Is Readbud Legit? The Jury is Still Out . . .

Update 12/9/10: Red Alert! Readbud IS a SCAM! It’s official - see PTC Investigations for full report.

Update 10/8/10: Readbud links removed as I no longer recommend Readbud.

I signed up for Readbud April 26, 2010. Initially I was earning over $1 each day reading articles based on my chosen interest categories. In mid-May, the Readbud blog announced an upcoming system expansion that was to include a new way to earn money and rewards, such iPhones and Xbox. On June 24, Readbud announced an infrastructure relocation to the US. On July 27, Readbud announced that the previously touted expansion was on hold until further notice, due in part to the infrastructure relocation. On Aug 22-26, Readbud underwent an extensive server upgrade. During these months, the number of articles available to me each day decreased significantly – some days just a few, some days none at all. I stuck with the program hoping things would improve after the move. Well, guess what?

No Improvement in Sight
It’s been nearly a month since the server upgrade was finished. Instead of an increase in articles each day, I’ve dropped from three to two. Hmm. Beings you have to earn $50 to reach payout, it’s going to take a while! In my post one week ago, I estimated reaching payout in 5-6 weeks based on an earning rate of 15-20 cents/day. Well, as of Tuesday, my available articles have dropped to just two and my average earnings are now 13 cents/day. I still may make payout in 5-6 weeks since I only need $4.45 more – unless they drop the articles to one or even zero. Can this happen? It rather looks that way.

Does Readbud Purposely Delay Payment?
My family kindly calls me tenacious for not throwing in the towel. What they really mean is obsessed but I’ll take tenacious any day. Anyway, I’ve gotten a couple of them on the bandwagon here. My DH and SIL both joined when I did but grew tired of the site glitches and slow earnings within a few days or weeks. Well, they’re both now active again. What better way to test if Readbud purposely delays payment than to compare their current experience to mine? One had earned under $5 and the other under $20. Guess what? They’re both earning over $1 each day by reading 15-19 articles. Hmm. And I only get two? What’s up with that? So we’ll see how it goes. They both predict my number of articles will drop to zero so that I can never reach payout. I predict that one of them will soon see a decrease in articles (at around $25) and the other will still have many each day.

So is Readbud Legit?
Only time will tell. If I do reach payout and actually see $50 deposited into my PayPal account, we’ll know that Readbud is legit to a point. But if Readbud purposely delays payment through lack of opportunity to earn, aren’t they actually a scam? Some would argue so, myself included. Luring participants with no intention of actually paying qualifies as a scam, right? Just because the mechanism by which non-payment is achieved is through participant opt-out due to difficulty and/or frustration is irrelevant. So once again, I’ll keep you posted as time goes by. I’m keeping stats on the number of articles and total earnings each day for the three of us and am anxious to see how this unfolds over the next several weeks.