Beginner's Guide To "Get Paid To" Programs

If you are looking for serious income, then investing, web entrpreneurship, freelancing or gambling may help you achieve your dream. Some lucky and comitted people even succeed to become incredibly rich by any of these activities.

If you need to make just few extra bucks, don't have special skills or don't want to do anything challenging or risky, there is a bullet proof option for you. "Get paid to" (GPT) programs give everyone (and I mean really everyone) with a computer and internet connection to earn some extra money doing really easy things. Sounds interesting? Read the disclaimer before going further:

Disclaimer

When something is easy and everyone can do it, it's not too profitable. "Get paid to" programs are by no means a big earner. Depending on what programs you find and how much time you devote to them, you will earn from "few bucks" to "make living" (at best). The bottom line is that all you risk with is your time. No other money making activity can offer you such an easy and risk-free method to profit.

Sub-disclaimer: There are many scams in the GPT business. They won't cost you money (unless you are dumb enough to sign for a paid GPT program), but may have you work for free. Nothing in life is really risk free. But do you really call clicking on banners or reading mails "work"?

So What Are Get Paid To Programs And Who Runs Them?

The real GPT programs are free to join and offer you opportunities to earn money by clicking on links, reading emails, signing up in websites, surfing websites, typing, chatting, posting on forums, filling surveys etc.

What's the deal of a such program owner? Usually they use your action to sell advertising with questionable quality but low price. Some use the work of their "employees" to give life to forums, dating sites and social networks so these sites can later attract geniune users and advertisers (since no one wants to join an empty network site). The paid survey programs usually sell the data to market research companies. There are also companies which pay you to surf websites. Your "surfing" is sold as traffic to webmasters.

Some of the business of such programs is of very questionable quality while other (like surveys) is just fine. In both cases however there is nothing illegal or gray unless of course the service does not pay you as promised.

Types Of GPT Programs

The niche of GPT programs is quite big although the amount of money rolling in it is probably not that impressive. Some types of GPT programs can actually make more serious money while most bring just pennies. Anyway, here are the most common types of GPT programs that you can find online:

Paid to click (PTC). You get paid to click on ads. Usually the pay is from $0.001 to $0.01. Very hard way to earn money. It's understandable, because the advertisers who buy suck clicks have very little conversion if any at all.

Paid to surf (PTS). These GPT programs should not be confused with the "autosurf" pyramid schemes. In PTS programs you don't need to "invest" any money. You get paid to surf websites. Usually the payment rates are similar to PTC programs

Paid to read emails (PTR) These programs usually pay much better than PTC and PTS - 5 - 20 cents per email. But they usually send only few emails per day. Still if you sign up for 10 such programs and read all the mails you could eventually make $100 or so per month. Slightly better than the previous two types

Paid to take surveys. Taking paid surveys is a serious business but unfortunately there are many fraudulend companies which will ask you for sigup fee and then don't pay you for takign the surveys. It's possible to make living from legit surveys because they are really useful for the adverisers. However very often the survey companies won't accept you if you are not USA citizen.

Paid to type (PTT) These programs involve actual work and real payment, just like the paid survey programs. You are given simple typing jobs (filling forms, schedulers etc) and get paid reasoinably low but much better than PTC, PTR and PTS programs. Unfortunately finding real PTT programs with available positions is not very easy.

Paid to shop (Mystery Shopping Jobs).
These are supposed to be great way to make money and to let you earn by shopping. Supposingly the companies who pay for that are doing it because they want to research what people are shopping, eating at restaurants etc. Unfortunately the things which are too good to be true, usually are not. Most of these programs are scams and the few that are real will just pay you pennies. It's unlikely that you would make good money this way.

"Get paid to" programs are a way to make some extra money for investing if your regular income only covers your expenses. With some luck and hard work you could make living by GPT, but that would probably be quite miserable. Consider GPT as an option, but don't rely on such programs to feed you and your family.

Published at Jun, 03 '09 , Read 2018 times.

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