Get Paid to do very little
Written: Mar 08 '01
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The Bottom Line
You can earn money but it will take years!!!
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| Full Review |
I know I have already mentioned the Get Paid to Surf sites in my Online Perks opinion, but I thought I would try and expand upon them, as well as giving information on other ones I may have left out. I am sorry if this is in the wrong place, but there was nowhere else to submit it.
PaysU
PaysU.com was first formed in August 1999. It's a fairly new company, so it is experiencing its fair share of problems recently. I find that their payment rates are quite low to start with, but if you click the adverts then you can increase it gradually up to 30 p an hour, which is not too bad.
What I am going to do is give you what they have available. In addition, I will cover a few things that you need to be aware of, if you are going to maximise your return with them. To begin with you need to know that , PayStart, PaysBack, PaysMail and PaysPoints are subsidiaries of PaysU, and they are basically different ways that you can make money from the company, wither by surfing, setting PaysU as your home page, and various other methods, like advertising on your website.
PaysU calls their viewbar The PaysStation. The rate for September and October, when I was using it was a poor 12p an hour. I have received this rate by clicking on the "Alert" button when it flashes or on a banner when the "Green bar" on the viewbar begins to turn blue. PaysU advertises that with revenue sharing you may be able to earn up to 30 p an hour, as aforementioned They have generalised how to maximise the revenue sharing to simply stating that it is a combination of clicking on ads, spending money at an advertiser's site and the like. PaysU pays for a maximum of 40 hours per month, although when I first joined this figure was more like 75 hours, but they cannot afford this any longer.
The website is not bad, and the accounts page is pretty good, and it is run in a real time mode, whereby any changes are done immediately. I find this feature very useful, although they do seem to cut your hours short at times, especially if the viewbar crashes. The site is quite simple to navigate, And everything is clearly laid out. The FAQ section is particularly useful to me, and has all the answers you may want. They also have a newsletter sent out by email to members,, via which they tell you of any future changes to the service.
PaysStart
In addition to the PayStation, you earn every time that you open up your home page, if it is set to the address that you are given. They pay 55% of what they call their "distributable" site advertising. They will also pay you 20% for the visits made by your direct referrals and 10% for first level indirect referrals. They pay 5% up to the next three levels. You get for up to 20 times a day of opening the homepage, and they must be 10 minutes apart, to stop people abusing the system. This is not going to earn you big money, but every little counts!!!
Referrals
You get paid 2p per hour to a maximum of 10 hours per month for your direct referrals using the PaysStation. In addition, you get paid 1p per hour to a maximum of 10 hours per month for the next four levels of indirect referrals. They say you can earn up to like £1,000 a month, but I find this hard to believe, as it is unlikely that you will know 30 people who know 30 people who know 30 people and so on. They are just saying this to attract new members.
They had to recently reduce their referral payouts due to a large amount of cheating incidents in September. This is a shame, as I feel the majority of people do use these programs honestly. As a result of the cheating incidents, they lost one of their advertisers and have had to begin anti-cheating measures. I think that people doing this will eventually bankrupt the system, and I feel it is going to be very difficult for them to stop people referring themselves.
Overall, PaysU's viewbar has had it's share of problems connecting to the server, but this is a problem that I have noticed with a few other viewbars recently, including All Advantage in particular, which was down for ages. In addition, there have been some recent problems with the timer on the viewbar, as well as, a few other bugs. Hopefully they can get their act together and try and encourage new members to join, maybe by better payments for referrals or an advertising schemes. This is not a bad programme, but the incentive to surf for longer is simply not there.
Desktop Dollars
Desktop Dollars is yet another paid-to-surf program. I joined it during my obsession with pay bars, and at the time it seemed one of the better options out there for sure. To my knowledge, Desktop Dollars has been around since the beginning of last year. I joined late September having found the site via a search engine.
After registering at Desktop Dollars, you need to download their viewbar called ?Profitzone.? The viewbar is approximately an inch tall and is as long as your screen. I used to leave my viewbar at the top of the screen, where it is less of an inconvenience, but it is still a bit irritating when surfing the net. It has an annoying tendency to crash, and obviously your viewing area is cut. However, it is relatively quick to download, and therefore does not take up much disk space, which is excellent.
