Paid-To-Click sites

The internet offers a lot of work opportunities for freelancers. Web marketing, web development and web optimization are the rapidly growing areas of services. One particular aspect of web marketing is online advertising. Online advertising is the creation of advertising campaigns to get the attention of the potential customers to certain products and services that Internet companies offer.

Paid-To-Click (PTC) marketing has earned the interest of many online advertisers today. A PTC site is a profit sharing online advertising business company that pays its members to visit an advertiser’s website. PTC sites allow advertisers to reach their target customers.

A PTC site guarantees traffic to advertisers’ website through the link it provides. A member is a registered user who clicks on the links provided by the PTC site. An advertiser, in return, purchases a required number of clicks from the PTC site.

Members will earn money by clicking and viewing those advertisements for a required period of time. In a day, a member may click a particular advertisement only once. 

Members can also earn through referrals which can either be a direct referral or referral for rent. A direct referral is a registered user joining under your account. Direct referrals can be a friend, an officemate, or a relative, who do not share the same Internet access with you. A referral for rent, on the other hand, is a registered user who has no referrer and is set by PTC site for rent.

Another way for members to generate income is to pay a specified amount to the PTC site to upgrade their membership. Upgrading a user’s membership means a registered user can get more ads to click, can earn a higher amount of pay per click and get a higher commission for referral clicks.

PTC sites pay their members for each website they personally view and for each website their referrals view. Payment requests can be made when members reach the minimum payout and are processed through a payment processor, such as Alertpay and PayPal. Minimum Payout is the required minimum amount specified by PTC sites before a member can request for a cashout.

In joining PTC Sites:

• You need a personal computer with internet access to perform your online activities.

• You must have a valid email address to use when you sign up to a PTC Site and for payment processor. You can sign up and create an email address from any free web based email such as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail. You can sign up for FREE on a payment processor, like AlertPay or Paypal Account to receive/send payments.

• Visit PTC websites and register for a FREE account to become a member. You will need to provide your username and password. A username is the same as the account name or login name. A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication to prove identity or gain access to a resource.

• Login to your account and look for a link like “SURF ADS”, “VIEW ADS”, “VIEW EARNINGS” or “EARNINGS AREA” to start clicking. In viewing, you need to wait for the confirmation that it is completed, like a ‘done’, check mark or ‘$’, to appear before closing the advertisement. Make it a daily habit to log in to your account and click links until you have reached the minimum payout.

• Build your own downline by getting referral under you or by paying to rent referral from PTC sites. To have more earnings is to have more active referrals who habitually click their advertisements. Remember that once your downline starts building, your earnings will increase.

• When minimum payout is reached, you can request for cash out. While some PTC sites can process cash outs instantly, other sites will require a specific period of time to process cash outs. Cash outs can be credited to your payment processor account. You may withdraw your money through check or through bank transfer subject to the payment processor guidelines.  

• Remember that you need to register and become a member to numerous PTC sites to maximize your collective earnings.

Because of the success of PTC sites, there are fraudulent PTC sites which are now populating the internet. To avoid being scammed, it is important to take note of the following measures:

1. There are sites available in the Internet which provides PTC blacklist or scam list. If you are to become a member for a PTC site, make sure that the PTC site is not blacklisted.

2. Signing up for a PTC site is for FREE. If a PTC site requires a fee for its membership, it is definitely a scam.

3. Lastly, you need to check the pay rates of a PTC site. Normally, PTC sites pay the amount of $ 0.02 per click. If a PTC site offers $1 or more per click, be very suspicious and investigate about this PTC site.

The PTC business calls for a greater degree of alertness from people who are interested to make money out of the PTC sites. A registered member must never spend too much money in one PTC site by purchasing referrals and upgrading membership. Because fraudulent PTC sites can disappear overnight, it is smart to be always on guard about the money you earn and spend in PTC sites.

(Amante B. Carreon is a senior manager for Information Technology of Manabat Sanagustin & Co., CPAs, a member firm of KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International, a Swiss cooperative.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of Amante B. Carreon and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG in the Philippines. For comments or inquiries, please email [email protected] or [email protected]).