Get Paid Techniques
Here are some of the techniques I used to use......
If you want to make money with get paid programs, you have to be methodical, persistent and organised. Treat it like any internet business. Advertise and work at it. Otherwise it will merely earn pennies. Of course, you may not be in it for the money - merely for the excellent advertising capabilities.
- Get Organised - Setup a dedicated email account for your Get Paid programs. Be careful to choose one without harsh filters that may stop emails from arriving. I've used Fastmail. Gmail is the latest fad.
- Read The Emails - Obvious, but do it. Don't wait too long - some emails will expire quickly. If you don't read, you won't earn cash/points. Some program owners will delete you if you do not read email for more than a week. That is why they invented holiday settings. Be aware of "English-checkers" - special links that may cause your account to be deleted. So many people try to cheat that owners have been forced to put extra links in to make sure the text is being read, as well as the link.
- Visit the Site - Taking advantage of your favourites button, visit the sites daily if you can, to check for updates, and mainly, to click on the Paid to Click section. This can speed up your earnings incredibly. Otherwise it usually takes months to get anywhere.
- Upgrade - Consider upgrading to Gold (or silver or platinum) membership. The best memberships include random referrals, advertising discounts, higher pay for reading emails, and free monthly ads. The best time to upgrade in terms of getting new referrals, is when a program is new, as there will not be as many competing gold members, and there may be large numbers of unattached members joining that can be assigned to you. But the most important reason to upgrade is if it includes free monthly advertising.
- Advertise - Advertising Get Paid programs is slightly different to advertising other standard MLM programs. For example, startpages often don't give good results unless you have a good website. See the Marketing Tips section of this site for standard MLM marketing techniques.
In a spreadsheet, summarise details for each program. Include program name, date joined, minimum payout, payment method, # referrals, minimum points required for advertising, current point balance, current cash balance. Update it weekly so you can see how close you are to cashing out, or being able to advertise. Many people save screenshots of their earnings, as proof in case the owner loses the database. Sadly, this is a good idea. To take a screenshot, hit the PrtSc button on your keyboard, then open something like a Paint program, and paste the contents. Save it in a file.
Create a folder in your browser favourites, for your Get Paid programs. This makes it easy to log on and check the above statistics.
Join payment programs to receive your payments, eg paypal.
Read the non-paid emails, as well. It supports the advertisers, and without them, there is no income. Non-paid emails usually reward you with points that you can use for your own advertising. And basically, do unto others as you would be done by...... you'd want people to read your non-paid emails, wouldn't you?
When you first start with Get Paid programs, spend most of your time trying to build downlines. Instead of just taking the cash and running, redeem your CASH earnings for ads.
Good results have been achieved advertising at sites that don't have many non-paid ads, basically because they don't have a lot of non-paid ads, so people are used to reading everything.
Redeem your POINTS earning for ads. It's free!
Even just displaying your own home-made banner in your signature when you post on the forum gets you posts. It worked for me.
Incentive-based safelists, such as Adtactics get better results than ordinary safelists, as people are given incentive to read these safelists. Although, with all safelists, the HEADING is the most important thing.
Adswaps. If you have an ezine, you may be able to exchange ads with another ezine owner for free.
Referral Exchange. Many forums have a referral exchange, which is basically, "I'll signup under you, if you signup under me", or "Signup and I'll pay you xx cents"" or "I'll reward you for each referral you build under me".
If you have a skill, offer it in exchange for signups. EG, if you signup for more than 3 of my programs, I will build you a webpage, or a simple banner.
A big "secret" is the use of downline-builders. Many MLM programs have forums with a section at the bottom for building downlines. Go to a forum, and if it has a downline-building section, search for your program. If it is not there yet, you've hit gold! Start a new thread for your program, and put your signup link in there. The idea is for people to signup under each other, one at a time. This should put one person per level under you. This process works best where your program lets you earn from several levels. Most Get Paid To Read Email/Surf programs have about 5 levels of earnings.
You HAVE to advertise - otherwise you won't get referrals, and your earnings will be slow. There are no guarantees, but if you do a handful of the above techniques, you should be on your way to success.
A common strategy is to have a handful of programs. When you first start out, reinvest all your cash and points earnings as advertising, so that you can build some decent downlines. Then set aside some programs as your money-generators, and others as your advertising vehicles to generate more signups to the big money-spinners.
My website works the best for me. For example, in one program I had a first level downline of 168. I have only ever advertised this program in my website. My website is seen because of:
a. My flashy banner in my signature on forums
b. Showing the website in traffic exchanges
c. Advertising the banner in paid-to-click section (twice)
d. Advertising the website in a paid-email ad to 500 (once)
e. Search engine positioning. #1 at Google for "A Get Paid Site" and was #1 at Yahoo for "the best get paid programs" and "get paid to read email". Yahoo was kinder than Google in that respect.
One last thing: there is a lot of cynicism in the get paid forums these days, as so many new programs come along in a blaze of publicity, then after a while, realise they cannot cope, or are losing money, so they quit, leaving lots of angry members unpaid. Signs to be wary of are: high paying emails (eg 10 cents), for low rates (eg send an ad to 1000 members for $10). If every single member read that ad, it should really cost 1000 * 5cents = $50. In practise, not every member does read every ad, and a lot will quit before they reach payout, but you may need to watch and wait before joining a new program with an unknown owner, and statistics like that. Even worse are programs offering a large startup bonus, just creating instant debt. These days the membership can grow very quickly, and overload the servers, and owners very quickly. So it doesn't take long for people to find out if a program is coping. Always do a search at a forum, looking for negative comments, before joining a new program. Good luck.