Hidden Drawbacks of Online Jobs

While everyone, including myself, celebrates the advantages of working online, there are some real drawbacks. Occasionally, these can cause distress and even loss of income.

It’s important to note that there are at least three kinds of online jobs. At the bottom end of realistic earning potential are things like pay-to-click sites. At these you perform some menial task for which you are rewarded. Unless you break some kind of rule, like using a robot, the work is straightforward, but low-paying. My thoughts don’t have much to do with this type of job.

The next level of online job is where one performs some one-time service which must be accepted by a company or client. The most obvious of these jobs is freelance writing. However, there are some opportunities which involve completing some other kind of work.

At the highest level, one might have a job with a brick-and-mortar company, but all, or almost all, interaction is accomplished through a web interface.

If one is freelance writing, the text probably will need to be accepted by an editor or a client. One might think that if a good writer submits content there would be no problem. But this is not always the case. Editors may not be particularly expert. Editors may have agendas dictated by the company they work for. There are multiple style books for writing, which means that proper grammar isn’t always as inflexible as one might imagine. Except that a particular site may accept only a certain style that isn't the way one was taught. Editors have been known to even change content and make an article factually incorrect, while the author’s name remains on the byline. This can damage an author's credibility through no fault of their own.

Companies which rely on freelance writers have little incentive to explain themselves or work with authors. There is no contract involved, and there are plenty of other writers who will simply step in an fill any gaps to create content. The author's only recourse may be to walk away.

If one is fortunate enough to find a job which provides steady income for a service, which allows the employee to work from home through the internet, it may be difficult to imagine any problems.

However, one potential shortcoming is the isolation An employee may interact with only one or two other people in the entire company. In the long term, it’s difficult to assess one’s competence in this social vacuum.

There are bound to be frustrations with some aspects of the job. With no employee break room, and chats over lunch, one has no way to know if complaints are shared across the board, or if personal gripes would best be dropped.

If one has a poor or mediocre manager, there may be absolutely no way to circumvent the effects of bad management.

There is no way to compare one’s work against that of co-workers. A company usually sets standards for performance, which are usually unrealistically perfect. This, in itself, is not bad. Of course, any company wants to put out their best product all the time. In reality, humans can’t deliver perfection all the time. In a workplace, one informally has some sort of idea of how good or bad a job they are doing. With only internet contact, only mistakes may be noted. In other words, Until the job is completed to perfection there is only negative feedback, and probably no positive feedback for good work.

There is no chance (for example) to roll the eyes, and glance at a lab partner, sharing the pain of “unreasonable” demands. Such social interactions are how people make it through tough work days. With internet jobs, all one may get are negative messages such as “CASE REJECTED,” “NEEDS REVISION,” “NOT ACCEPTED,” etc.

For some people, internet jobs are the solution to various work dilemmas. Just be aware that there can be problems and frustrations with any type of job.

XXX

Why Clixsense is the Only PTC I Still Use

I just got $23.02 from Clixsense, and that's with a standard membership. Took 14 months to accumulate that much, but there were no hassles, and the fees are much lower to cashout than they used to be.

ClixSense now has PayPal available, and it only cost me $0.73 processing fee, much less than it use to be with AlertPay. In addition, they pay every Monday, so you don't have to wait a month to get your cash.

And, I have the answer to another of life burning questions. Does anyone every win $5.00 in the ClixGrid game? I had previously won anywhere from a dime to 50¢, but last week, yes, I won $5.00. That was certainly nice!

If you want to upgrade your membership, it now costs $15 a year. I'm still not convinced that's worth it unless you have a lot of referrals.

Anyway, I am happy to add $23 to my wallet!

Sign up for ClixSense under me. If you are thinking of signing up, it helps me and doesn't hurt you at all to use this link.

Bux.to is Not Making Me Happy

Bux.to has rolled out their new changes, but so far, I have not been able to re-register and sign in.

