So this did seem like a bit of a waste of time at first. JimFred initially told me that the “point” of the site was a bit unclear, and I had to agree. But yesterday I poked around again for the first time in a while and started to get the hang of the site.
I found $5 new in my paypal account yesterday from Swagbucks. I decided that, if I could get away with a very small investment, I would give You-Cubez a real go, just so I could understand it. Well it turns out the minimum to put into the site is £2, which, yesterday, was $3.12. Not bad, let’s see what I found out.
I’ll start at the beginning. The gimmick. Ads (links) embedded in colourful, customizable 3-D cubes, listed 10x10 per page. Click a cube, go to the page. The most “valuable” cubes are the ones on the first page (more specifically, the top left cube is the most valuable).
If you don’t feel like investing, or reinvesting once you’ve made some money, then this site is nothing more than a lame PTC. The vast, VAST majority of the cubez don’t give you anything for clicking.
You have “cash cubez” that become clickable occasionally when the coin logo appears on it. Like any PTC, you click the cube (ad) and view a site for a certain amount of time to get some money. Except the money here is between 0.5p and 0.25p ($0.01 to $0.005), and this used to be once, maybe, per day. Recently, they’ve added 15 or so “budget cubez” that you can click twice per day, but they offer even less cash per click (roughly $0.0004). So it’s still not a very good PTC.
So how have they survived? Well the lure is part investment opportunity, part cheap ad space, both of which are fighting for dominance in my head right now.
You see, you can buy a brand new cube, from the site, for £1. It starts on the very last page (since it’s only valued at £1). Now you have an ad for you site, all be it a hard to find one, for 1 year, for really cheap. But how do you get the ad higher on the list, and therefore, more noticeable (and get yourself more traffic)?
Well since the cubes are listed in order of “value”, you need to add value to your cube. You can do this by earning “cube funds”. It’s basically fake money that you can buy or earn, and then add onto your cube, effectively raising it’s status and position in line to the top. (Note: you can’t buy cubez with cube funds, only increase the value of cubez you already own) Also, you can’t cash out cube funds. How do you earn it though? Click 100 standard (non-cash) cubes per day. It’s actually way easier than it sounds, since you don’t have to wait for a window to load before you click the next cube. (I usually click 15 at a time, and then close them all when they’re done loading.)
So that’s how you get a cheap ad and make it more prominent. But where’s the investment? Well you can sell you’re cube (and therefore your position on the cube list) to other members. Currently I have a cube for sale on page 9 for £15. I originally bought it for £2 (on page 10), then added to its value twice. I might be asking too much for it, but whatever, I’m still learning.
Now I should make one thing clear. A cubes “value” and what it will sell for, are two very different things. I bought my cube for £2, but its “value” was £233.
So what do I have now that I didn’t have before? Well I have a cheap ad for my blog that’s good for a year, if I don’t sell it. I received 12 hits within the first hour or so… I’m sure no one stayed more than 20 seconds, but whatever. I’ve also added “value” to my cube, and put a for-sale sign on it right away. If it sells, I’ll lose my ad, but I’ll have earned a profit. Maybe I’ll buy two different ones instead and cash out the difference. It’s a fun experiment even if it doesn’t go anywhere, and it all only cost me $3.12.
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