The story began when one of our LeadsLeap members complain that someone is advertising a scam program called Bux.to in our network. The scam ‘proof’ is given in this website:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/17/surprise-the-buxto-pyramid-scheme-is-a-fraud/

Because of this, I began my own assessment of this program to find out if Bux.to is really a scam.

For those of you who have not heard of Bux.to, it is a Paid To Click (PTC) program, where you are paid $0.01 for each website you personally view and $0.01 for each website your referrals view.

There is nothing wrong with PTC programs. From business point of view, each click costs the website owner $0.02, $0.01 goes to the member viewing the ad and the other $0.01 goes to the member’s sponsor. If the website owner charges $0.05 per click, which is a good bargain to most advertisers, he will make 60% profit. Good deal.

Before I continue, I probably need to tell you that I’m not a newbie in the PTC industry. To tell you the truth, I run Asia’s largest paid-to-read-email program, with more than 130,000 members. In other words, I know what I’m talking about!

When I study Bux.to’s business model, I found 2 things that make me feel uncomfortable.

1) Low advertising fee

Bux.to charges $19.10 per 1,000 member visits. This means an advertiser only pays $0.019 for each ad click.

Remember that Bux.to pays out $0.02 for each click? This means they are losing money for each ad click they sell.

To me, it is quite obvious that this pricing plan is not sustainable.

2) Selling referrals to members

Bux.to sells referrals to its members. The price is about $1 per referral.

I believe Paypal bans Bux.to because of this. (Bux.to is now using Alertpay as their payment gateway.)

To me, it simply doesn’t make business sense to sell referrals, unless my aim is to get rich quick instead of building a long-lasting business.

The reason is obvious.

If my members can make money from the referrals they’ve bought, it simply means that I am losing a lot of potential income in the long run.

If you don’t understand what I mean, ask yourself this question, “if you know that you can make $0.01 from Member-A whenever he reads an ad, and he can potentially read 10 ads a day (or earn you $0.10 a day), will you sell Member-A away for just $1?”

If your answer is no, why do you think the website wants to sell referrals for just $1 per referral?

I can only think of two reasons: 1) to get rich quick, 2) the website owner fails his maths.

Is Bux.to Paying?

If you google for Bux.to scam or Bux.to review, you will come across many people who are paid and many people who are not paid.

The general feedback is the payment is slow. The website says that members will be paid in 60 business days, but some people have waited for than 4 months and still not being paid.

It seems that they are now having a problem paying its members on time.

From my above assessment of the program, you can see that the program doesn’t have a long-term profitable business model. It may be very successful in the short run because many people can make lots of money in a short time. But in the long run, I do believe that the website will run into financial problem.

So is Bux.to a scam? You decide. You may be the lucky one who is paid.

For me, I’m not comfortable with its business model. I don’t believe that such a model is sustainable.

If you are advertising for Bux.to, I strongly encourage you to change your ad.