They say that you MUST use the same email and password as previously, or you will lose all your accounts. Fine. But it will not accept my password. It keeps saying that it is not alphanumeric, which it is, completely. (Thank goodness! What are people doing who had other characters in their passwords). It also rejects my entry of the captcha code about 2/3 of the time.

I am not alone in this nonsense. There was a whole thread on the forum about it. But, of course, they closed that.

I've sent two emails to support, but so far no response. I hope you are one of the lucky ones who was able to re-register.

Here's hoping I don't lose my $62 ($52 already in a payment queue), but who knows.

Big Changes at Bux.to

The Bux.to PTC site is temporarily closed down. They have a splash page explaining what is happening. After being in business four years (an old man of PTC sites), they need to make changes.

In an effort to weed out dishonest members and bots, the site is being restructured. Some of what they say is easy to understand, some parts, not so much

They want to make cash-outs faster because audits are taking too long. (Ask me... I've been waiting since July 19 for my first cashout to be audited).

But some folks are likely to be unhappy with the changes. I'm not sure if I'm in that group. I think they are saying that all Standard and Standard Pro members will be able to use their balances for advertising or buying referrals (I have $52 due in a cashout and another $10 in my account. I sure hope I can get some of that in cash).

All Standard Members who had previously purchased referrals will automatically be made Standard Pro Members. I will have this status, since I did purchase referrals once.

However, all referrals older than six months are going to be eliminated. If you made any purchases of referrals in the past six months you will have a percentage of inactive ones replaced.

They predict changing the earnings per click (probably read "less money"), and new cashout options (probably read "fewer ways to actually get cash").

Well, they've been down for two days, and don't give a firm date for when they will be back. I hope I can at least get my $52. That's a significant pile of money.

Bux.to

I Am So Done with Neobux

Finally, I have reached the next payout level at Neobux, and I am calling it quits. Since the big changes they made in March, I've been hanging on until this day when I could cashout and leave. I only get $4.90 of my $5.00 because they charge a transaction fee. The good news is that they pay instantly, which makes you believe that they are not hanging on by their toenails, paying the merest top of some payment queue whenever they actually get income.

In March, Neobux devalued their guaranteed clicks to $0.004 per day instead of $0.04. Yes, they cut it to a tenth of the value. Their claim was that there would be lots more ads to click on, and really denigrated anyone who chose to suggest otherwise in the forum. I have been able to average less than $0.015 per day from them since that time. Of course, I'm not willing to stay logged in to the site all day and continuously check for new ads. I have a life.

I really didn't want to lose the $3.00 I had in my account, so I stubbornly kept clicking until today. However, I have to say that for the return compared to the time, this was a total waste. I should have let the $3.00 go and spent the time picking up cans in the ditches. I would have made more money and gotten some exercise.

If you are higher than a standard member, or have a lot of referrals, you may be able to do better. However, if you don't want to do pay-per-click for a living, Neobux is no longer a good option.

Goodbye Neobux, and no regrets.

OnBux Seems to Be Dead

OnBux hasn't paid anyone for months and months, and now seems to be totally off the web. The URL returns a page not found error.

I had $5 coming from them, and kept clicking while waiting for that payment with hopes of the rumors being false, so all that click time is lost. This is always the chance one takes with pay-to-click sites.

I'm trying to see it as extra time opening up in my daily routine. Now I just need something good to replace it with.

Cashium and PalmBux Both Belly Up

Two PTC sites that I was using have gone away. Cashium is probably no surprise. I was, however, mildly surprised at PalmBux's demise.

Cashium has had problems off and on for a long time. A new owner managed to pull it back from the brink of disappearing. But, just as I cashed out $2, the site stopped loading, and has never reappeared. Needless to say, I did not get my money.

