Cash is Good!

I have taken a part-time job, and it's definitely affecting my blogging time. I'll continue to post here as I am able.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Not Sure I Can Tolerate You-Cubez


I signed up just a few days ago at You-Cubez. You can read that post for basic information about You-Cubez.

As I mentioned there are two kinds of cash there: cube cash and real cash. I am learning the difference between them. I was hoping to earn enough real cash to buy by first cube without putting money into the system. That is probably unrealistic. The first day, I was shown 6 cash cubes to click, usually at a value of £ 0.0025, which I clicked. The banner says be sure to check back often because there will be new cash cubes available throughout the day. Since then, four days ago, I have had no other cash cubes to click. I have earned £ 0.0225. To buy a cube of my own, I need £ 1.00. This would take an unreasonably long time to reach by this method.

It's pretty easy, although tedious, to earn cube cash. I've earned some, which remains in my account until I buy a cube. You click on cubes, play games, and occasionally can sign up for offers. The clicking is annoying. You often have to enter validation codes which are small and hard to read. The cube cash builds slowly. I haven't worked very hard at it, but I have £ 8 after 4 days.

I could upgrade for £ 4. Thus for a cost of about $10 I could have a cube and a premium membership. Part of me thinks that I should buy one cube and give it a chance to see how much traffic it generates for me.

But I'm still not convinced that it's worth it. The You-Cubez frame takes up a third of the screen, so even if you had the patience to actually look at the web sites you are being shown, you can't see much unless you scroll. The whole thing just lends itself to opening a bunch of tabs, clicking without looking, and leaving. The value of cubes on the first page is in the £ 5-10 thousand range. So I would have to spend a lot of time to get a cube up there. There are 7,256 cubes (as noted in their stats as I write this). Now some people may look farther down the list, but I suspect most people just click of the top few pages. You can also select to sort for the newest, so newbies probably get more clicks as well. The middle ground is probably something of a purgatory. Active clickers may do ok, as you can also sort for cubes that have recently moved, ie. added more value.

And most off-putting is that the site is completely dominated by money-making sites. Each screen has 100 cubes, and on average 2 or 3 of them are for web sites that are something other than promotion of PTC, matix schemes, online gambling, or similar stuff. When I saw the ad for You-Cubez, I thought it looked like an interesting and valid way to promote a blog. But unless the admin wants to reject 97% of their participants, it will never be that way. Too bad... it could have been a fun way to see new blogs.

Due to the low incentive to actually look at what is on a visited page, and the amount of time it would take to work a cube up to the top tier, I just don't think that You-Cubez is worth the effort.

You-Cubez

web ad income Dec 1 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing):
Adsense $.03
Adgitize $.75
Project Wonderful $.02
Clixsense $.07
Swagbucks $10.00
Neobux $.04
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Total: $10.91


 
 
web income Nov actually cashed out (4 blogs, 2 web sites, other writing):
Adgitize (income - ad cost) -$3.83
Swagbucks $30.00
Shared Reviews $107.81
Associated Content $3.95
______________________
Total: $137.93

4 comments:

cornyman said...

Hi Sharkbytes,

you made 27.18 $ or 17.18 $ in Adgitize for November :)

2nd December earnings rocks as now are only 24$ advertiser (or 12/18$) in the system and more money is in the system (149 x 24 $)than on 31st October with 216 x 14 $

Sharkbytes (TM) said...

Hi Martin- I took in $20.18. When I subtract that from the $24 that I paid it is a net loss of $3.83. Oops, I see that I have a typo anyway. I'll fix that now. So the "income" from Adgitize in Nov is MINUS $3.83. (overall I have a net gain, and I expect in Dec it will again be on the positive side.- see the post I just put up for today, Friday)

cornyman said...

Yup, i didn't see the MINUS :) with the current earnings you'll be easily on track to a nice profit as we just need little bit less than 78 Cents daily to cover the costs.

Have a great time and i click myself away :)

Sharkbytes said...

I know! That minus sign in this font is tiny!