Author Archives: Juan Valencia

Bitcoins, Cryptocurrencies, and the PTC Systems

I think by this point about everybody tryinig to make a living online thanks to the PTC Systems have heard the word Bitcoin, and many persons surely have looked into it, into What are Bitcoins, How are Bitcoins generated (most probably because of an interest to generate some of them), How to receive Bitcoins, How to acquire Bitcoins, among other things. At this very moment the PTC networks are getting kicked out of PayPal, so I think it is fair to assume that most, if not all, are looking into cryptocurrencies as an alternative. The question for us as both users and advertisers is then, are we prepared?

Bitcoin

Don’t wait for the change to happen, be part of the change

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to imagine a future based on cryptocurrencies for the systems that we are currently handling. Bitcoin (BTC) may be the first, and the most expensive out there, but it is no longer the only highly valued one, we have Ethereum (ETH), we have Dash , Litecoin (LTC), Unobtanium (UNO) and a large large variety of them. These Cryptocurrencies offer us a possibility that was unthinkable before: To exchange value outside of a banking system.

Are all of them worthy?

The thing is, we don’t know. Not even Bitcoin was a safe bet back when it all began, although some of us saw a lot of potential in it.

Of what depends whether a cryptocurrency will be worthy or not?

On its acceptance. On whether people want to have it or not, and I mean, want it enough to give up something else of value in exchange for them.

A cryptocurrency is no different than a normal currency in this regard. For the currency of where you live, you are willing to give up a very large amount of your time. But you do it because you know that you get things from others who also value it about as much as you do. The government regulates how much is the value of the currency.

Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies are different in this regard, no government is determining how much it is worth, it is pure offer and demand. In order for it to work, the system had to be made solid enough that somebody with a bad intention can take it down by exploiting an error in the system. Once the system is strong enough to withstand attacks, then the value is whatever people is willing to give up for it.

Cryptocurrency Hoarders

Except for Bitcoin, we are at the stage in which people is hoarding as much of their favourite cryptocurrency, just hoping that one of them will see the same rise that Bitcoin saw and still seeing, but not many businesses or services are actually accepting them.

But if the cryptocurrency doesn’t begin to be accepted in a variety of services, or by people selling a variety of products, then these people will simple have a “wallet” full of said cryptocurrency that they can not use to buy anything.

And this is the destiny that awaits many of the current wave of cryptocurrencies, whether they are willing to accept it or not.

Should you try or not then?

I think you should, just don’t put your entire future in just one cryptocurrency, don’t put your entire life-savings on anything; only put on it money that you can spare and that you can live without.

Even in Bitcoin, I see quite a lot of very sucessful years ahead, but I think it may come to a point in which it develops some problems, it is way beyond the scope of this article to treat them, but it is about whether it can handle a very very large amount of small transactions. The cost of transferring Bitcoins has started to be noticeable; in a few years, with a much larger user base, I am curious about how is it going to work.

We recently have a new development in Bitcoin, in which two attemps at solving this issue went head to head. They were not compatible, and Bitcoin split in two: Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash. I may cover this in a different article, or a different website, but the point I am trying to make here is that issue arise, and solutions come, but it is hard to predict what they will be or how they will play out.

Nothing last forever

We don’t have anything to put value into, that is sure to still be operational in 50 years. But Bitcoins may, in fact, become a currency used by very large scale transactions between countries. And it is scary to think about it, because there are some users that have been hoarding this since the very beggining. I think this calls for a good assesment and analysis of the blockchain, and being honest, I would bet that some organizations and governments have already done it extensively and are very likely trying to associate the wallets with the most bitcoins to the persons who own them, to either take them, or control them.

ClixSense will no longer be a PTC platform

When ClixSense was started it was nothing but a PTC system. Across the years it added more and more ways of making money: Surveys, Offers, Tasks, the ClixGrid game, plus it had up to 8 levels of referrals if you were into building your downline to reach your finantial freedom.

But, if you have been using ClixSense since PayPal stopped working with them, then you also noticed the huge reduction in the ammount of PTC Ads available. There used to be quite a lot to look at, but nowadays there are just a very small number of them, some times the 4 Ads that you can click every day (here anyway) outnumber the number of paid Ads to watch.

Which lead to the decision of ClixSense of stop working as a PTC system. It was one of the best at this, but now it does not make any finantial sense for them to continue. Not to mention that in the PTC world the scams abound, so many people just want to take your money and run away with it. Situation that lead to the creation of this website in the first place.

But ClixSense is not closing, it still has a very active community, and it has become one of the largest Survey systems online. It is still a network to trust that pays what it says that it will pay, and the change, although radical, I agree that it is necessary.

