The Proactive Pro

Paid-to-click sites (PTCs) are sites that offer to pay its users for clicking and viewing advertisements.  These sites are very attractive because all the users have to do is click the advertisements and they get paid.  They are also paid for any referrals who sign up for membership in their sites.  I have been a member of several PTC sites before. However, I have made up my mind to steer clear of these sites.  Here are the reasons why:

1) PTCs  ARE A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME - Sure, clicking ads is so easy. It is a no-brainer task and it requires very little effort. However, the time you spend clicking on ads is simply not worth it. You earn mere cents for the hours that you spend doing this. Remember, time is gold and you cannot retrieve it once it is lost. You could have earned a lot more by getting a online job or by building your own Internet business.

2) YOU ENDANGER YOUR COMPUTER AND YOUR FILES BECAUSE YOU GET EXPOSED TO SITES WITH VIRUSES AND MALWARE - When you click ads, you are sometimes redirected to websites that are virus and malware infested. It is like being thrown in an ocean full of sharks. There is no way of knowing whether the sites that you visit are safe. Sometimes, you get redirected to porn sites which are haven to viruses and malware.

3) MOST PAID-TO-CLICK PROGRAMS TURN OUT TO BE SCAMS -  PTC sites sell PPC ads. Companies or individuals who buy their services pay PTC sites every time somebody clicks on their ads. PTCs lure you into signing up and clicking their ads, promising you a substantial income especially if you have referrals. When you click the PTC site's ads, they earn. However, some sites magically disappear when it is time for you to cash in. Some sites change their policies frequently. At first, they will tell you it is free to join their program. And then, all of a sudden, they will tell you that they changed their policy about payments. For instance, there is a site that suddenly required their members to upgrade their membership by paying a certain amount so that they could get paid. Oftentimes, the amount that you have pay for the upgrade is more than your earnings. Not only that -- oftentimes, the fee for the upgrade is not deducted from your earnings. You would need to pay them upfront either by giving them your credit card details (which is dangerous) or via PayPal.

Clicking ads for money is a way to waste your precious time. You can earn so much more with the time you spend clicking ads. Also, you expose yourself to cyber threats when you get into PTCs. You are also likely to get scammed by PTC sites. Knowing the truth about PTCs, you should now have the good sense to stay away from them.

Does the title of this post sound like a scam? Don't worry. I just would like to introduce you to a site that I stumbled upon this morning. It made me wish that I had learned of this site much earlier.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is the site to go to when you want to earn by doing simple tasks. Yup, MTurk is a subsidiary of Amazon.com so I'm confident that it's not a scam. No job application is needed. Just view the available jobs, click on the task that you think you can do and start working. You will get paid for performing Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) -- these are tasks that are impossible for computers to do, but are really simple for humans to perform. Finding contact numbers of companies, commenting and voting on articles, rewriting sentences in your own words are but few of the examples of HITs available at MTurk. Most tasks, if not all, are easy. You decide when to work and how much work you want to do.

However, there's some bad news for those who live outside the U.S. When it comes to the payment options, you only have a choice between U.S. bank transfer and Amazon.com gift certificate. Unless you have a U.S. bank account, you definitely can't choose the first option, which means you cannot receive your earnings in cash. However, when you choose the second option, your earnings will be credited to your Amazon.com account and you can use this to purchase items from Amazon.com. It's not a bad idea especially if there is something that you want to purchase from Amazon. They have cool gadgets there...

For more information and to create an MTurk account, click HERE.

P.S. Signing up for an account is absolutely free!

A lot of us spend a lot of time online, but I don't really know how many of us actually earn from the things we do on the Internet. Some get-paid-to sites actually pay its users to do common tasks -- things that we usually do, but take for granted. Here are examples of such things and how we can earn from them:

1) GET PAID FOR LISTENING TO MUSIC -- Yes, you can turn on your media player, plug in a pair of earphones, sit back, relax, and earn. Well, the earning part comes after reviewing the music that you've heard, but how hard is that when all you need to say is whether you like the music or not and why.

SlicethePie.com - This is a music site aiming to help relatively unknown bands and individual artists get discovered. They also pay you to help them figure out which of these artists are most likely to succeed and therefore worth their time promoting. If you're tired of the mainstream hits and are looking for something different or something fresh, then this site is for you. To check out the site, click HERE.

PopCuts.com - Do you buy music online? Do you have that special sense for the next big thing in music? If your answer to those two questions is yes, then PopCuts.com is for you. The website says, "Every time a song you bought sells, you get a cut of the proceeds." Trendspotters are rewarded here. For more info, click HERE.

2) GET PAID TO SEARCH - Search engines are indispensable to Net addicts (like me). They point us to the information that we look for and help us discover fabulous websites. But ever thought that it is possible to get paid for searching?

Homepages Friends is a program that pays you for using the Yahoo search engine. If you do a lot of searching, you might as well earn from it. To register for an account on Hompages Friends, click HERE.

3) GET PAID TO SOCIALIZE - Do you have a MySpace Account? Friendster? How about a social networking site that you can earn from?

Yuwie is social networking with a twist. You can invite friends, dress up your profile, blog, share your pictures, etc, just like you normally would in other social networking sites. But there is one difference. Yuwie pays you! To learn more, click HERE.

4) GET PAID TO SHARE PHOTOS - You might have a ton of pictures that you took with your digicam that you may want to share with friends. Why not share them through a website that pays you for sharing your photos? You may also want to get codes for your blog, website or MySpace.

ShareAPic.net is the website that allows you to do all these things. It's a great alternative to Flickr and Photobucket. To sign up, click HERE.

5) GET PAID TO BLOG - Do you love blogging? I do. But do you earn from blogging? You can. There are many ways to earn from blogging. One is to submit your blog to websites that pay you to blog.

PayPerPost is a website where you can get paid for providing valuable opinion and useful feedback to advertisers. A similar site that is also good is Smorty. Check out both sites by clicking the names in boldface.

6) GET PAID TO MAKE PREDICTIONS - Do you think you're a bit of a psychic or is your intuition pretty strong? Or can you make educated predictions based on current trends? Why not be paid for it?

Predictify.com is a website that allows you to predict the future and build a reputation based on your accuracy. It's fun! And best of all, you can make money by winning cash! To start predicting future news, click HERE.

7) GET PAID TO WRITE LETTERS - Have you been writing letters? Your letters might be of use to others, so why not sell it as a template? Go to LetterRep.com to get paid for writing letters. For more info, click HERE.

I will certainly discover more get-paid-to sites in the coming days. If you've come across some good ones, it would be great if you can share them by writing a comment.

Note: No PTCs (pay-to-click) please!


Please check out the GPT section of this blog as well for more get-paid-to sites.

Last week was such hectic week so I'm glad that it's weekend again. I have plenty of time in my hands. However, I just thought that since I have lots of free time, why not make money while killing it?

One of the sites that I like going to is MyLot, where I get to share my thoughts with the MyLot community and make friends with its thousands of users. It's fun to be there. You can be zany, wacky, humorous and all the synonyms for "funny" (Just be decent, of course, or you'll get kicked out). There are hundreds of topics to choose from, so surely there are discussions that match your interests.

The nicest thing about this is you get paid for doing something fun. Honestly, I'm in MyLot, not so much for the money, but for the chance to share my thoughts and learn some things from other people and to make friends with them. But heck, it is nice to get paid for this!

To start earning while having fun, click on the banner below:




More time to kill? I just found this video on YouTube. I just thought I'd share this with you. Can you do this with your eyebrows? Enjoy!