Is ReadBud a Scam (4th update)

It's about 1 1/2 weeks since I joined the ReadBud site and I've got to say I'm more than a little bored with it, even though I only selected a few subjects, that I am genuinely interested in. To be totally honest I am tempted to never return to the site again, but I want to see whether they pay me once I have read enough articles to reach their payout threshold of $50. I will be genuinely surprised if they do pay up because I am reading too many reports that say that ReadBud is a scam site.

Anyway I have been given an average of about 18 articles a day to read and have made about $1 a day - if they ever really do pay anybody that is. Wow! A whole dollar. It's not enough to bother with, is it? I think my time could probably be better spent writing articles for Triond. At least I know from past experience that they pay up.

I will post further updates about ReadBud next month.

Google Anounces New Weapon in their War Against Content Farms

Google recently announced the realease of a couple of new extensions to the Google Chrome browser and they contain new algorithms that are designed to filter out sites that offer poor quality content and they say that the worst offenders are content farms. How this will affect sites like Triond remains to be seen, but remains king of the search engines, they weild a lot of power, and can easily make or break an online business:  Will Google’s New Algorithms Mean The End of Triond?

St. Catherine's Wheel

Have you ever wondered how Catherine Wheels got their name? If you have you might be surprised to learn that it is not a nice story. Modern day Catherine Wheels are a spinning firework, but they were named after the big, spiked wheel that St Catherine of Alexandria was stretched across when she upset the Roman Emperor, Maxentius: How Catherine Wheels Got Their Name.

Facebook Prank Causes Worldwide Panic

It all began on January 9th. Panic spread across the net and many Facebook users began downloading their photographs from the site before they were lost. Meanwhile, other users  were busy exploring their options. Where would they go? MySpace? Twitter. Once Facebook bit the dust they would need a replacement. Except Facebook was not and is not going anywhere, the panic had been caused by a spoof article posted on The Weekly World News Website that stated that Facebook would shut down on March 15th: Facebook Shutting Down? That’s About as Likely as Martians Putting Down!

Is ReadBud a Scam? (Day 3)

Today ReadBud provided over 20 articles for me to read and if they ever pay up today's earnings are nearly $2. It is going to take a long time before I reach the $50 payment threshold so I think it is a little unrealistic for me to post daily updates, so my next update on this will be next week. I'm still checking other sites and everything I am reading suggests that ReadBud is a scam. Here is a forum post from a guy who reached the payment threshold. Two months later he was still waiting to be paid and found it impossible to contact ReadBud about it.

Is ReadBud a Scam? (Day 2)

This post is a continuation of yesterday’s post which marked the beginning of my investigation into the paid to read articles site ReadBud.

I logged into ReadBud today and read all the available articles. There were a few less than yesterday and I was a few cents short of making a dollar. It will be interesting to see how many they offer me tomorrow.

My antivirus went crazy a few times as I was reading articles though, and I find this rather worrying because the sites I normally visit never present a problem and I cannot remember the last time it activated. I use a Firefox browser and have the NoScript extension installed. NoScript is a free extension that provides extra protection for mozilla-based browsers and it only allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plugins to be executed by sites that you trust. It also gives the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Yesterday when I visited ReadBud I allowed NoScript to block just about everything on the site except for what was needed to rate the articles. Today I set it to temporarily allow all on the pages. I won’t make that mistake again. I am still a long way off being able to say whether or not I think ReadBud is a scam, but the site does appear to have some worrying cross-scripts on the pages, so if you do decide to read articles at ReadBud I recommend that you have a functioning antivirus program installed on your computer and NoScript might be a good idea as well.

How to Diet Without Dieting

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary the definition of a diet is:

‘a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight.’

Some diets that are diets in name only though, because they have little to do with what the so called dieter eats or drinks: Six Ways to Diet Without Dieting

Is ReadBud A Scam?

I just stumbled across a site called ReadBud and at first it seems to offer a pretty good deal: read articles online at the ReadBud site and get paid for doing so.  The rates of pay are not specified on the website, but are available to read when you become a member of the site.

