How do they work?
Briefly, a paid to surf program, pays you to let a window of your browser display some
webpages (that others have payed to advertise). The logic seems very simple.
With advertising being one of the most sold service on the internet, publishers and advertisers always struggle to find as many attractive ways as they can to sell their products or services, so the idea of paying visitors to watch specific websites (without even having to type the address) could work.
The down parts
The golden rule that applies for every method of making money online is that if something looks to good to be true it probably has some hidden aspects. The main thing that you should know is that every program like this has a limit of websites that you can visit a day so don’t think of quitting your daily job just yet, because the earnings you will get after going through this will be insignificant.
The only way to generate some revenue from this is to convince people to join that specific program as your referrals.
If you have a lot friends that are willing to try this you may consider giving it a try. To make a decent profit you must be able to convince at least 4 people to join that paid to surf program, and each one of them must be able to bring another 3-4 to sign under their name (depending on what paid to surf program you are using, you should be able to generate a profit of about 450-700 usd a month in this case); and you should be able to do this every month.
It is all based on a MLM system like Avon, Herbalife and pay per click programs.
Even if it may seem easy at a first glance, if you have been working in a similar system before you know that it is quite difficult to people that will be committed to the program and find others themselfs.
Things to be careful about
Be sure that you do a research to see what’s the reputation of the paid to surf program that you are considering joining. You can do this following the indications I gave in 6 things to check before joining a pay per click program article on this blog. In this case it is even more important to check those steps before joining a paid to surf program, especially because it involves downloading and installing specific toolbars which may contain viruses or trojans that can cause you a great deal of unpleasent surprises.
A little bit of history
Although I have heard a lot of people saying that this concept is quite new, it is not at all like that. Some time ago (in the 90’s) there was a company who made a lot of waves (the company name was AllAdvantage). There were a lot of people that made some decent money online with their aid, but in the end they went down, since they arrived to a point where they couldn’t pay their members.
Since than, there were many other smaller companies that appeared; some of them were able to stay in the business but most of them disappeared as quick as they appeared
My personal take on this
As far as I am concerned, I am not a big fan of anything that is based on a MLM system, mainly because eventually there will be a lot of people that will generate spam due to their desperate need to find more referrals and let’s not forget about mini-websites filled with overstatements, lies and fake testimonials telling users how rich they can get with their systems.
But again, if you are a “popular” person and know a lot of people, paid to surf programs could work for you.
Technorati: Paid to surf, Money online