So, what are the changes?

I’ll only resume the changes as I am about to travel so I am in a rush. The changes become effective after July 17th.

  • PTC ads will be removed.
  • ClixGrid will be removed.
  • Premium upgrades and the corresponding 8-level commission structure, removed. Instead of this only the direct referrals count, but the commissions that you get from them goes up significantly. If you have a Premium membership you will get whatever is left of it refunded, all members are now equal.
  • Minimum cashout for all members is $10.00
  • Affiliate commissions upped to 20% for all members.
  • Checklist bonus will now pay a maximum of 10% if all requirements met.
  • Any remaining Ads of ClixGrid credit that you have after the change on July 17th will be refunded.
  • There are new banners and Splash pages

EasyHits4U gets PayPal available for buying services and subscriptions

Besides being a good Traffic Exchange, EasyHits4U has some very good tools to do our marketing, in particular the Easy Splash Builder is fantastic. It was a terrible hit to lose the ability to pay for those services utilizing PayPal. But it is back. Cashouts are not possible via PayPal and I don’t think they will ever be back.

As I have already mentioned, if you are looking to make a massive amount of cash quickly, EasyHits4U is not what you are looking for, it would take an obscene amount of active referrals to do such a thing out of EasyHits4U alone.

However, I love this Traffic Exchange due to its huge number of active members which is constantly growing, its nice gamification features to make it a bit more interesting, and its very practical tools; tools that you can use to make yourself nice and very easy to make landing/splash pages, which you can then use in every other Ad Network or Traffic Exchange that you participate in.

EasyHits4U is the place to test your campaigns. If you accumulate enough credits, for either Landing Pages, Banners or Textual Ads, you can do some good A/B testing (where you take two versions of your Ad, split the credits between both of them, and see which one gives better results/more clicks. More on this is coming in a future article).

I have gotten myself referrals for quite a variety of other networks utilizing EasyHits4U, including ClixSense, NeoBux, BTC Clicks, and to Bitcoin Faucets such as BonusBitcoin.co, Freebitco.in and Moonbit.co.in . I am not saying that if you just hang out in there their landing page you will automatically get referrals. It can work like that, but it is extremely uneffective, to the point that I would call it a waste of your credits.

I do make Splash Pages, I do use marketing strategies, I do A/B testing on the Splash pages and the Banners; but most of all, I have fun with it.

Of course it helps that I am a bit addicted to get credits, if I am free member I see 500 Ads, if I am Premium I see 750, if I am Ultimate I see 1,000. But I do it for fun and I don’t do it every day. In fact, I don’t do it if I am not planing to go all the way, because the nice rewards come in the lasts prices for seeing Ads. If you see 100 ads every day for 10 days, you will get a small fraction of what you would get if you see 1,000 in one day.

You can actually purchase 1 day of Ultimate if you have the credit. You get one day, see the 1,000 Ads after going to “settings” and selecting to save all the credits. It is an effective way to accumulate credits to play with.

The Most Popular Traffic Exchange

NeoBux losses Paypal

In my article of March 21, titled «NeoBux: What is coming» I talked about how the recent changes in PayPal were affecting the different PTC Networks, and that that policy change was very likely to reach also NeoBux at some point. Well, it happened. What is NeoBux’s response to the change?

This is serious. PayPal is no longer supported in NeoBux. There are no purchases, no deposits, and specially, no withdrawals via PayPal. PayPal is of course withholding all of the funds of NeoBux, and it will likely take a little bit of time and a lot of paperwork to release them.

July, 7th, NeoBux’s Admin wrote a post about the situation, you can read it full here: https://www.neobux.com/forum/?/3/630469/Regarding-PayPal/&vl=4FF22E3FB999B961D7F69C7B041F3E12

But the important points are that:

  • They will adapt and make the transition as smoothly as possible to the users.
  • No user will lose a single penny.
  • There will be no deductions of any kind.
  • Any and all limitations regarding PayPal such as the ones in the point 5.1 of their terms will be removed (more on that right after the list).
  • All Paypal buttons have been removed from the site.
  • The changes and adaptations will be fully implemented within the next weeks.

Withdrawals to some accounts, if you have never put funds into NeoBux from those accounts, is currently not possible, but they ask us to have a little patience, it is a huge huge change, but I believe that NeoBux has earned the trust of anyone using it seriously, they have a very sustainable business model, and I believe that they will adapt to this change.

The limitation in point 5.1 of their terms of service is that where you can only withdraw to an account as much as you have put into NeoBux from that account; except from your main account, where withdrawals are unlimited.

