- Guide to Referrals
- Big Referral Guide
- Qualities of a PTSer
- Increase Traffic to Site
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Stop hear if you are new to the Paid to Surf system. Find facts, frequently asked questions and more.
Things you must know to be a successful player in PTS. Guide to referrals and other strategies.
General Tips
Referral Guide
BIG Referral Guide
Qualities of a Paid to Surfer
Increase Traffic to Your Site
Support Programs
Have two monitors -- The idea here is to have two monitors act as one big screen. You can put your mess of adbars on one screen by dragging and dropping, then go do your regular work on the other! Its a good idea to utlize especiall if you have several adbars, so they don't clutter your screen and limit your space. Macs and Windows 98 (and up) support this feature. You can probably find another monitor for a real cheap price, usually under $100, but it'll pay for itself. Check out cnet.com for a "How to" on hooking up dual monitors.
Referrals -- They are pretty much your only hope if you intend to hit quadruple digits in your checks! Use your imagination on how to advertise your referral ID, and don't succumb to spamming! =P Bad!
Have different passwords -- Its a good idea to make a spreadsheet of a list of all the companies you join, your ID, and password. You should use different passwords for every company you join, this way, hackers wont be able to get all your accounts.
- Ask a Question
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- Suggestion/Comments
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2. Jotter
3. PaysU
4. Epipo
5. Ignifuge
6. iMandi
7. eLance
8. PayPal
8. BePaid
9. ePilot
10. NetFlip
11. iCameo
12. Adsavers
13. Adsenger
14. GoThruUs
15. UniqueSurf
16. CashClickConcepts
17. ShopDog
18. MValue
19 SurfingPrizes
20. ClickDough
21. PaidForSurf
22. CashFiesta
23. CashSurfers
24. DesktopDollars
25. GetPaid4
26. UtopiAd
27. Epinions
28. CashWars
29. Spedia
30. VirtualStartPage
31. HomePageRewards
32. WebBullion
33. RadioFreeCash
34. SearchCactus
35. Surf2Web
36. PaidZone
37. GotoWorld
38. PayBar
39. Surfing2Cash
40. AllCommunity
41. GiantRewards
42. ValuePay
43. SurfMiles
44. CoolAgent
45. MultiKredits
46. ItAdsUp
47. TargetShop
48. DesktopHorizon
49. BlueTree
Start with Friends & Family -- Its obvious that you can get most of your recruits through relatives and close friends! They already have your trust (hopefully) and are willing to listen to what you have to say!
Be honest -- Don't go telling everyone you see they can retire the next month after signing up with PTS programs and other false things. Those kind of people are quite annoying. Though it is true that you can make thousands of dollars, I'd advise not to quit your day job! ^_^ For some, this is just a way to make money on the side. Some like the features of a ad bar. And others want to make some serious money! Either way, you should educate your referrals so that they have a strong understanding of PTS so that you have good referrals. If you fill them with lies just to grab their attention and only think of yourself, you'll have frustrrated referrals and they will most likely not last a month or two, and quit. Keep it real!
Utilize sample e-mails -- All companies will try to help you to gain referrals by making sample e-mails. All you have to do is copy and send em to your friends. But I'd rather make up my own, personalized message! Don't spam though, make sure you are sending your referral ID to people you know, or else you may get reported and your account could be terminated, forfeiting your money! x.x Other examples of spamming are posting you ID in message boards and chat rooms.
Start your own website -- The internet is huge, and you've got to be heard. Making a web site about PTS, can really bring in money. That's kinda what this site is for, thought my primary goal is to help others in their quest. You can put referral links to all the companies you've joined on your web page for instant recruitments. Geocities is just one of many servers that offer free web publishing. There are special places out there that make free web pages for PTS. To find out more, check out the BIG Referral Guide.
