Did I upgrade at NerdBux? Of course I did! In a previous post “Is It Profitable?” we saw that I was actually losing money on my rented referrals. So upgrading was the way to get into positive earnings territory.
I paid my $50 annual NerdBux membership upgrade.
I also took some time to review the performance of my 100 referrals. Eight of them were total deadbeats — not a single click in 10 days. But I had another 40 that had only clicked on one ad in 10 days. So half my referrals were contributing almost nothing to my earnings.
I could wait another 4 days and “freecycle” these non-productive referrals. (NerdBux allows you to replace any referrals at no cost after 14 days.) But I decided to be more proactive.
I opted for aggressive recycling. I replaced half my rented referrals after just 10 days. I dropped all the ones that had no click or one click, and NerdBux filled in with a random selection of other referrals. I spent a few bucks to replace before the 14-day “freecycle” period, but it felt better to take action than to do nothing.
DOUBLING DOWN
And then I rented another 100 new referrals.
You can see the jump in earnings on Day 22. But after a couple more days it appears I haven’t significantly improved the daily earning power of my total pool of referrals.
Perhaps the aggressive recycling wasn’t the best idea.
I will give these 200 referrals more time, and resist the temptation to recycle early. But I will begin “freecycling” as soon as I am able.
FUNDING YOUR ACCOUNT
EARNINGS
$11.19
Renting referrals requires that you fund your account with money to pay for them.
It’s good to include additional funds if you plan to use the autorenew feature, as I am doing. Autorenew is a way to keep referrals by re-renting them on a daily basis for another 30-day term, but only if they click! Autorenew is about a 25% cost savings over regular 30-day renting. For all the details, see the NerdBux FAQ page.
I initially funded my account with $50 and spent $20 of that to rent my first 100 referrals. In the first 10 days my autorenew cost was about $5, leaving me with $25 in my account. I used another $20 to rent my second batch of 100 referrals. That left me with about $5 in my account. That wasn’t much remaining for autorenewing 200 referrals; so I added another $20 to fund my account again.
The $50 membership upgrade I paid separately. That will be an ongoing annual expense, but from now on I should be able to pay for it out of my earnings.
Total spent: $50 to upgrade, $40 to rent 200 referrals, $5 to autorenew, and I have $25 available in my “Purchase Balance” to fund ongoing autorenewals. I also have $6.49 in my “Main Balance.” I could withdraw that money now (minimum withdrawal for upgraded members at NerdBux is just $2) but I’m going to let those earnings accumulate.
tame bear this one is a great learning piece many thanks
christine
So glad you’re liking it, Christine. It was a conversation you and I had over at CTP that got me thinking about how to run an “experiment” like this and see what I could make of these four PTCs, after my initial year-long experience with ClixSense. I think renting referrals is what sets the others apart from ClixSense.
Renting should make it possible to ramp up earnings far faster than fishing for direct referrals. Of course in the long run direct referrals that are using these or similar strategies to boost earnings are far more cost effective than rented referrals. But it takes TIME to get 100 or 200 direct referrals. Given time or money, I am choosing to spend money to reach higher earnings faster. We’ll see how it works.
Hi Bear
Thanks for the sharing this. However, my experience has been slightly different. 90% of RRs are averaging 12 clicks per day. With 1335 referrals, I am getting around 17000 clicks per day. For me, Nerdbux referrals are the most hyperactive ones, hope yours will improve soon.
Direct Referrals: 1
Rented Referrals: 1335
Referral clicks: 564396 Statistics
Earnings from referrals: $566.2200
Wow — that’s a lot of referrals, Abdul! If you rented them all at once, your initial out-of-pocket expense (at 20¢ each) would be $267. You probably upgraded too, there’s another $50. So your net profit would be about $249.
If you want to continue renting those referrals you can get a discount (at 15¢ each) by extending their referral time, so ongoing cost every three months would be around $200, or $66 per month. So your ongoing profit after the first month would be $566-$66=$500. That’s $6,000 per year from NerdBux alone. Lookin’ good!
ATTENTION: 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.