PalmBux had been stable. They had a core of advertisers so that you could be sure of a few clicks every day. I had some referrals, and had been paid twice by them. However, about a month ago, I noticed that the daily clicks for standard members were dropping from 5 or 6 to 2 or 3. This probably was not enough regular advertisers to support the site. They also disappeared without any warning. I've waited to write about it, thinking that it might reappear with new owners or a new model, but it seems to be really gone.

Total money lost between the two sites? I had over $4 in my PalmBux account, so my total loss was $6. Of course, this isn't life or death, but I do resent how much time I spent to build up those amounts only to lose them.

Moral- don't rely heavily on PTC sites for income. That opportunity can go belly up faster than a dimestore goldfish.

Cashing Out Swagbucks

I am in process of cashing out two more $5 payments to my PayPal account. I like getting cash better than other things. Once I figured out the verification process, all further cashouts have gone smoothly.

Swagbucks awards you points simply for using their search engine. The drawback is that several of the top results presented will be filtered through their own advertising, but you don't ever have to click on them.

When you have enough points to cashout, simply go to swagbucks.com and look through the rewards until you find the one you want. Be sure you have enough points to cover it, then click it and follow any additional directions. Note that there is usually a time limit to claim the award, in addition to the verification process. Click "Snag it."



You will be shown a shipping address confirmation screen, and then the notice that you must verify this order. What this means is that you will receive an email from swagbucks, which contains a link that must be clicked. If you don't receive this email, check your junk folder, because you will not be able to claim your reward unless this step is followed.



Once you click the verification link in the email, you will see that your order is verified.

It still takes several weeks to get it. Sometimes up to 2 months. Still... money for doing almost nothing is pretty darn good! This will make $40 I have received from Swagbucks since I signed up.

Swagbucks (if you sign up under me it helps me, and will never hurt you in any way.)

Update: I was paid on May 13.

ClixSense Highly Improved

While several PTC sites have recently disappeared or made things more difficult for standard members to earn, ClixSense has greatly improved their interface.

In the first place, they've redesigned their logo, and the site, to be more visually attractive, and it's much easier to navigate.

Most importantly, it is now a dynamic interface. Of the PTCs I still do, it's the best one as far as ease of use. When you log in you are shown several things on the same page. Your current account balance is displayed at the top. This amount will change with every click you successfully view. The number of ads currently available to you shows in a blue box.

The knockout new feature, however, is dynamic refreshing of the ads. Once you log in, you may need to wait a few seconds for the site to find you. But then a number will appear in your "View Ads" blue button, and you can click it to see the ads. Any ads you see will be good ones- no clicking and waiting, and then getting the annoying message that the ad is no longer available. Once your ad click has been validated, that ad will automatically be removed from the available list and be placed below, under "Ads Clicked in the Last 24 Hours" and grayed out.

You will randomly be asked to match a picture after the click timer has run down, to verify that a human is clicking. This works smoothly, so far I haven't seen any failed loading problems with the frame (an annoying problem with some verification schemes)

The ClixGrid game has been improved tremendously. No longer do you have to click around that stupid monkey, always wondering where you have already clicked. With each click a different, lovely, picture will be shown. The grid lines are visible, including an address for the one you are on at the bottom. After you click a square, it changes color, and your remaining clicks are immediately revised and displayed, so you don't have to track your clicks on a separate piece of paper. I don't often do the Grid (I've never won anything there), but I may just do it occasionally now that it is more interesting and less frustrating.

They have also added micro-ads, worth only a tenth of a cent, and minis, worth half a cent. But this has not taken away from the number of one cent ads available to standard members. I am actually making a tiny bit more there than I was before the changes.

The first year I belonged, I upgraded, but this year I've just kept a standard membership, not having seen a difference in the net profit. But with these changes, I might consider it in the future.

ClixSense

Neobux Makes Changes- Bad for Standard Members

Last week Neobux made huge changes to their earning structure, and none of it is good for standard members. In my opinion it has toppled Neobux from one of the best PTCs for people who don't want to make a career of it, to one of the most useless.

