Bold Prediction: One Year From Now, Gagabux and Readbud Will No Longer Exist

One advantage of having years of experience trying to make money online under my belt is that I now have a pretty good feel about whether a program has the potential to last or not. This enables me to avoid getting excited by and wrapped up in sites that, in all likelihood, will turn into scams before long. Unfortunately, my inner scam detector tells me there is a strong likelihood that two of the most hyped earning sites of the moment are not going to last very long. I'm willing to go on the record here and state that I don't think Gagabux or Readbud will be paying sites one year from hence. Indeed, I doubt they'll even exist. I'll be happy to acknowledge being wrong if that's how things turn out, but please let me make my case first.

Gagabux is the latest in a long line of "bux" PTCs that pay 1 cent per ad clicked and promise great riches to those who invest in the site by upgrading or renting referrals. These sites are generally speaking ponzi schemes because their advertising costs are too high to attract real advertisers (hence the ads you see are mainly self-sponsored by the site itself)...thus, their main source of income is the money they earn from upgrades and referral sales. It's from this pool of money that they must pay their clickers and investors. Bux sites generally don't last too long -- NeoBux is the remarkable exception to this rule.

Gagabux has even less of a chance to last than the typical bux site, however. They have been offering somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 PTC ads per day, enabling all members to earn around $0.15 a day without referrals. You can cash out at $2.00 so in two weeks anyone can click their way to a payment. Currently, the site IS paying though payments are already starting to take longer to process. While Gaga is earning a lot of goodwill by paying so many people, I think it will soon be forced to at the very least raise the minimum payment or reduce the number of ads available to free users...no PTC can afford to pay $0.15 a day to each and every clicker. In GB's defense, I will say that at least many Gagabux ads are affiliate ads that can earn the site some money -- this is in contrast to a site like bux.to which was notorious for mainly featuring paid ads about itself! The site is basically stuck in a corner, though. Any changes it implements will reduce the trust people have in it and hence make people less eager to invest. This site might be a fun one to "ride" for a while, but I suspect it is already nearing the end of its rope.

Readbud is a more unique kind of site -- indeed, I'm not aware of any site quite like it. They actually promise to pay you for reading articles. That's right: READING articles, not writing them. I can imagine such a site existing that paid a very small amount to article readers, but Readbud pays its readers up to $0.10 per article read! From a publisher's point of view, I know these rates aren't sustainable. Even if Readbud merely paid 1 cent for every article read, this would imply that it earns at least $10 from an article with a thousand views (1 cent * 1000 = 1000 cents or $10). Many AdSense publishers would kill for a $10 CPM rate, but Readbud is promising to pay more than this to its article readers from around the world. It simply beggars credulity. One smart thing that Readbud does is have a minimum payout of $50. That's very high and not easy to reach...presumably, a lot of readers will give up prior to reaching such rarefied heights. That, in turn, saves Readbud some money. However, how is the site going to manage to pay the patient sorts who do reach the $50 mark? I don't think it can, at least not for long.

How serious is my prediction? Pretty serious -- note the lack of referral links in this post. I just don't think there's much point in getting referrals for Readbud and Gagabux.