Make an e-mail signature -- E-mail is the number one usage of communication world wide. Well, maybe... but I know for sure, it has been the easiest! Ya know what a signature is? Its almost what you are thinking, but for electronic mail. They are little messages that are automatically posted at the bottom of every outgoing you send. Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook Express, and more support this feature. Make sure its short and attention grabbing!
Post a flyer -- Remember that 7Up commercial with the vending machine in the middle of the freeway? Well, that guy made a very good point. You should make flyers of your website link or referral ID in "high traffic" areas (not the highway!!). Just make sure you are posting 'em in places you are allowed to.
Business cards -- Make a catchy phrase like "Get paid doing what you love" or the most popular (not to mention I've seen TOO much of) "Get paid to surf the web!" Have them handy with your web site or referral ID on it and pass it along to people who are interested in PTS! I've even read somewhere that you should slip them into computer related books at the library! Hey, your imagination's the limit! You can design and customize your own business card for free at VistaPrint!
For more information, check out the BIG Referral Guide! Above was just to get you an idea or get started, go here if you want th real stuff! ^.~
Begin With your Friends and Family
Starting with friends and family for referrals is the most effective method of gaining a good downline! Since you have a close relationship with these people, they will trust your opinions and listen to your recommendations. Which is better than getting total strangers. Don't just send mass e-mails to them, but try talking to them in person or on the telephone! By sending mass mail, they are most likely to delete them, concidering them as junk mail. Talking with them directly can help them get questions answered or deal with any concerns. And if you just can't do that, try talking through Instant Messangers or a personalized e-mail!
Quality & Innactive Referrals
This problem arises much too often. When people download these ad bars, some of them quit for some reason, whatever that may be. These are called "Innactive" referrals. What you want are to refer people who are just as enthusiastic about PTS as yourself!
The Downline
I thought at first that I should go out and refer 1000 people all by myself, but I found that too hard! The great thing is, the companies credit you for a percentage of not only what your Direct referrals make, but also for Indirect (how deep it goes depends on the company). For example, you sign up for AllAdvantage, then you tell your friend Elena, then she tells Reno, he tells Rude, then tells Tseng, and he tells Rufus! Guess what? You don't just get credit for Elena, but Reno, Rude, Tseng, and Rufus as well! Now to illustrate how this could come out to be, say you refer 4 people, and each one of your direct referrals refer 4 people, and each of those referred 4 people, and each of those referred 4, and so on, then your referral downline would look like this.
4 people on your 1st Level
16 people on your 2nd Level
64 people on your 3rd Level
256 people on your 4th Level
1024 people on your 5th Level
Which totals out to 1364 referrals! With only 4 people you sign up, it goes a long way! Of course it may be unrealistic to expect every single person to refer 4 people, but there are several ways to make 100s on your own. First, and most effective, it help them out. Let them know what has worked and not worked for you. Stay in touch with your referrals and answer any question that arises. The other is to specifically target people who can bring in lots of money. In particular, the Webmasters. These guys are people who own high-traffic websites and will use their site to gain referrals. How is this done? Read on, my friend!
Build a Loyal Downline
If you have a loyal referral base, the drop out rate is much much more lower than of others because as a loyal user base will be able to count on their referrer for help , support and encouragement. And they are usually more likely to sign up for more programs in the future. This can give you the boost for when new PTS companies arive. There are many things you can do to build a loyal downline. First of all, be kind and courteous to everyone you interact with. Kind words and a smile can go a long ways, while a sour attitude will imediately poison a person's impression of you. Offer to answer any questions your referrals have. If you run a site, make sure you have an area to where they can contact your if they have any concerns. Even offer to personally assist them! This can go a very long way, and if you let them know what some good strategies are, you shouldn't have too many drop outs, or even any!
Online & Offline Promotions
There are two ways to promote yourself: online (on the computer) and offline (non-computer). Both have their advantages, and I suggest you take the best of both worlds.
Online: Online promotion has the convienience of instant action, over the offline world media. If someone sees an ad on your web site, or your referral link, they can immediately click on it and find out more. With a TV, radio, or newspaper ad, the person cannot visit the website or follow the referral link unless they remember it until they are in front of the computer.
