Looks like the FreeRide Magic Bus got a flat tire. At least they are upfront about their current situation. Personally, I appreciate the honesty.

The following is posted at their website:

Since 1995, FreeRide has attracted more advertisers than virtually anyone else on the Web, because we've been able to deliver the one thing they want most: you.

FreeRiders account for nearly 2 million sponsor site visits every day. And since the launch of The Magic Bus, each of those visits is lasting an incredible average of over 4 minutes.

Unfortunately, even the best audience on the planet can't attract sponsors that aren't there. Just when you're lining up to give Web advertisers more of your time and attention, they're cutting back drastically on advertising spending. So, in order to guide our favorite site through this belt-tightening phase on the Net, we've decided to make some temporary changes.

We're sorry to say Destination Points will be closed until further notice. The Magic Bus remains open, but we've temporarily cut back the awards. Now you can get points for riding The Bus for up to 30 minutes, and for clicking on up to 20 hitchhikers a day.

This is a great time to look into the many other ways to get FreeRide points. You'll find different Point Works and Shop-O-Rama deals featured every time you return to our redesigned Home page. Do your holiday shopping in Shop-O-Rama and pick up tons of points! Along the way you could get lucky and win the Grab A Cab Daily Sweeps. To enter, just follow the Featured Sponsor banners marked by our cab.

Finally, stay tuned for the terrific new features that we'll launch in the coming weeks and months. We're now focusing on some of the biggest names in traditional advertising, those who are ready to reach out to the 60
million who surf the Web every day.

With an audience like you, we can't lose.

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Addicted to airline miles? Check out: The Airline Mileage Workshop

I, too, appreciate their honesty, but Freeride seems to be going through business plans about as quick as any other online operation.

Check out bigwords.com : BIGWORDS.com succumbed Friday, October 20th to the powers that be. BIGWORDS was the number one online textbook retailer, with over 800,000 unique visitors per month, and around $14M in sales.

ARGH!

And I like FreeRide!

I hope things improve!

It still seems possible to get about 100 points a day from Freeride - 20 on Search, 15 from the 30 minutes on the Magic Bus, and another 50 or so from Hitchhikers.

By the way, has anyone ever gotten the Bonus Hitchhiker they mention for 50 points?

I believe that is a misprint. It should be bogus hitchhiker, as in nonexistent.

Not true..

I have picked up bonus HHs twice (50 pts each).

Alas, they seem to have cut back on those as well..

The site is not worth my time anymore...

I have also seen and clicked on Bonus Riders frequestly. I have seen the 50 point bonus several times, a coupla 30 point bonuses and even a 20 point bonus.

Another 3 days and still no bonus hitchhiker. To those of you who have gotten it, is there something special one needs to do?

I do not do anything special. All I do is crank up the Magic Bus when I am at home going through e-mail.

I make sure to click on each and every hitchhiker, and after three hitchhikers, I click on a different ad to bring up the next three.

I do not get bonus riders every time I do this, but I do get them with some semi-regularity.

You get three hitchhikers per site and the bonus hitchhikers are usually the third one. I usually click on the first two and pass on the third one unless it is a three.

By the way, it looks like 115 to 125 points a day is what I'm getting. Does everyone know about the "flashing yellow lights"? You can click on them 15 times a day for thirty points. I just cram the bottom of the freeride page onto the bottom of my screen so its there (like now) and when the lights start flashing....I click. Oops....just earned two more points.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've been going to a new site after each hitchhiker. So now I'll try to stay on one till I get all three and let you know how it works.

Things are not that great at FreeRide. From a friend of mine who is employed by Freeride...

"They just laid off 45 employees. Morale is not good." This was back around Oct. 19th. There are other problems that I wouldn't feel comfortable elaborating on but most of the layoffs were CSR/Administrative types.