That limitation will be removed, so you can withdraw your funds to whichever account suits you best.

They mentioned in their announcement that users in NeoBux has already been moving away from Paypal as of late. Personally, I have been putting some funds into it from Skrill and withdrawing into Neobux, but with no limitation, I can just withdraw to Skrill as much as I want.

What did Paypal tell NeoBux?

Apparently there was a very bad PTC Network (no kidding, again, bad PTC Networks are the reason I created this website in the first place), and then Paypal, being your «Pal», decided to punish absolutely every single network that dealed with PTC. And Paypal doesn’t warn, they just close the accounts and lock the funds, then say something about they having a problem with you.

What do I expect of NeoBux now?

Only the best. I know that many people did not like NeoBux when they tried it, but here is the thing: Those users had absolutely no idea of how NeoBux works, they expected to open the account, put some funds on it, and see them magically grow.

I am sorry, but if you are going to put money on a system, and you will not even bother to learn anything about said system, you kind of have a problem.

But that is not you who is reading this, you are here after all, I think you are really trying to make a living and not looking for a magic fix to all of your economical woes, so kudos to you.

But I digress. NeoBux has a very viable and solid business model, and PTC Ads are not their only source of income. They have surveys, they have offers, they have tasks.

And their rented referrals system is nice. It takes ages to build, but it can grow to give you that finantial freedom that you seek. But the cost of it is your dedication, your constancy, and some of your time. If you have neither of them, then my advice is simple: do not join NeoBux.

BuxP and their response to losing Paypal

Every site that allows sharing revenue to its members has been getting hit by PayPal. It is not a very good “Pal”. BuxP also got the same threatment. At first they allow them to sell their services with PayPal, just to remove it from Cashouts. But then they changed their mind and completely banned BuxP. In BuxP words while trying to deal with PayPal:

settling a meeting with the U.S. President would have been easier than communicating with PayPal.

So now what?

BuxP has a variety of services that have good value, such as Facebook Likes, Google+ +1’s, YouTube video views. They have been working quite intense at adding new ways to pay for their services. They accept Payza and Bitcoin now, and are working to add Payoneer and Skrill but those are only ideas at this point.

PayPal accounted for about 95% of their income, it was a big hit for them and these days are not many Ads available to watch.

While Bitcoin is not yet implemented as a Cashout option, they do take Bitcoins and they are already encouraging people to add the Bitcoin addresses (have you get yours?) to their profiles.

Footnotes

I hope that they make it through. As a way to support them I will be watching Ads there, joining things that I see promoted in there, and I’ll buy a couple of things from them, most likely with Bitcoin.

It is a matter of time before all PTC Services get hit by the restrictive PayPal policies. At the same time, Bitcoin reached today, 4th of May, a price of USD$1,500. I envision a future where this sort of services move more to Bitcoin. BuxP already takes it, and here I already wrote how to join the world of Bitcoin if you still haven’t join. While this site is not dedicated to cryptocurrencies, as the time goes they will become an important part of our world.


NeoBux: What is coming

If you are using NeoBux too, and you have been paying attention to what is happening in the PTC World, you know what is going to happen.

PayPal have been suspending the services to a variety of system with a Revenue-Sharing model. Of the main sites that I promote here, EasyHits4U was hit first by the policy change, and not long after ClixSense followed.

I think it is not unrealistic to expect that NeoBux will be hit at some point. So, how can you prepare?

Withdrawals

In the point 5.1 of their terms of service, NeoBux says: «You can only request an unlimited amount to be paid to the payment processor you’ve used to make the most of your purchases in monetary amount. The maximum amount you can request to the other payment processors is equal to the value of the purchases you’ve made through them individually.»

I asked NeoBux about what would happen if PayPal stops working and a user has PayPal as the primary payment processor. What would happen is that PayPal would then be out of the term 5.1, and the primary payment processor would become the next one that has been used the most.

Of course, if you have never used Payza, Skrill or NETELLER to fund NeoBux, then all three of them would be on equal grounds, and another point in their terms of service say: «In the event of equal most value of purchases between two or more payment processors you can make an unlimited payment request for each one that is part of the par.»

So there you have it. I got this from the answer I got when I asked the question, and knowing how NeoBux operates and how long they have been in their business, I think they would find a way for its users to be paid. Just as ClixSense did.

They offer a service, and there is a good use for it. I believe that as long as that is the case NeoBux will be around, and I can only believe that about NeoBux because of how long they have been operating.

The 9th anniversary

NeoBux was started on March 25, 2008. Normally, every anniversary they offer a promotion to either extend the rented referrals cheaper, or get the Golden membership and Golden Packs cheaper. It is usually the best to have some funds available to take advantage of this opportunities.

