You know when you’ve drunk more than you should the night before, and ate things you normally wouldn’t, and said and did things that you’re now embarrassed about the next morning, as you sit up in bed and become aware that your entire body is wrapped in a blanket of pain?
Well of course maybe you never have, and that’s fine.
MAKING AN ANALOGY
This is just an analogy to what it felt like when all my Rented Referrals finally expired.
Every high becomes a downer before it levels off and starts climbing again. That’s true of absolutely everything, including PTC earnings.
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My earnings reached a peak by about Day 98. (See “My Biggest Cashout Yet.”) I thought I’d never earn anything less again. But I was wrong. There is an annual cycle to the PTC business, and I was just entering it. I was entering it with armloads full of Rented Referrals, and when the cycle reached it’s predictable downturn in January, I began to have lots of referrals I was paying for but who were not clicking very much. Some spots in my “office pool” were already leased for months ahead.
Continuing to rent referrals was an ongoing expense that ate into my earnings, just at a time when earnings were decreasing. That was a YIKES moment, which I wrote about in “Where I Went Wrong“ on Day 302.
TAMEBEAR UNLOADED
That high level of earning back on Day 98 slowed to around $3.30 by Day 302. But by then my rented referral costs were more than my base earnings. So my earnings continued to deteriorate. Once I realized this was happening, I committed to letting all my RRs expire. That took about half a year. During most of that time, my RRs continued to underperform, on par with the annual PTC cycle. And by the time all my RRs were unloaded, my base rate of earning was about $1.50 per day.
Well that’s when I felt something like a hangover.
Day 507
EARNINGS $1,875 |
Day 507
CASHOUTS $1,725 |
Day 507
INVESTED $1,928 |
Day 507
ADVERTISING $1,381 |
Still, $1.50 amounts to $45.00 per month for not a lot of work. That’s money I can spend on more traffic to keep building my list and adding little by little to my direct downlines. That part of my system is actually working well, but as in any Simple Business, the rate of earning is not easy to predict.
On top of the RR hangover, I discovered another bummer. As my RRs expired, I noticed that NeoBux — one of my Core 4 PTCs from the beginning — was raking back an “expiration tax” on every Rented Referral that I let go. So another 6¢ or so was being drained from my account with every RR exiration. Ouch.
Such fees bring to mind the wealthy wisdom that keeping fees low is a way to grow earnings. Think of it like high fees at a stock brokerage, for account management and trading. You don’t want that. Higher fees eat away at your earnings and you have less. I believe this is the main reason it’s been a challenge to reach net profit in NeoBux.
Keep an eye on the Core 4 whenever you spot it in traffic rotation — that page is the first indicator that a previous star has been demoted.