These are the rates:

• Under 100 : 1 cent
• Between 101 and 200 : 2 cents
• Between 201 and 300 : 3 cents
• Between 301 and 400 : 4 cents
• Between 401 and 500 : 5 cents
• Between 501 and 600 : 6 cents
• Between 601 and 700 : 7 cents
• Between 701 and 800 : 8 cents
• Between 801 and 900 : 9 cents
• Between 901 and 1500 : 10 cents
• Between 1501 and 2000 : 15 cents
• Over 2000 : 20 cents

So ReadBud are promising that they will pay their members 1 cent for reading an article of 100 words or less and 20 cents for reading an article of 2,000 of more words. In order to be paid every article must be rated. Not reviewed, just rated at between one and five stars. It takes just a second to apply the rating, and it is not a very long job to read the articles, so it should, in theory anyway, be possible to make a dollar or two a day. Not a lot of money, but it compares very well to sites like Write Articles Get Paid.com that pay a dollar for writing an article because I can read a dollars worth of articles a lot faster than I can write them. That only works though, if ReadBud actually make good on their promise and pay up. Unfortunately there are a lot of people online that are saying that ReadBud is a scam.

ReadBud claim to make payment by Paypal when $50 has been accrued, but many people are saying that although the site initially offers many articles a day, the amount of articles available begin to peter off the closer that you come to the payout figure. 

The ReadBud site is rich in advertising and some members are claiming that they only way they managed to receive more articles was to click on ads while they read. In fact I have read some reviews that state that the site encourages people to do so by clicking on the Bidvertiser Ads. To encourage clicking like this would be click fraud and against Bidvertiser’s rules.  I am only seeing Clicksor ads on the site so cannot help but wonder if ReadBud have lost their account with Bidvertiser.

I have checked a lot of sites, blogs and forums and there are a lot of people claiming that they are finding it hard to reach the minimum payout limit. A few people say that they have reached it, but have never been paid, and that’s bad news because the world does not need another scam site. I have seen a couple of forum posts that state that the site is not a scam and that they have been paid, but such cases are few and far between and I cannot help but wonder if the people who claim to have been paid are ReadBud staff members or the owners of the site. It is all too easy to set up a false identity on a forum and then post false information and lies. I think that more independent reviews of ReadBud are needed and have decided to see if I can make any money at ReadBud. I joined ReadBud yesterday, read and rated several articles and have now accrued over $1. It will be interesting to see if I continue to make $1 a day, and if so for how long. It is my intent to use the ReadBud site every day and keep an accurate record of how things go. I will post the results here on my blog and if I do get paid I will take that as a positive sign.

If you are thinking of signing up for ReadBud you may also want to check out what PTC Investigations have to say about the site. They did get a payout, but still believe that ReadBud is a Scam. You can read their full report HERE.

You may also want to read some of the posts at the Digital Points Forum.

I will post more on this tomorrow, by which time I should have read and rated a few more articles. I am not going to post the exact number of articles that I have read though. Nor will I say exactly how much I have accrued. I want this to be an independent review of the site and if  I use precise figure the people at ReadBud might be able to tell who I am, and if they do they may very well pay me just so that I can confirm that they are the real deal. To be honest with you though, my first impression is that this site is a scam.

The World's Most Disgusting Diets

Some diets are just too disgusting for words. Tapeworms, cotton wool balls, a few gallons of man juice; it's amazing what some people will do to try and loose weight: The World's Most Disgusting Diets.

The Famous Fans of the Five Finger Discount

They would seem to have it all, but even those with fame and fortune are not above helping themselves to a five finger discount: The Strange World of the Celebrity Shoplifters.

Hey! I've Got New Funds

I just checked my email and discovered that Triond have sent me a payment. It's not much, that's all right because I ignored them for nearly two years and only began submitting fresh articles at the back end of December. Having said that, even though I was not doing a thing on Triond I still received a payment from them last July and if I'd had as much content then as I do now I would have probably been receiving a small payment every month. So that's something to think about. With Triond you really can generate a passive income stream.

I plan to continue writing articles for Triond because I am curious to see how much income I can generate in a month and if I can beat it every month. I am also curious to see what happens if I stop writing for a while because that is when I will see how much the real passive income is.

At the moment it seems likely that next month's payment will be a little bit more than this month's, but Triond are offering up to 30% in bonus payments for February so I can't really go wrong.