Without any warning, we learned on March 13, that our four guaranteed clicks for the day were now going to be worth 1/10 of a cent each instead of 1 cent. Yes, only 10% of what they had been! They claim this is a good thing, because they will be offering many more kinds of ads, and that a person can earn lots more than the past guaranteed 4 cents a day by coming back all day and clicking the increased offerings.

Advertisers are happy... they are going to get more value for their money. Neobux claims that via a poll more people are happy than not happy. Here's how it worked out for me.

I thought I'd give it a try, even though I don't want to keep going back to their site all day long. I was fine with a few minutes for 4 cents with my coffee in the morning, but not a continual nagging commitment. Since then, I've visited the Neobux site as often as I remembered. Some days, I'm on the computer almost all day, and just kept going back. Some days, that's not what my life is about. I've managed an average of 4.04 cents a day since then, with a much larger investment of time. Not good.

A piece of me wants to hang in there till I make the next payout, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Neobux

Third Neobux Cashout

I'm not getting rich from any Pay-to-Click sites, but I don't mind clicking a few ads while I drink my morning coffee, and getting paid to do it. This is my third payout from Neobux, one of the most stable of the sites.

Last year, I did a lot of experimenting, and calculating whether it was worth it to rent a "downline" (referrals- people who are under you and whose clicks also give you a little income). My conclusion was that it was not worth it, at all! The only way to benefit from a downline on Neobux is if people freely sign up under you. So far, I don't have anyone. I've earned a total of $9.00, and wasted almost that much more in my spending of earned money to rent referrals.

Those $9.00 are not going to change my life, but I'll take it. You do need to check in at least once every 60 days or you will lose your cash and your referrals. This is one of the harshest membership policies on these pay-to-click sites.

If you would like to sign up under me, go to Neobux (and wouldn't you rather sign up under a friend than be rented to a stranger?)
Losing Money and Wasting Time
Neobux Again- Going the Right Direction?

Second Payment from Onbux

I continue to keep a few pay-to-click sites going- they are a mindless thing to do with my first cup of coffee. OnBux continues to be one of the stable ones. Onbux clicks are worth a penny each, very straightforward. There are four ads available to click most days, for those with a basic membership. Occasionally, there will be five.

As you can see, I just cashed out $2.95. This was what remained after a 12-cent processing fee. My balance was $3.07. I had to be over $3 to cash out this time.

I'm not ever going to be one of those people who invests hundreds of dollars in these sites, trying to make a living. But I don't mind a few extra bucks every so often! If this interests you, why not sign up under me. If you don't your account will just be rented to someone you don't even know.

Onbux

Take a Chance on KlickBuck?

I sure don't know if this PTC site can survive, but I just cashed out $5.08, so right at this moment, it's working.



As the banner says, you can earn up to a dollar a day, but that won't happen unless they get a lot more advertisers. Early joiners did manage to "bag a buck" a day. Now, however, they have lots more members and click opportunities are gone within seconds of being posted.

The idea is that there is a gameboard grid of 25 squares worth 4 cents each. When an ad is available you can click on it, and a square is then filled- you can't click that one again for 24 hours. The most I've ever made in one day is 64 cents, and the least... nothing. The only way to grab clicks is to see them right after they are posted. So you have to keep this open in a tab and keep refreshing it mindlessly all day long. (No ads are posted between 1 and 6 am Eastern Time.)

It's a pain to keep refreshing, and the site logs you out about every 30 minutes so you have to keep logging back in. But... I made $5 in 3 weeks, with no referrals under me. That's really fast.

They say 2-3 days for payment, but I got mine in about 2 hours. AlertPay cashout only.

If you want to take a chance and try to get $5 before they go bust (can 4 cents a click really last?), sign up here for KlickBuck

Bux.to - The Best PTC?

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across bux.to. This is, by far, the biggest PTC penny generator if you don't want to get involved with maintaining a big downline of referrals below you. Whereas, the other sites I've kept up with (believing a few to be worth doing with my morning coffee) average 3-4 cents a day, bux.to has been averaging about $0.17 a day.