- Get a Website Making a website is a very great idea! There are many benefits such as: an easy to remember URL, a central place to promote multiple adstream companies, a chance to collect e-mail addresses for mailing lists, and provides a better opportunity for more comprehensive promotion. If you plan on doing any offline promotion, then it is recommended that you get yourself a website. Because who wants to type a long refferal link? Which one do you think they will most likely enter?
http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=MFD062
or
www.kakkoii.cjb.net
There's no question that you'd choose the second one over the other! Its much easier to remember. Rather than having to type the entire first URL, they'll just type in "www.alladvantage.com" and skip the rest of the URL. So, in this case, you wont get any credit if they go straight there and sign up. If you are the type that doesn't know about web sites (or don't even want to ^.~) then I suggest signing up for a free account at MaxRef! MaxRef provide you with your own web page that list all your referral links to different adstream programs. After you sign up, you go to a page and submit all your user IDs of every company you've signed up for, save, and your done! Then you'll be given a referral URL so you can get it out to people. It'll look like this:
http://www.maxref.com/mrp/top.cgi/freemoneyweb/MX336338
Ugly isn't it? And most of all, its very hard to remember. Thus, you'll want to sign up for a free redirecting alias. You can check out www.cjb.net to get a free URL that will automatically send the person to your MaxRef address or any other website you own, which will look like http://www.____.cjb.net. I currently use that (www.kakkoii.cjb.net) to get it to my Geocities address.
- Setting up your Website Making a webste takes lots of work, as compared to the quick and easy MaxRef, but there are several important advantages. If you make your own website, you can ad a box that allows people to sign up for your newsletter! This is very important, because through mailing lists, you can gain a substantial amount of referrals. Your site also allows you to customize the content.
The first thing you need to do is find yourself a free hosting provider. Places like Geocities, Xoom, and the Globe offer free pages, but you have the hassle of a banner pop-up (~.~ no kidding...). But at http://free.prohosting.com you can get yourself a free website without the requirement of banner ads! You can also check out www.townserver.com and www.suite101.com!
The next step is to change your URL. If you made a website with Geocities, it may look something like http://www.oocities.org/tsengsama. This is very hard to remember and ugly! If a potential visitor sees your URL, they'll most likely not visit it, which is lost chances to gain referrals. But you can get a free website that redirects them to your original site! A great place is http://www.cjb.net and it'll look like www.____.cjb.net (ex. http://www.kakkoii.cjb.net)! Really easy! Another one is http://go.to which can look like http://__.__/_____! (ex. http://i.am/kakkoii)
- Spamming Nope! It isn't the food! This is the practice of sending out unsolicited e-mails and posting blatant advertisements on message boards. Spamming will cause the PTS company that you signed up for to cancel your account. Additionally, sending out unsolicted e-mails will make you lose your ISP provider and in some states, its againts the law. Only e-mail people you know! Just don't spam!
- Mailing Lists If you set up a mailing list on your web site, you can keep in touch with people who enjoy your site! You can easily and quickly get your own free mailing list at Listbot.com! They'll give you an HTML code that you can put on your website to create a box that people can submit their e-mail address! You can manage subscriptions nd send out newsletter messages from the Listbot.com site.
Mailing lists lso provide repeat visitors. If you have a high quality site, then a mailing list can serve as a good reminder to come and visit your site. Its easier to bring someone back who likes your website than to have to go out and recuit a brand new visitor.
- Signature Files E-mail is currently the#1 usage of the internet. You probably already send out several e-mails out every day! What you should do is take advantage of this and create a signature that promotes a PTS site! A file signature is just a short little post that automatically is included at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Many popular e-mail systems can do this for you, like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Outlook Express, and more! If you can't find how to do it, try looking under the "Help" section and seek out "signature". An example of what one of your messages may look like could be:
Konbanwa, kaichou. We've lost sight of the target at the mineral caves, but we have reason to believe that he's heading towards the South Eastern continent. I shall report soon. -- Tseng.