Best thing with Profitzone is that it will continue to run even if you are chatting on any of your instant messengers, which is useful to me as I spend a lot of time on these, particularly MSN. Spedia is the main exception to this, as they only pay you when you are actively surfing. This is superb, as it means you can be doing some work, checking your email, anything and you will still be getting paid!!!
There is no maximum number of hours that Desktop Dollars will pay you for. You can be logged in all day and that is OK, you will receive credit. Every 20 minutes, Profitzone will ask you to click the ?continue? button on the viewbar. This can be very annoying, as you cannot leave it on if you go away from your computer, although I can see their point of view because they would be paying a lot of money if they did not do this.
Having logged into your account via the website, you can track the time you have spent watching the viewbar and how long your referrals have been using Profitzone each month. It is not done by how many hours you have been on the net, but by how many adverts you have viewed, and it is not really possible to find out what each advert is worth until the end of the month. They did not even pay me at all for the hours I did in October, so I was disappointed to say the least.
When you get to the payout rate, they will either send you it via a cheque, or send you adebit card specially for Desk Top dollars, and then your earnings for each month are added on. I applied for this card, and unfortunately I have not received mine, almost 4 months later, so I am of the opinion that maybe they do not send them abroad.
Currently, the rates for Desktop Dollars are as below:
You: 45% of revenue from ads
Referrals:
Level 1: 15%
Level 2: 5%
Level 3: 2%
Level 4: 1%
Level 5: 1%
Level 6: 1%
They do not tell you how much you get paid at each level though, and therefore it would be very easy for them to declare low advertising income and then pay their members less. We would be none the wiser!!!
Overall, it would have been quite a good idea, but unfortunately I do not seem to have any earnings in my account, even though I have been surfing regularly. They only update your account two months after you earn the money, meaning you only know what you earned in December in February for example. This gives them scope to rob you of earnings, and it is unlikely you will remember how long you surfed two months ago. I no longer use it because it is not worth my time, more a scam with a lot of members involved.
All Advantage
I joined AllAdvantage in March of last year after a recommendation by a friend, who had been surfing for like 3 months previously using the bar, and had great praise for the company.
I recommend that you join as a referral of someone you know and respect. They will have already experienced some of the ups and downs of AllAdvantage membership, and will have a vested interest in giving you good advice and help, which could actually help you in the future. Once you join, you will never be able to change your referrer, which is hardly surprising I suppose. AllAdvantage does not require that you have a referrer, and appears to intentionally make it convenient for new members to join without one so it can profit more greatly, by not having to pay members extra for their referrals. Current members will appreciate your effort to make sure you join with a referrer, just as you will later appreciate new members you refer giving you credit for referring them. They will also benefit from you joining under their name, although they will need to surf the same hours as you to make the referral earnings. You might as well be referred because you do not lose anything, and can help your friends to earn in the process.
After you join, you will download a software program that will display ads on your screen. AllAdvantage has made significant strides in ironing out bugs in its program, but some still exist. There were loads at the start, and they can constantly crash your system if you?re not careful. For most users, downloading and installation should be smooth, and it should take maybe 5 minutes at the most, sometimes less. Once the software is installed, it will periodically update itself to the current version as AllAdvantage makes improvements and other changes from time to time. This is an excellent idea and you do not have to do anything to bring the changes into effect. The adverts are sometimes useful to you, but in general they are adverts for AA, and therefore I rarely click on them, as they are of little interest to me.
Once installed, the Viewbar will run automatically when you start your computer. You can turn it off at any time. It will track paid time for you, as indicated by a green light while you are actively surfing the Web. Sometimes this just goes off for no apparent reason, and you are then not paid for your time online. While you are not surfing it will continue to display ads, but will not track paid time for you, as indicated by a red light. I think you are paid as long as your are using the Internet, but not if you are doing some work on other programs, or looking at your email, and this can be a disadvantage, as the bar will then take a few minutes to become active again.
British members earn 20 p per hour for a maximum of 12 hours per month for surfing with the Viewbar running. You also get 6p for your referrals and then 3p for indirect referrals. The payment rates and hours are decreasing all the time, and I imagine that without any referrals it would take over a year to reach the payout rate, meaning that it is simply not worth your time. There are many better ways to earn money online, and unfortunately you get paid like 20 times less than working in a shop for an hour, so the incentive is again lacking.