Each click is worth a cent. After finding that there are a lot of PTC sites that don't even pay a penny a click, this is good news. Even with a standard membership, you will see 12-25 links that can be clicked every day.

The "downside" is that you can't cash out until you reach $50.00. However, that doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time when you are making four times as much each day. In the two weeks since I've signed up, my account has risen to $3.28.

It is a little harder to tell which links you've clicked. They don't change color or icon, but you can usually keep track. If not, refresh the page, and the ones you've clicked will have a line through them. In fact, when you think you are all done for the day, it pays to do this, as a few more links may appear.

Payments are through AlertPay which does take out more of a service fee than PayPal.

If you are willing to spend a few mindless minutes a day poking buttons, you might as well make a few cents doing it!

bux.to

Troubles at Palm Bux

Palmbux has recently changed owners. The good part of that is not everyone will lose money. Maybe. On the forum, several people who invested amounts, sometimes exceeding $1000, with them, are up a creek. The new owners aren't making good on losses that the previous owners incurred.

But they promised an "all new" site on Friday, Sept 24, 2010, with the ability to cash out, which had been locked for quite a while. Sure enough, some things were new. After a few days of an inability to even click ads, that was open again.

The new owners seem determined to succeed, but I'm a little annoyed. The said that cashout would again be open. But any funds one had in their regular balance has been moved to a place called "Reserve Balance." This will be fed back into Rental Balance, 10% per month, plus a 20% bonus. If everyone tried to cash out their balances immediately, PalmBux would go under immediately. The owners stated that the total would be $121,000 dollars if that happened.

So the good news is that people did not lose all that value. The bad news is that it can't ever be gotten out in cash, because rental balances can't be transferred back to the Main Balance. I think this is true... it's true at most of the Pay-to-Click sites. But, I can't check, because the Help Page at PalmBux still isn't working.

Well, this will never be on my list of favorite PTC sites. You get too little cash for the time. Most clicks are worth either $.002 or $.008- yes less than a penny. It's really disheartening when to get several in a row that don't even add up to a cent. So why do I keep doing it? Probably just curiosity to see if I can ever get any money out of it.

Palmbux

Getting Paid by ClixSense

I took my first payout from ClixSense, and it went smoothly enough, but there were hidden costs. I had set my payout at $20, to avoid taking a real hit with the payout fee. I had planned to use a paper check, with a $3 fee, but in the end, I opened an AlertPay account. I had been resisting doing this, just because I don't want to have a whole lot of small accounts to track. But I figured that to save $2.50, I could do it, and AlertPay looks stable enough.

Anyway, after I did that, on the 10th of the month, after my ClixSense account passed the $20 I had chosen, the money was passed to AlertPay. You can see that the balance must have been at $20.27, so that $19.77 was paid.

Then I transferred the AlertPal balance to my bank, and they took out another $1.27 fee. Well, I still saved $1.23 overall, by using this method over a paper check.

At any rate, I did end up making a small amount of money through ClixSense.

Neobux Payment

OK, after I got mad because Neobux took away all my money after a 30-day hiatus on my part (I was away), I went back. I mean... I can click 4 things while I'm reading my mail and drinking my coffee, without ruining my day. Now, I'm taking my first cashout, and it went smoothly enough. Of course, they keep another 4 cents for the processing. I know that they really do have to pay a fee with PayPal, but it's just more nickel-and-diming of the user (or panny-and-half-pennying).

So I clicked "yes," and within 5 minutes the notice came that the money was in my PayPal account.

You may remember that I've tried renting referrals there and never could come out ahead of the game by doing that. I think the only way to have a profitable downline is if people sign up under you of their own accord.

You can take your first payout at $2.00. After that the minimum increases by $1.00 each time until it reaches $10.00, and then it remains at that amount. They pay to PayPal or Alertpay.

