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.