. By 16 September 2003, when sorted by rating, it stood first in the section with a value of 57, while the next site had 38, and most of the rest had no rating recorded at all[3]. A day later, in a sample from the same directory sorted differently, the site's rating is recorded as 58[4]. Judging by these figures, first place came not so much from the site's own growth as from the attrition of its neighbors: its own rating grew from 46 to 57, while most sites in the section had by then stopped being rated at all. The site does not appear in the surviving final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[5].

Fate of the address

In our web archive sample, two snapshots of the home page survive, both from 2022, and they are identical[6][7]. The home page was built with frames, and the archiver preserved only the outer wrapper: as the home page stated, "Your browser does not support frames!", and the only available link remaining was "Home page"[6]. The window title read: "Earning online freebies money free stuff work halyava," and below it a line of keywords was repeated three times — "freebie free nahalyavu compact discs CD earning online cassettes books earning money network net internet work surfing serfing sponsors dollar buck $$$ getpaid get paid for"[6]. This is a typical turn-of-the-century promotion technique: a list of search queries laid out openly on the page.

The web archive did not preserve the frame contents, so it is impossible to judge how the site looked inside or whether it was updated in its final years: the promised receipts, mailing list, and "freebie" rating are known only from the directory annotation. Our data contain no information about the domain moving to another address; the last snapshot of the home page is dated 27 June 2022[7]. When checked in August 2026, the site at this address was responding. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, such a site is a characteristic figure of its time: a private project on a third-level domain in someone else's zone, placed by the counter in the "Personalities" section[1], yet reliably occupying a line in the city counter and city directory alongside companies and editorial offices.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru rating, "Personalities" section, 2 December 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Freebies and Earning Online" section, 23 June 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Freebies and Earning Online" section, sorted by rating, 16 September 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Freebies and Earning Online" section, 17 September 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)