You might have come across an ad for EZ Bucks on your favorite social media platform like Facebook. It promises to give you a $35 bonus just for signing up plus more money for simply using the power of social media (whatever that means). Let’s take a closer look into this system.
12 Legit Online Jobs that Pay in 2020
EZ Bucks Review
EZ Bucks website claims that you will make money by simply sharing your referral link on social media platforms. Sounds simple enough, right? But how exactly will you be making money? Well, this is unclear from the website. This is the first red flag and it applies to EVERY single “Make Money Opportunity”. If they can’t easily explain how you’ll be making money, it’s probably because you won’t be making any.
There page also claims that you can get paid for installing mobile apps and answering simple surveys. This kind of sounds like Swagbucks which is a legit company. To be honest the whole idea of EZ Bucks sounds like a rip-off of Swagbucks. But let me assure you, these two websites are completely different and have nothing in common.
If you scroll down the EZ Bucks page you’ll see a bunch of “testimonials” from their “customers”. I put quotes around these two words because I suspect that these people do not exist and I know that these income claims are fake. You don’t have to believe my opinions this is why I would like to present some facts.
Here is the screenshot of a few Payment Proofs directly from EZBucks website:
You can use a free WHOIS lookup to see when the EZ Bucks domain name first registered:
So, the domain name was first registered on February 20, 2020. The “payment proofs” show dates of August 2019 and February 2019. So people got paid a year before the company even existed? The folks behind this “system” are so lazy they didn’t even bother to double check the dates on their fake income proof, but there is a reason for it.
Who ever is running EZ Bucks also run many similar sites with slightly different names: RewardDollars, SwiftBucks and others. All of these websites are almost identical. This means the fake proofs were created for the very first site and then have been simply copy / pasted to other sites. The main reason for running several websites is obvious.
As clients join such website, waste their time and end up not getting paid – they start complaining online. Soon enough the word gets around and the website loses its reputation. So the owner of the website creates a copy with a new name and starts all over again.
How Does EZ Bucks Operate?
So far EZ Bucks has quite a few red flags. They’re promising a 35$ sign up bonus. If you do sign up, they promise that you will make 40$ per every app you install, you will also earn $2 every time someone click on your link, $40 for every survey and so on. First of all these numbers are simply unrealistic.
Let’s look at the lowest number here: 2$ per click. If 100 of your friends simply click on the link, without signing up to anything or buying anything – you will earn $200. That’s what EZ Bucks wants you to believe. But where does that money come from? Thin air, yes. It doesn’t come from anywhere because that money does not exist and will not be paid to you.
Here is a comment left on the official EZ Bucks Instagram page:
This person complains that they have not been paid as promised by EZ Bucks. There were MANY other negative comments and complaints just a few days ago but it seems like they have all been deleted by EZ Bucks. I am sure that new complaints keep coming into that instagram page but the owners of the account obviously delete all the comments they do not like.
Here is the comment from Facebook (I am sure it will be deleted soon):
Just another victim who joined EZ Bucks but did not get paid.
Here are other comments about EZBucks that I found on Reddit:
As you can see, a customer qualified for a payout but never received a payment. So they tried to contact EZ Bucks through Instagram (because the contact form on their website obviously does not work) and they blocked this person. Does it still seem legit to you?
This particular comments leads us to a very interesting theory. EZ Bucks does not pay anyone simply because the money was never there. However, they still make you complete tasks and install apps. Some of these tasks require you to give them your phone number, email address, credit card numbers and other personal information. Is it possible that EZ Bucks then sells this personal information to scammers, spammers and other unethical schemes?
Similar Schemes
Here is an articled from the Better Business Bureau about a very similar system:
So if it really was a scam, how is it able to operate? The truth is taking a website down is a very difficult and long process. Most people who get scammed usually don’t end up filing official complaints with the authorities because they simply don’t want to admit that they fell for something like this. It’s understandable. Let’s imagine a scenario where A LOT of people actually do report an incident of getting scammed by a certain company or a website. After a certain amount of people complain, police might start an investigation.
Such investigations might take years to complete for several reasons. First of all it’s very hard to figure out who actually runs the site. The police will also need to find enough proof to qualify a site as a scam. Once this is done – the matter is submitted for a court hearing where a judge will make a decision.
Taking ANYTHING to court usually takes several months and even years. By the time a judge hears the case, that website probably scammed tens of thousands of people, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more and quietly shut down. It is unfortunate that it takes so long but that’s the sad truth. Scammers are NOT allowed to operate but they can easily do so for years, especially on a smaller scale.
Can You Make Money Online ?
The short answer is yes. All of my income for the past 13 years has been created online. I’ve used affiliate marketing as my main source of income. I’ve tried selling t-shirts online, my own products through Etsy and Amazon, I’ve tried filling out surveys and many many many other things along the way. You can even earn “easy money” but this usually means very little money.
I’ve used SwagBucks for a few weeks (maybe months?) and although it is a legit company, I decided it was simply not worth my time. Most of the time you would be able to earn a few bucks per hour, and there would only be enough tasks to work 1 hour per day. Another thing that I don’t like about these rewards sites is that normally you can’t actually cash out the earnings, you need to claim them in Gift Cards. I just logged into my SB account and it seems like I’ve claimed about $100 worth of Amazon gift cards from them, which is fine because I do shop on Amazon.
If you want to earn an actual income online you would need to put in the effort and time. There are no shortcuts to riches and easy ways to make money. You can start freelancing on sites like Upwork and Fiverr and get paid for design, copy-writing, proof-reading and so on. Your first gigs won’t pay much because you will need to build a reputation. You can also start an online business, which could be an ecommerce store, an affiliate website, a blog, a Youtube channel, etc. In this case you will also need to put in the effort, often for several months without seeing any income. It takes time and work.
Don’t forget to check out my very detailed article about 12 legit work-at-home opportunities in 2020.
