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Two days ago I mentioned some recent changes in Neobux that have made me rethink my strategy. These changes are, in the long run, going to prove beneficial – not just to me, but to all users. Today and last night I began to implement some aspects of my new strategy.

How I Solved My Neobux Dilemma

In the previously mentioned blog post I discussed two possibilities with regard to my next referral rental, which took place last night. When it came time to rent more referrals, I was at $17 plus some change in my Neobux account. I needed $21 to rent 100 referrals. I decided not to do that because based on my daily average earnings after necessary investments I have to wait two days to make the rental. I reasoned it is better to rent fewer today than to wait and rent more later. Here’s why.

Each day you wait you lose more referrals. I’ve been losing from 5 to 20 referrals each night on recidivism. That is, unproductive referrals that aren’t worth renewing. I just let them expire.

Referral recidivism costs money. First, I have to pay .02 for each referral that expires. Plus, those referrals aren’t active enough to maintain a minimum level of productivity to remain profitable for me. No profit means a loss of earnings. Plain and simple.

Since I had lost over 100 referrals in the last week and found myself down below the 500 referral mark again, I needed to get those numbers back up. Plus, and this is a very important principle, the more referrals on the roster then the more likely I am to get more ad views and therefore more earnings. Again, plain and simple.

This is the bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush principle. You are better off renting 3 or 10 or 20 or 70 today than waiting and renting more tomorrow or the next day.

Something Else I Did Last Night

In addition to renting referrals last night, I decided to take advantage of the new Neobux referral schedule. The first step to that was to lower my minimum required ad views for referral productivity from 1 ad view per day on average to .9 ad views per day on average.

Based on the numbers I decided that each referral needed to have a minimum of .7 ad views per day to stay profitable. But if I rent all referrals for 30 days then history has shown that referrals are likely to fall below that by the end of the month, especially if they start out the month with less than 1 ad view per day. The historical pattern for me has been for rented referrals to lose interest over time and view ads less and less often. Productivity declines over time.

However, as an aside, I’m learning that rented referrals have distinct individual ad viewing habits so I admit that I need to spend some time studying these and analyzing them for best practices.

Nevertheless, based on the above-mentioned historical patterns and the new Neobux changes, I went ahead and lowered my standards. What that did was widen my pool of rented referral renewals. Last night I was able to renew 11 referrals for 15 days each.

Why 15 Days?

The importance of 15 days cannot be overstated. The cost to rent 1 referral for that length of time is 11 cents. So I saved a lot of money by doing it that way. Previously, I’d have rented them for 30 days because that would have been the least amount of time I could have rented for according to Neobux’s rental policy. At 21 cents per referral for that 30-day time period, it would have cost me $2.31. As it was, it cost just $1.21.

This rate is a full half penny and a half difference over a 15-day period. That’s not a lot but when you figure that over multiple referrals, it can add up.

The night before last I actually did rent a referral for a longer period of time. I rented 1 referral for 90 days and 4 referrals for 15 days. I decided not to do that every night at this stage as a Neobux member because I need to preserve some of my earnings for renting new referrals.

Tonight, I renewed 2 referrals for 15 days and 2 referrals for 30 days. I think 30 days is the max that I want to go until I become more profitable.

Where Do Neobux And I Go From Here?

So what’s next? Honestly, I’m not sure. I have two goals.

• First, increase my number of referrals overall and become more profitable.
• Keep my costs down.

The challenge will be to realize both of these goals on a week by week basis, particularly since there are factors that are unpredictable. I can’t determine how many referrals will be productive each day. But there is one bright spot: I do not have to recycle referrals as often as I used to.

At one time I thought I needed to recycle referrals every 4 days. Based on numbers, that might have been reasonable. But now I can go up to 8 days. Tonight, for instance, I recycled 11 referrals that had not viewed any ads at all since August 19. If they had all viewed 4 ads today then that would have put them on a .5 ad view per day per average track – too low to maintain long term profitability. If they were to view 4 ads tomorrow then they’d have a daily average of .44 ad views, which is well below the profitability line. They needed to go.

By keeping referrals longer I think I won’t have to recycle as many referrals over the long term. Since I started recycling a week ago, I went from recycling 11 referrals on August 20 to recycling only 1 on August 25. I didn’t recycle any last night as a cost cutting measure, but I went back to recycling 16 tonight.

When I recycle, I look for referrals that have gone at least 8 days with no ad views and that have less than .9 ad views on average. I also recycle those with the lowest average first while keeping within a budget of less than 80 cents per day (tonight was an exception that I thought I could afford).

By maintaining the standards laid out in this blog post I hope that I’ll be able to rent 100 new referrals each week – or, at least, to rent more referrals than I lose to recidivism. The goal is to increase more than I decrease.

What do you think? Are you a Neobuxer? Do you have your own strategy for renting referrals and recycling? If you’re not a Neobux member, I’d invite you to become one.