********
Get paid doing what you love to do! http://www.kakkoii.cjb.net!
Its a good idea to keep the message short but eye grabbing! Anything that mentions "free stuff" is a good idea!
A good way to utilize your signature is to send out humurous forwads. You know what they are right? They are these jokes, interesting facts, and chain letters that people send eachother. One most familiar one is the foreward that Bill Gates was sopposedly tracking and that'd he'd pay you for sending it out to more people? Hahaa, it is quite too good to be true, but you can use these to add your signature to and then forward it to friends and family and eventually it will keep getting forewarded and sent to lots and lots of people! Cuz some people, who have too much time on their hands, foreward them to 20-30 people! That's several potential referrals!
Another way to use your signature is in message boards. Make sure you read the rules of each board because sometimes they may concider this spamming. And make sure your message is relevant to the subject, no just "hi" or "I agree" just to get your signature seen.
- Chat rooms PLEASE don't go into chat rooms and yell out "Join blah blah blah and get paid!" This is concidered spamming, and if someone reports to the PTS program, your account will be terminated! But there are good ways to using chat rooms. Try making a screen name like "PaidtoSurf" or "FreeMoney2Surf" and wait till someone asks you about it. If someone asks you, its not conciderd spamming, and you can tell them safely about that PTS industry. A better idea, in my opinion, is to create a chat room called "PaidtoSurfheWeb" or "FreeMoney" and wait for people to stop on by.
- Self Replicating Referral Sites Even if you decide not to use MaxRef, you should let others know about it because not too many people want to go through the hassel of making their own websites. You can also benefit by this in two ways when using MaxRef or Refmaker. First, if you provide these tools to your referral, your chances of gaining more indirect referrals increase! The other advantage is that your referral ID is automatically used in any unused slots! For example, if you referred Elena to use MaxRef and she puts in her AllAdvantage referral ID but leaves Jotter blank, your ID for Jotter will be automatically used because all feilds must be filled in. This is great for gaining numerous referrals because it can go down to infinite levels as long as their referral's referrals leave blank slots. But it still is a good idea to have them sign up for programs because you'll benefit more. However, if they promote their page alot, then it my be better -- it really depends!
Offline: This provides face-to-face contact ensuring trust and credibility! The only downfall is that they'll need to remember your referral ID or website address until they get on a computer.
- Websites are a Requirement If you plan on doing any sort of offline promotion, its a good idea to have a website! If you don't, you'll lose TONS of referrals! Imagine this, you make a great catchy flyer for AllAdvantage. Even with this, your losing referrals. Your potential referral reads the flyer and finds AllAdvantage to be awesome. When the potential referral goes home to sign up, what URL do you think they'll most likely enter:
http://www.alladvantage.com or http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=mfd062 ?
Luckily you don't need to lose referrals! You can get a free re-directing address from www.cjb.net! You can make it look like www.joinalladvantage.cjb.com, much easier to remember! You can use it to re-direct them to your website or straight to the referral link!
- Classified Ads You can try using your local newspaper. You can place an ad in the "Help Wanted" or "Business Oportunities" sections and make something like this:
Web surfer wanted! One who wants to use his/or computer and get paid for it.
For more info, visit: www.kakkoii.cjb.net
- Flyers Flyers can be good, cheap, and an easy way for offline promotions! Designing a professional looking flyer is important to attracting attention to your flyer andgiving it credibility. Its most credibile is it looks professional. If you saw a flyer that looked like it was done by pre-schoolers with crayons that say "Make $1000/month for doing nothing!" would you believe it? Here are tips on making flyers.
- Print out your flyers on colored paper, rather than white paper, in order to attract attention. If you flyer is posted on a bulletin board with other papers, neon or bright colors should help it stand out.