What's Worse Than a Rat? A Giant Rat

In February 2010 a giant rat was captured in Fuzhou, China. Six months later giant rats turned up in England and invaded a housing estate in Bradford. One of them was 2 ½ feet  long. It was shot, but four more escaped. Giant rats have also turned up in the USA and an Alabaman man shot a monster rat that weighed in at a staggering 97 pounds. It took three shots to kill the beast: The Biggest Rats in the World.

Made and Remade: Scum

The film Scum was released in 1979 and is a no-holds-barred depiction of life within the British Borstal system. Due to the film’s extremely violent nature and the profuse use of foul language Scum became one of the most controversial films of the 1980s and Mary Whitehouse campaigned to have it banned. Being banned was nothing new for Scum though, because it was a remake of a television programme that the BBC decided not to broadcast because they deemed it to be too violent: Scum Was a Remake, But Nobody Knew It.

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No Longer Confined to the Tower, The Wandering Ghost of Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn was executed in 1536 and it is probably not surprising that her ghost is reputedly a long-term resident of The Tower of London, where she spent her final days. Unlike other ghosts though, Anne Boleyn appears to get around and sightings have been reported from many different areas of the British Isles.

The ghost of Anne Boleyn has been sighted at Blicking Hall,  Hever Castle, Salle Church, Marwell Hall, Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle. So it would appear that Anne Boleyn’s ghost gets around a lot more than the average phantom: The Wandering Ghost of Anne Boleyn.

The Unruly Game of Mob Football

A GAME OF MEDIEVAL MOB FOOTBALL

If the legend is true. the game of mob football began with a bit of a kick about with a severed head. The game caught on, but using a ball instead of a head. Even with a ball though, it remains a rough game and, in some part of the UK,  it remains a popular bank holiday activity. What am I talking about? The game of mob football. A game with very few rules and where the players have even been known to loose their lives instead of a penalty.

Mob football continues to be a popular game in certain areas of the UK. In Sedgefield, there's a game every year on Shrove Tuesday and the local shops have been known to board up their windows for the occasion. This may seem a little extreme, but  this is not an ordinary game of football. It's mob football and in mob football there are very few rules.

The game of  mob football did not originate in Sedgefield and it is not the only place where the game is played. It is a very old sport, however, and there is a rather nasty legend that states the game was originally played with the head of a Danish Prince who had once ruled England, but had been deposed and beheaded.

 Mob football can have any number of players and it is not a team sport. In fact the game can get so rough that in the past people have been known to loose their lives during play.  Apparently in 1,280, and then again in 1,320 some players had fatal accidents because they were carrying sheath knives while playing.

Traditionally mob football can be played on any bank holiday, including Christmas and New Year and other places where you can witness a game include Ashbourne in Derbyshire and the Orkney Islands, where it is known as the Ba Game.

The Hands Resist Him

It appeared on eBay in 2,000. The sellers claimed it was a haunted painting and it was an instant eBay hit. The listing had over 30,000 page views and the winning bid was for a staggering $1,025. Rather a lot of money for a painting that was found discarded behind a brewery. The Hands Resist Him is now one of the most famous haunted paintings in the world, and this is regardless of the fact that is would appear that it is nothing more than a normal painting with an unusual theme. Hype sells and some people just cannot resist getting their hands on something that is believed to have a supernatural bonus thrown in for free: The Hands Resist Him, a Lesson in Hype.

Cursed Painting: The Crying Boy

Back in the1980s pictures of The Crying Boy were a very popular thing to have hung on your wall. Then something strange emerged. It was noticed that a lot of houses that had a Crying Boy in them were burning down. In nearly every case the picture survived the blaze: The Curse of the Crying Boy Painting.

The 27 Club

Apart from singing, what do Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix have in common? I'll give you a clue, they share it with Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.

Any idea?

The all died when they were twenty-seven-years-old: The 27 Club.

A Short History of The Ritz Cinema

The Ritz cinema at Thirsk was built in the middle of the 19th Century and began its life as a Mechanic’s Institute, but by 1912 Mechanic’s Institutes were pretty much a thing of the past and Walter Power renamed the building The Picture House and began showing silent movies, which soon became known as ‘Powers’ amongst the local community: A Short History of Thirsk's Ritz Cinema.