I have come across a PTC (paid to click) website recently called Bux.to. The premise of the program is quite sound… advertisers pay 1.9 cents for each visitor that Bux.to sends to them via the click page. But, the viability of the program comes into question when you do the math on the payouts.
Each user is paid 1 cent for clicking each ad and you also earn 1 cent for each click by your direct referrals. Well, right there you begin to see the problem… the company is only bringing in 1.9 cents per click, but is paying out 2 cents (a .1 cent per click deficit). However, the disparity grows for those who upgrade for $59/year. Those users earn 1.25 cents per personal click and 1.25 cents per referral click – a .6 cent shortfall each.
Another possible problem is that some of the links that are available to click are just links to Bux.to upgrade offers or to a pro-Bux.to forum entry that the company obviously was not paid the 1.9 cents for.
Why I may be wrong:
Of course not everyone is signed up by a referrer, so it is entirely possible that the company is not paying out anywhere close to a system wide average of 2 cents per click. But, now Bux.to is selling un-referred members for about $1 each. This move guarantees that the click cost will be at least 2 cents and the company will lose money on every click.
There are many people being paid, sometimes hundreds of dollars, by Bux.to. The payout queue has gotten quite long and is now running at about 30 days. Will Bux.to stick around or disappear into the Internet abyss sometime in the future? In the meantime I’ll click a few links everyday and request payout when I hit $10 and see what happens. After all, what have I got to lose? It’s free to join.
[tags]bux.to, ptc, paid to click, shaun carter, payout, advertise, mlm, scam, pyramid[/tags]
Companies like this bank on users NOT accruing enough to be paid out. A user that doesn’t have any referrals, my guess >90%, must click 1000 ads before they earn money. Now Im guessing a lot of users will signup, play around with it, and realize that sitting in front of a screen clicking ads for hours each day is not worth the pennies it brings in. Thus, the company banks the 1.9 cents for these clicks without paying the user out.
Nick
Good observation Nick. I would be curious to know how many “unpaid clicks” they have in their system at any given time. If they were to make accounts inactive after 90 days of non-use they could just transfer that money right into the owner’s bank account.
So, bux.to is a viable program as long as they keep bringing in new members, but those new members do not hit payout… kind of counterproductive I’d think.