Minimum check amounts in the UK are £18 a month, and it is fairly common for checks to be delayed for various reasons, so it is wise to not count on receiving checks at any specific time. This is a significant irritant to large numbers of members who become involved in delays which are often not announces in advance, and can last weeks or even months in some cases. Explanations are seldom clear for delays. Most delayed payments are eventually made. I have never received a cheque, and probably never will, but am informed of the above by my friend who has received three payouts from them, so at least a crumb of comfort for you. They have also started some Jackpot with £000s in it, although I would rather be paid more for surfing to be honest, as it is unlikely I am going to win.
Many members experience little or no hassles with AllAdvantage. However, large numbers of members experience numerous frustrations and hassles, ranging from technical problems with their Viewbars to significant and repeated delays in receipt of their checks. I, unfortunately am one of the latter, which was a shame as AA could have been very good.
AllAdvantage is believed by many to be on its way out of business. I believe the company will survive. It is important to note, however, that AllAdvantage's vision is not limited to its current "get paid to surf" scope. The company is likely to make sacrifices to this model to assure its survival and keep alive its hopes of achieving a much more grandiose mission. Virtually all communication originating from AllAdvantage indicates that to be simply a GPTS company would be a failure, and I suppose that this was inevitable in the end because it is not viable to pay people to view adverts which they don?t look at anyway, and this scheme simply did not attract bug time sponsors.
Overall, AA has failed at a Get Paid to Surf Company, as they simply could not cope with the demand from their customers. Their rates went down, then their hours and then eventually they stopped paying- What a terrible state of affairs!!!
Paid for Surf
This is one of many pay to surf surfbar companies that appeared on the Internet the latter half of last year. Their surfing contraption is called the Surfbar, and it is similar in size to AllAdvantage's viewbar. They claim to pay out 50% of their advertising income to their members, although this is a grey area, as the users do not know how much they actually make.
You are getting paid when the date shows in green on the Surfbar, but most of the time it is shown in yellow, which means that you are online but are not earning money, which is very annoying. I have tried loading up sites and using them actively, but still it stays yellow. This was very disappointing, and I am sure this would detract many potential members.
PaidforSurf says they will pay you for unlimited surfing hours, unlike many similar companies which have limits of 40 hours or thereabouts. They claim payout would have been 30p per hour in recent months, although this is certainly debatable. They do actually pay though, which is a bonus, as several others have gone for a runner after wasting our time!!!
PaidforSurf pays five levels for referrals; 6p for each hour surfed by first level referrals, and a 1p per hour for each hour surfed by those at levels two through five. They pay down 5 levels of referrals which is quite good, although I doubt many people will be able to take advantage of this. the levels may look pretty small on face value, but if you refer a lot off people then you will get your reward.
However, there are quite a number of negative aspects of PaidforSurf. They are one of the few pay to surf companies that continues to require you to click on their ads every now and then to get paid. The required click-through % is .5%, that equals at least an average of one click-through for every two hundred ads. If you go below 0.5 % or above 5 % then you will be seen as abusing the system, and consequently your earnings per hour will fall. Accurate statistics postings are apparently few and far between, and the site is down frequently. The Surfbar can only be docked at the top or bottom of the screen, which seems to be the case with most of these companies, but that does not stop it being an irritant.
Overall, it is not a bad way to earn money but again, the earnings are minimal, and there is not that much incentive for you to keep the viewbar open for longer hours. You could earn more if you tried to get more referrals, but obviously it is difficult to get people to join in the first place, because at first it does not look that attractive.
Go to World
I started using GoToWorld in October and have found it to be intriguing but a pain in the behind. It slows my computer up drastically and doesn't pay out what I thought it would. This site seems to be useful and you can earn money from the viewbar or by the instant messenger, or so to say. I tried to download it, but could not get it to work and then the viewbar kept on crashing, so that was not much use either. I still have it on my system even though I have tried to delete it on several occasions, and this got very annoying, especially when it kept on crashing other programs as well. They pay pretty similar rates to the other companies, at around 30p an hour for 40 hours I think it is and they send you the money as a cheque. Again, it is unlikely that I will make any money out of this scheme, as it takes too long to get to the payout level. It could possibly be good, but again you will need loads of referrals to make it worthwhile for you.
Overall, Pay Bars are a steady income for the average Internet user, but I cannot really see them making you big time money even if you know a lot of people. They have too many cons to make them worth your while unfortunately.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: John Needham
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 5 members
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