- Use graphics rather than just text in order to make the flyer look more professional and less dull. No one wants to read a sea of text, they wont even begin to read your flyer. Breaking up the text wth graphics makes the flyer more readable.
- A good graphic to use on the flyer is a scanned check from a PTS company. This helps to build credibility when people see that you are actually making money.
- Use catchy ads! The word "free" usually catches attention. Include all the benefits but don't exaggerate your claims. Concider a flyer for AllAdvantage, tell them that they could make atleast 15/month for surfing the web and referring one friend. Huge claims are only going to make distrust your poster and ignore it. If you write "Earn $1000 a month for surfing the web!" no one will likely believe it. Remember that you have to sell this idea to people who likely no nothing about AllAdvantage. Remember how skeptical you were about AllAdvantage when you first heard it? I know I didn't believe it! Thus, keep in mind that they may be skeptical about this as you were when you first heard about it. When you make outrageous claims, you are just feeding their skepticism and cause them to completely dismiss you. By making credible claims, you help alleviate their skepticism and make them much more likely to check out your site!
- Make sure your flyer is "pull tab" flyer. The bottom should have 5-10 tabs that can be ripped off, each with your website URL. A pull-tab flyer will increase the effectiveness as interested people can simply take one of the tabs. If they have to search for pen and paper they'll most likely decide that it isn't worth the effort, or if they have to memorize the URL, they'll forget it. Additionally, the tab is a physical reminder to visit your site. When the person is empyting their pockets at home, they'll see your tab and check it out!
There are several places to put your flyer! Post it everywhere there is a public bulletin board, such as laundramats, grocery stores, library, public buildings, college campuses, etc. You can also leave your flyer on parked cars or hand them out in busy places! Before you do this though, be sure to ask permission from the parking lot, or business owner. Leaving flyers on parked cars without the permission of the parking lot owner can violate laws and can violate the AllAdvantage Terms of Services, causing your account to be canceled! You can also deliver flyers to people's doorsteps, but not their mail boxes. Only US Postal emplyees are allowed to put mail in the mailboxes, anyone else doing so is breaking the law! So that's a no, no...
- Business Cards Business cards is another usefull tool! You'll want to have an attractive design and a catchy slogan, and your URL. A catchy phrase you could use could be:
Get Paid to Surf the Web!
Get Free Money
Use your computer -- get money!
With vague, yet catchy slogan, your business card may draw enough interest to tempt someone to visit your site! You can get your busines cards printed for free at lots of places! There are even shareware programs that can automatically design them for you!
- Leave them with your tip at resturaunts. Include it with your tip to the pizza delivery person.
- Leave them on public bulletin boards at groceries, laundramats, libraries, and other public buildings.
- Pin one up at your cubical at work. You'll get asked about it, believe me -- your co-workers are getting paid as poorly as you are! ^.~
- Leave the card next to the keyboard of public computer terminals in libraries and other places. Also load the browser to set the start page as your address so it'll be the first thing people see when they open it!
- Ask one simple question to every service person you come in contact with on a daily basis, "Do you have internet access?". Sales clerks, the dry cleaner, the florist, you name it! If they say yes, just make one request, "Could you please visit my website? I'm trying to get more hits on my counter." Its so simple that people wont give you a no. Not everyone will visit, but they will take your card! ^^
- Recruit your kids! Kids love free stuff, and more programs are opening up to 13 year olds and up! When you find a program that allows kids to join, be sure to sign your child up and send him/her off with cards of their own!
Don't limit yourself! These were just a few ideas! From here on, they get kinda crazy, but can prove to be effective like making custimized pencils and mouse pads, advertise on your car, get on TV or the radio, etc.! Your imagination's the limit! And if you have anymore suggestions, just send em my way!
(I'll be adding more each update! Its the homework and school ya know...)
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"Tseng" and artwork are tradmarks of Squaresoft.
Comments and Questions may be submitted to: Tseng-sama