Dec 22 2008
Bukisa - a Scam?
There is a new get-paid-to write site that came up. I have been receiving so many invites to join the site. I have received these invites from my Triond writing mates, claiming that you get to earn much faster at Bukisa than Triond.
I am very careful now with joining new writing sites, especially after my experience with Neowide, remember? I do not want to be in a situation whereby I write so many articles for them and they don’t pay a single cent. The first thing I noticed was the fact that the minimum payout is $50. Wow! That is a lot of money to accumulate. They pay on a pageview basis as well, similar to Triond.
But there is something that actually prevents me from joining it - the referral system. It is based on a pyramidal structure. It means that the more people joining the site under you, the more you will earn from their writing. You get a cut from their earnings. Pyramid structures have crumbled before. The only person profitting from this would be the one at the top.
In Triond, each for its own. There is no referral system at Triond. You write and you earn from your writing alone. You become responsible for all your pieces and answerable to your earnings. If your writing is lousy or you don’t write as much, you will earn less. If you don’t promote your articles, you get less pageviews and less earnings. That’s it. But on the positive side, if you write wonderful articles that gets the attention of many people, you will also find your earnings increase accordingly. For me, I prefer a simple structure I can trust. The more complicated it is, the more things they are trying to hide from you. So you have got to be very careful!
Hmm, thanks for letting me know. I published over 7 articles there and I made sure I didn’t sign up under anyone’s name since I happened to figure out the scheme right away.
It’s Chef Lauren by the Way from Triond
I absolutely agree on caution with this site. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a scam, but the high payout and the heavy emphasis on referrals are not good signs. Referrals are obviously supposed to make up for the difficulty of getting payout with just page views, and will lead to the same kind of overenthusiastic recommending that sites like Yuwie inspire. If the only way you’re going to make real money is through referrals, then you’re going to do a lot of spamming and friending to get them. There have already been reports of heavy plagiarizing there also, another bad sign. People should take a closer look at the TOS and how much control they have over their material–none.
BTW, you’ve been chosen to receive the prestigious Lemonade Award. See
http://shakespearemom.today.com/2008/12/23/have-some-lemonade/
I found your blog through Shakespearemom and thought I’d check it out. I’ve signed on with Triond a month or so ago and still haven’t posted anything but poems so far.
I’ve been considering Review Stream, but didn’t know they paid less than $2 under any circumstance…last night I signed up with LetterRep, a site that pays you to write letters for people.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and great site!
Hi ShakespeareMom,
Thank you for the award! I still have not figured how to add the logo.