So now what?

I have some funding in my PayPal account and no issue with it, so if things go wrong there is always a possibility of helping people cashing out in alternative payment processors to exchange money and get it in PayPal. It would be an exchange.

Something that I strongly advice against, because in PayPal you can get money, and the person who sent you the money can cancel the transaction, leaving you with no recourse. But of course I have never done such a thing and I never will. The people who gets funds from me via PayPal because they generated that amount for me via ClixSense use have never lose the funds I send them, I still have the promotion going on but now it doesn’t include PayPal in the funding options.

ClixSense loses PayPal, gains Payoneer, Payza and Skrill

PayPal made a change in its terms of use that affects both the PTC networks and the Traffic Exchanges, and basically every system that allows revenue share among its members.

EasyHits4U got hit not long ago, but this time it was ClixSense who had its PayPal account blocked. They tried to deal with PayPal, and being that ClixSense is a legitimate business that has been operating without any problem for 7 years, one would think that they would find a solution, but they got cut anyway because PayPal can, at any time, change its terms of service and cut any service that doesn’t comply to the change without any recourse.

The answer by ClixSense has been nothing short of excellent. They informed the community of users (their forum is very active and the community is very helpful), and began working on alternatives. And now they are here.

ClixSense payment changes

Personally, I never really liked PayPal, I see it as a necessary evil that we have had to put up with because there were no other alternatives to the service they were providing.

However, that is not the case now. We have payment processors with a lot better options for their members; some that allow easy withdrawal to bank accounts, some that have a MasterCard available to use your funds. PayPal only allowed to pay for services that accept PayPal. With those cards you can do it anywere that accepts Mastercard, and use ATMs if you get the physical card.

To enable any of the alternatives in ClixSense you need to move the mouse over your name, and then click on “Profile and Settings”. In there you can select the method by which you desire to cash-out. I will make a very short introduction to them but there will be an article dedicated to every one of the different payment processors in the near future.

The new available alternatives are:

Payoneer

The minimum that you can cash-out via Payoneer is USD$20, however the minimum withdrawal from Payoneer to your bank account is USD$25. The fees to withdraw to a bank account varies by country, the full information is at https://www.payoneer.com/fees/

Also, the processing fee taken by Payoneer is USD$2, which means that if you want to receive money in your bank account, you should withdraw over USD$27, Payoneer will show that you have USD$25 and you can withdraw those. To be on the safe side, just cash-out over USD$30, then transfer to your bank account.

I will make a full post dedicated to the handling of Payoneer, I am not done experimenting with it as well as with other alternatives, that is why I haven’t really publish, but it is coming quite soon.

Payza

The minimum that you can cash-out with Payza is USD$6 as premium or USD$8 as normal user, and the fee taken by Payza is USD$1.34.

Payza allows many options to withdraw the funds, from a bank account, to even Bitcoins if you have made your Bitcoin wallet. But YOU MUST VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT TO WITHDRAW OR PAY. Otherwise you will have your funds, but you will not be able to use them.

Payza also will get its own post in the short future.

Skrill

The minimum that you can cash-out with Skrill is USD$6 as premium or USD$8 as a normal user, and the fee taken by Skrill is USD$0.36.

While Skrill allows you to withdraw to a bank account, Skrill has the option of getting a prepaid MasterCard so you can use your funds in normal stores, online, or you can get funds from an ATM.

And yes, Skrill will also get a dedicated post.

Footnotes

It takes a little time to finish a full run-down of the alternatives, plus moving money, plus withdrawing the money, plus sorting out all sorts of issues, but I am working on it. Once hat is done my expectation is to share anything I find here.

The world of PTC is changing, and it is growing. We are still afflicted by a massive massive number of scams and frauds, but some systems, one of them ClixSense, have shown their commitment to their user-base.

ClixSense is completely recommended, both to use, and to refer.

What happens to my promotion if you join under me?

That promotion where if you generate the cost of the premium membership for me I send you that via PayPal (after you send me an opinion about ClixSense) will be changed, but anyone who joined under me before the date that PayPal was lost, if you get to the USD$17 for me and you wish to have them on PayPal, you will get them there.

For the other systems I will probably let you choose which one you desire, of the ones available in ClixSense at the time you reach the threshold of USD$17 generated for me. I may even allow you to choose Bitcoin, only PayPal will not be available to chose if you joined ClixSense after PayPal terminated the service.

