This is one chapter of the “Amazing Tale“ I would prefer not to write.
However in the interests of transparency I’ll go ahead and relate my experience with EveBux in hopes that we can all benefit from the telling.
Let’s start with the bad news.
EVEBUX IS GONE.
It was just one month ago, back on Day 45, that I joined EveBux, a brand new PTC that I thought was simply beautiful design. It was easy to use, not a lot of ads yet, quick to click through, and it offered referral rentals, which has been my favored method to boost daily earnings.
Five days after joining, I funded my account with $25 and rented 100 referrals. I requested my first cashout — $9.54 — just 16 days later, on Day 66. That money was slow in coming, but I didn’t give it much thought.
I funded my account again ($20) on Day 68, and rented another 100 referrals.
Day 72 was the last day I was able to find the site. It has been “site not found” every day for close to a week now, and I’m pretty sure it’s not coming back.
By Day 72 my rented referrals had earned another $3.91. I had $5 remaining in my advertising account. And I had not yet received my cashout. I sent a message to the support email address for EveBux, asking about my cashout and the whereabouts of the site. No reply.
THAT SINKING FEELING
You know that sinking feeling when you begin to suspect you’ve been had? In my mind I am adding up the money I put into EveBux, a total of $50 lost, not counting the $13.45 I had earned there and was not paid.
One day the site is working fine, and the next day — poof — it’s gone. What happened?
We will likely never know what happened to EveBux. Was it a simple business failure? (Even some news from the owners explaining the situation would have gone a long way towards settling the matter.) Or was it a denial-of-service attack? (NerdBux and ClixSense have weathered such attacks in recent weeks without much disturbance in their ongoing business.) Or was it unscrupulous criminals out to steal some easy cash? And were there tell-tale clues that EveBux was in trouble?
In retrospect some suspicions come to mind. One thing I noticed was that my payments to fund my account and to advertise at EveBux all went to different email addresses — PayPal accounts with personal names instead of business names. Should that have raised a red flag?
EveBux was so new that it had not yet been adequately reviewed or discussed over at research site PTC Investigations. Perhaps in the future I should avoid brand new sites until they have a track record of payouts. What do you think?
I’ve lost money before in promising programs that did not pan out. I’ve also made money in programs that later went bye-bye. And in my experience, it’s very difficult to see a failure coming, or to predict where the big successes will come from.
ON THE BRIGHER SIDE
I have not put all my eggs in one basket, and the success I am anticipating in PTCs will come from a portfolio of sites, where some fail, some succeed, and some go on to greatness.
So this is the last time EveBux will appear on our Daily Earnings Chart. I will also be removing Hitzza from the chart because the prospects for earning serious money there are growing slimmer every day. I wrote to owner Barry Langdon about the dwindling ads to click on there. He replied, saying he really doesn’t know what to do. Hitzza is not gone, but it looks like it is dying. (If you’ve ever thought it would be fun to operate your own PTC, I expect Barry would be open to any reasonable offers.)
The only money I’ve spent at Hitzza was on advertising, and it was money well-spent; I got a good share of signups for my ad dollars. Hitzza has been a good place to advertise. I wish Barry well. I’ll continue to check in there every now and then. If things change I’ll be happy to return the Hitzza line to our chart.
On the brighter side, NerdBux has really taken off and is set to pass NeoBux in total earnings. Last week I talked about the Huge News from NerdBux. I hope their decision to pay for every click becomes a wakeup call to the entire PTC industry. If other PTCs follow what NerdBux has done, it will set the Pay-To-Click space on fire!
Current earnings are looking better than ever: $6.80 per day. Here are all our numbers for today:
|
Day 76
EARNINGS $165.63 |
Day 76
CASHOUTS $150.59 |
Day 76
INVESTED $683.00 |
Days To Profit
at $6.80 per day 76 days |
I had a similar experience with Buxboost. I was very happy with the results and then suddenly Poof! At first they said they were closing down temporarily to get caught up with payments etc. Now the site is just gone. Pays to be careful, especially with new unproven sites and unknown owners.
Nerdbux, LegacyClix, Dr. Clix were all safe bets because their owners are upfront, long standing internet marketeers and well known. That being said I have met a few owners on smaller PTCs which certainly adds credibility in my books.
Thanks for all your posts Peter.
Sincerely,
Shelayne
The guys at TimTech SOLD NerdBux on March 18, 2014.
Please read the blog post I wrote about the events leading up to the sale: “The Rise and Fall of NerdBux.”
Earnings dropped off quite a bit after the sale… but not to zero. I am still logging in every day and clicking all available ads, and earning money.
No, I don’t think NerdBux is dead yet, but TRUST — which is an important facet of business — has been significantly eroded.
In surfing the TE’s, I have heard nothing but bad about the new owner of nerdbux, in fact because I do not like bashers, I wrote a comment to the new owner to maybe remove his ad from Sweeva, let it cool down. I felt bad for him. Maybe he is a crook, like what is said about him, maybe he is a bad business manager or just had bad luck, whatever, he does not deserve the nasty comments. You are fair and do not resort to bashing, I wish all were like that, maybe this internet world would be a nicer place. In life, there are people out to make a fast buck without doing the work and there are dishonesty everywhere. It is hard to know which is honest. One thing I look at is what do they offer me? what are they saying? if it is to good to be true, then most likely it is not a good deal.
Thanks Peter, as always, your articles bring sense and order to a very confusing world.
Kathy, I had a LIFETIME membership at NerdBux, and the new owner, Jeffrey Johnson, still killed my account. That was in mid-May. By then membership had been cut from a high of over 300,000 members to just a few thousand. I thought I had been lucky and made the cut. (Others with LIFETIME memberships had already been booted out.)
But no – I GOT THE BOOT TOO, like so many others. No response to support requests, no explanation why. And it was just a week after I had run a very profitable ad campaign there. I would have continued to spend money on advertising at NerdBux. But the new owner, Jeffery Johnson, killed my account.
It’s because of this direct personal experience with Mr. Johnson that I will have nothing more to do with NerdBux or any of his other sites, and why I advise others to stay away.
I am so very sorry that that happened to you. It would be so nice if people could just be honest, but unfortunately, I do not see a lot of that. I guess I understand why everyone was so hostile to him at Sweeva but I think the way you are putting it out to people is a better way to get the information out there.
From what I have been reading, this man has been around and has done this before. I hope that somehow he is stopped, but in this on line world, I do not see that happening.
It is a great service that you provide, especially to the new people who have just began, if they listen. The ones who see only dollar signs and want to get something for nothing are the ones the predators get.
I do not understand why TimTech sold to him, they must know about him? Oh well, I guess life does go on, we hopefully learn our lessons and move carefully in the future.
Thanks, Peter, I very much admire your blog’s postings and am glad there is a voice of sanity!
Kathy