Something From Nothing: "Bux" Sites Blues

So the quest continues, and in the last month I have explored several different methods of making an online income for yourself starting out with nothing at all. Some of these methods have actually borne fruit for me, or at least they appear to as up to now, nothing at all has hit my PayPal or bank accounts from any of these companies. One of the avenues that I've been exploring have been websites called "bux" sites, and these are paid to click websites that offer the user anywhere from a fraction of a cent to a penny for clicking advertising links that they have displayed. The main purpose of these sites is to provide search engine optimization for advertisers as well is a steady flow of traffic that they can place bets upon like a roulette wheel for their affiliate sales.

Well, about a month in and 60 of these sites on my handy dandy spreadsheet that I use everyday, I am up to about $200 in theoretical revenue. Not bad on the surface, but I am finding more and more that many of these are also scams in that they have several flaming hoops that users have to jump through in order to receive their payments. One of these sites has me clocked in at about $20 in revenue, but in order to receive that via PayPal, I have to make an "investment" in the site itself first. You read that correctly, I have to pay them in order to receive my payment. Herp derp!

As there are so many of them, and each with their own individual policies, I can't make any recommendations for any particular site at this time until at least one of them actually places currency where it belongs....

BUT! These little Ponzi scheme websites might actually prove useful in the future when I have built enough revenue to actually start affiliate marketing in earnest. Despite the stinginess they show to the poor sods who log in and click spam links all day with the hope of making a few extra dollars a month, they treat the advertisers who pay them like gold and can guarantee up to 100,000 individual hits on your affiliate page for prices as ridiculous as $20. The problem is that those 100,000 hits that you get are most likely coming from people in less developed countries who are sitting in Internet cafés hoping to score enough money through paid to click sites to be able to afford a bag of rice that month. So in essence advertising your Forex and stock investment affiliate programs would pretty much be like pissing in the wind. But I have some ideas... More on that later.

Another outlet that I've discovered through the help of my good friend, the brilliant Astronomy Pirate was the Amazon Mechanical Turk program. This is a program hosted by Amazon that pays users anywhere from a penny to $4.00 for completing simple tasks posted by various companies. These run the gambit from filling out surveys, taking digital pictures, participating in online focus groups, or writing an article for submission to their directories. So far in the two weeks I've used it, I am up to $17.80. Amazon lets you transfer your earnings to either your own personal checking account (not a savings account) or towards purchases at Amazon.com. This is by no means any kind of get rich program, but if I had approached this with some more ferocity, I'm sure my earnings would be a lot higher than what they are. I highly recommend this program for people who may be one of make some extra cash for Christmas presents this year, and the fact that your earnings can go towards purchases at Amazon make it perfect for that scenario.

The Varolo program that I recommended in my last installment of this feature isn't really panning out for me because I don't like to bug my friends and family. Sure, the only thing they have to do is watch some video commercials, but it's still smells too much like Amway to me for me to put any kind of huge efforts into building my "village". The purpose of this venture is to make something from nothing without being a pain in the ass to the people I love. Multilevel marketing is just that, a pain in the ass. Except of course if you are one of the people who came up with your individual product or service that you decide to market this way. No, I am going to do this with my bare hands and without trying to convince my grandmother that watching a 30 second Snickers commercial could lead to wealth and prosperity...

Next week I will keep you posted on my fight to start actually receiving the money owed to me by these bux sites. And as soon as I get payment from one of them, I will recommend them as a way to start the chain reaction that may very well lead to our mutual financial independence! Because if/when the train comes in....everybody rides!