Only it will take the time to withdraw to it if I don’t have enough funds in the system that you desire (usually I have enough funds in ClixSense), and then transfer them to you, or I may withdraw directly to your address. We will work it out =)

Valentine’s promotion in NeoBux

NeoBux has added a little promotion to extend rented referrals for Valentine’s day, it is an extra discount when you extend them for a prolonged period of time.

  • 30 days: 8%
  • 60 days: 13%
  • 90 days: 20%
  • 150 days: 27%
  • 240 days: 32%

The promotions to extend rented referrals come from to NeoBux from time to time in special dates such as St. Valentine, Easter, Halloween and Christmas. It is a good strategy to acumulate some funds to extend and/or rent new referrals during those dates, as rented referrals are worth a bit more if the are extended for a long time. This year Easter is on April 16.

NeoBux has not been hit by the new PayPal policy as other networks such as ClixSense has, but I see it coming. I am working in a post about the different options and what we can do about it, I will only finish checking the different options and doing the math. I never really liked PayPal being from Mexico myself, but now we have plenty of options to it =), between them Bitcoin (learn about what it is and how to join right here).

Lets talk a little about investments

This is only a short post about the idea behind investing while I finish preparing the new material. I published all the other material on Bitcoins in anticipation of the change of power in the US, hoping that the information could help somebody.

The basic idea behind investing is that you acquire something, expecting it to grow in value in the future. Or at the very least, to not lose the value.

Growth Graphic

Money is a terrible investment. It is affected by regulations, the markets, the government, inflation, you name it. So the idea of saving money in the long term is a terrible idea. You can keep the money in your matress, or put it in a bank account, it doesn’t matter, it will be worth less if you just keep it.

So people buy other things in the belief that they will be worth more in the future. The best example of this is real-state; our planet has a limited amount of area, and we continue growing as a population. It is not difficult to see why is it a good idea to invest in real-state.

But one thing that we need to be careful about is about getting in debt to invest, because just as real-state may grow in value, so does the amount of money that you owe to a finantial institution, and some times that debt grows a lot faster than the value of real-state, plus some times the prices of real-state collapse, and your investment becomes a burden.

If the prices of real-state collapse but you own the real-state, you can just hold on to it for as long as it takes for the prices to bounce back. But for many people, that was not the case during the housing crisis; they got debt, they could not pay the debt, and they lost the property.

Diversify

Choosing where to put the money is one of the greatest challenges that we face. We can not simply take real-state and pay it full unless we are already wealthy; so we must look for alternatives. Smaller alternatives are in this case an alternative currency (like Euros or US Dollars), stock of a company, gold/silver, and nowadays Bitcoins. We also have the PTC sites as options.

All of those alternatives have risks. Investing in something is a little like betting. But it is not just risk, it can be calculated risk; you can do the numbers, you can see whether it is sustainable or if it will simply collapse.

Diversifying is a good strategy here. Nothing last forever, whichever option you choose carries a little risk with it, but if you have several options, the combination of them give you something, and if one goes down, you still have the others.

To end this, you need to be very very careful. In the world of PTC and that of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies there is an abundance of scams. They ask you to send them money on the promise that it will grow, but that is not what happens:

  • The first persons do get their money back, this is so they promote it to others.
  • After the first round of persons, people send their money in.
  • The people who made the scam run away with all the money.

I promote very little sites here, but those sites have without a problem send me the money or bitcoins when I request it. So that is where I put my money and my time. I put time in others, and I am close to test some other sites to see if they do pay me, but for now the list of sites is still the same:

And for the Bitcoin Faucets:

If you have a little money around, you can put it in Genesis-mining, that is the only cloud-mining Bitcoin platform that I trust at the moment, or it can mine other cryptocurrencies too. There is also an abundance of them, but it is hard to find one that is not a scam. This is the safest platform I know.

If you need a Bitcoin Address to receive the funds, I still recommend:



Another opinion about ClixSense

Some times I get busy in getting the opinions out, I get overwhelmed with other things, but I always pay the USD$17 as soon as the threshold is reached, that is never late because I check every day.

Anyway, I have been running that promotion where people who joins ClixSense under me, if they generate the cost of the premium membership for me as a Sponsor, I make sure they get that money in their PayPal accounts. They generated that, I think they should have it and I hope it motivates to be active. The original was in Spanish, this is a translation.

It’s great and is trustworthy
🙂
It gets me out of small hurries

I know it is a small promotion, but I’m doing the numbers to see how to make new ones. For the time being, this promotion became a permanent promotion. It changed in that instead of paying the premium for you, I give you the $17 so you can decide what to do with them.

ClixSense Banner

The offer is an exclusive offer the author of this article in PTC Secret when you follow my banner and join ClixSense under my account.