Over the months I "wasted" close to $10.00 buying referrals, and I lost $5.00 in the hiatus fiasco, but if you stick to the rules, the site does pay. And they pay more per click than most similar sites.

Losing Money and Wasting Time at Neobux- The Fine Print

Well, I just learned a really nasty lesson about Neobux, the pay to click site that everyone says is so good. I had actually racked up $5.60 in my account. Then I went hiking.

With the priority of getting the NCT miles finished (see My Quality Day) I did not log in to Neobux for more than 30 days. My account was temporarily suspended per terms of service 8.4: "After 30 days of inactivity, your account will be temporarily suspended and permanently suspended after 60 days of inactivity. An inactive user for 72 hours after registration will have the account permanently suspended."

So I asked to have my account reinstated. When they did so, I saw that my account had dropped to zero! I inquired about this and was referred to point 8.2:"All suspended accounts will have all their balances reset, all referrals taken away and no refunds will be given."

So much for Neobux, as far as I'm concerned. Thirty days is much too short a time period to set for reducing a user back to beginner status. A move, illness, family issue, or other important activity can easily keep a person off the internet for 30 days.

Caveat emptor!

ADPTC is Annoying and I Lost my Dollar

Here's just one more Pay to Click (PTC) site to avoid. I signed up quite a while ago, and was unhappy fairly early, but decided to stick it out until I reached the $1 payout.

In the first place, the clicks are only worth $0.001 or $0.002 each. Yes, that's one or two tenths of a cent. There are usually 5-10 clicks available each day, so your income per day is less than two cents.

Next, there is an annoying timing feature. After you click on a link, and it loads, there is a number to match to click and be credited with your tiny reward. If it is more than 5 minutes between when you click the ad and the number it returns an error and you have to click it again. Sometimes a page doesn't even load in 5 minutes. Sometimes I'm off multitasking and that 5 minute limit error is there waiting for me when I come back to click.

The site often has processing problems. Way too often I get a message "Sorry, this action could not be processed." Sometimes you can reload and get back what you were doing. Sometimes, it's just gone and you didn't get credit for your click.

When ads break out of their frames you are not credited for the click.

This all ads up to the situation that it takes way too much time to get your measly two-tenths of a cent. But here's the frosting on the cake. I only sign up for sites that pay via PayPal. I understand that they may not always be so friendly with overseas accounts, but I'm a verified, premium member, and they've been very good to me. However, two days before I tried to cash out my dollar, PayPal suspended the ADPTC account. So the only way to be paid is by AlertPay. I don't have an account there, and am not going to open one for a buck.

Bye, bye dollar. Bye, bye all the time I wasted earning it. Hello, information I can pass on to you. I don't recommend ADPTC.

Signed Up with PalmBux

You might think that I have discarded all the pay to click schemes. Maybe I should. But the truth is that I can do some meaningless clicking in the morning while I'm drinking my coffee and waking up.

So, I signed up with Palmbux. Here's how it works. With a standard membership you are given 5 or 6 ads to click on per day. The ads load more quickly than the ones offered by Neobux, which is nice. When the page has been displayed for the required time you are given a letter (A, B, C, or D) to match and click to validate the view.

The validation in the header will then be replaced with the value of the ad which is credited to your account. It's a little confusing since the value levels are also coded A-D, but these letters have nothing to do with the validation check. An A ad is worth $0.008 (yes less than a penny, but more than some sites pay), and a D ad is worth $0.001.

I've been a member for three days and have earned $0.07. It costs 30 cents a month to rent referrals. I don't think I'm going to even try this out on Palmbux. If I can't make money on Neobux where the costs per referral is 25 cents a month and the clicks are worth a full cent, I sure don't know how you could get ahead at Palmbux, even if there is not a daily maintenance fee.

But if this kind of site appeals then so far, my experience has been acceptable. I'll report again if I reach the $2 minimum payout and succeed in having the money transferred to me.

Palmbux