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Well, I had originally planned to use this blog to type out my exploits in the GPT industry, but due to some unexplainable phenomenon, all my blogs got deleted, including this one. I have since restarted my blogs, taking care to save the templates, and send a copy of the entries to my email account.

I have started another blog called GPT-Insanity for obvious reasons.
I have reposted the original 4 blog entries that I managed to recover. All further blog entries will be posted in the other blog.

REPOST Entry 4: PPC & Search Engines

We all know what search engines do. They help us to sieve through the quagmire that is the Net. But, how do search engines make their money? Advertising. Now, this is no problem for the big ones, the top dogs (1st Tier) - Google, MSN, Yahoo. Paid-per-Click (PPC) Search Engines fill an important niche in online advertising. Getting your site listed in a Tier 1 search engine is difficult. Even if you ARE listed, you'll find it somewhere on page 15 out of 23, or something like that. PPC Search Engines allow advertisers to place their site on page 1... at a price. For Tier 1, these ads appear as sponsored links. For Tier 2 and 3, the search results ARE the ads.


For more info, check out the following links:
PayPerClickSearchEngines - A comprehensive list of PPC Search Engines.
Why-Search-Free-PTR - A site that deals with the turmulent relationship between the GPT industry and PPC Search Engines

REPOST Entry 3: Advertising

Most of us know that advertising can be costly, and online advertising is no different. The main difference is, on the web, you have the entire world as your potential audience. Not only that, but you can redirect your audience to local advertisements that actually matter to them. With the advent of cheap broadband internet, the Net has become a hotbed for advertising. In fact, just like reality TV, it has taken off, oozing into every facet of daily existence, and frankly, just as annoying.


Advertisements are what you need to keep a real website going. As any property developer will tell you, it's all about location, location, location. Surf any popular website, and notice where the ads are placed at the top, sides and bottom of the webpage. Then, there are the annoying ads - popups, flying ads, popunders. And the really scary ones - ActiveX installers, virus-(bin-)Laden ads. Needless to say, anything that shoves itself in your face without permission is annoying. Enter... the... Ad Blockers.


Banner ad prices vary according to location and site popularity. For instance, to advertise on google or yahoo, is the equivalent of advertising on primetime TV. There are tons of other sites that provide a better explanation on the importance of google-ranking, keywords and what-not.



The GPT industry has the potential to be so much more. Here, we have over thousands of people, clicking on ads to make some spare change; truly a captive audience, albeit an audience with glazed eyes from viewing too much pr0n advertising.


In recent times, click fraud has been a major issue, and serious counter-measures have been installed to combat this.

REPOST Entry 2: Get-Paid-To (GPT)

GPT Read, Click, Search, Surf, Signup. That's what it means. There are literally thousands of websites in the GPT industry. And for every real one, there's probably 10 sites set up somewhere to scam people (more on that later). But as George Dubya says, you've got to preserve (*snicker*).

Here's a quick 5-step program to get you started.

Step 1: Join a GPT forum
Discussion forums are great sources of information, allowing you to do some proper research before signing up. It will save you time and effort. Seriously.

Which ones, you ask? Well, the more popular ones are:

GPTBoycott Forum

GPTForum.com

Get Paid Forum

Be sure to check out the referral sections, since it will help you to get downlines quicker. You will also need to register, if you want to post on the sites.


Step 2: Create a separate e-mail account
This is vital if you hope to maintain your sanity. Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, it's really up to you. Be sure to set your spam settings relatively low, or else you won't receive some emails. I'm using Yahoo Mail, since it has a free POP3 option that allows me to download the messages (using an email software such as Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird), and view them offline. An email program is great for sorting out your emails into folders before you even read them.


Step 3: Select an Online Payment Processor
There are a few of these out there. Some are better than others, depending on your needs and on your geographical location. Paypal is, by far, the most popular worldwide. It is not your only option, thankfully, but it is one of the more stable and accepted ones.


Step 4: Selecting Programs to Signup
There is a huge range of options, depending on how much time (and money) you're willing to invest. For those with limited $$$, it would be best to stick with PTR/PTC/PTP sites. Autosurfs are generally more risky and require some capital outlay.

PTR - Paid to Read (Emails)
PTC - Paid to Click
PTP - Paid to Promote

Many sites offer a mixture of these three. Earnings from PTR/PTC range from 0.01 cent up to 5c per click. Anything that offers more than 10c per click, well 99.9% of the time, those are scams! Obviously, you don't want to be endlessly clicking on 0.01 cent ads, do you? 0.1 cent is probably the lowest I would look for. Those that offer PPC search ads typically offer between 0.25c and 1c per click. Sign up for a few, not too many, or you might go nuts (like me).
Avoid the sites that offer more than $50 minimum payout. Your chances of seeing that money are rather low, and it's usually better not to put all your eggs in one basket.


Step 5: Create a personal website to promote your PTRs/etc
Make it simple. Easy to navigate. Better yet, use a blog. Blogs are easy to use and don't require much HTML knowledge. There are quite a number of sites that offer free webhosting, but many of them have bandwidth limits. The site below has unlimited bandwidth... great for promoting it everywhere.

GetAPortal offers an interesting affiliate program. You get commission for introducing people to sign up for their web hosting. You even get a commission from members who sign up for FREE web hosting. Of course, the real earnings are from the paid web hosting. In addition, Getaportal has a partnership program with a number of PPC search engines. By using GetaPortal to promote one of the search engines, the ad banners from GetaPortal will be removed. I am currently signed up to DiggySearch, which accepts most traffic from US, Canada and Western Europe.

But, why promote your GPT links? Most GPT sites offer a simple referral system that allows you to earn a percentage of earnings from people you refer to their site. In recent months, Paypal has been cracking down on GPT sites that appear to be borderline MLM due to multi-level referral systems. This hasn't been confirmed, but as a general rule, sites with a single referral level should be safe, provided they don't violate any other terms of service (TOS).

The important thing to remember, is not to get rattled by the torrent of emails. Pace yourself. It's not a matter of life or death. It shouldn't have to be a chore.

In case you missed it, here's my GPT list.

REPOST Entry 1: How it all began

It all started about 2-3 months back, in early May. I was bored, and a recovering online game addict (don't laugh). I needed something to take my mind off it. Instead of going outside and enjoying the cool & breezy (okay, cold & rainy) weather, I stayed glued to the net, and stumbled onto a forum for making money on the net.

In retrospect, I think it could have been a mistake - replacing one addiction for another. Yeah, it probably was. But, at the time, it seemed like a good idea. The first month was a little hazy. There was no strategy, no planning, no direction, just random sign-ups and clicking. I was drawn in by the sites offering high payouts for clicking on email ads and banners. I was to learn later that most of these were scam sites created by fraudsters, scondrels, rogues, evil creatures that prey on newbies and the blissfully ignorant.

I had stumbled on something called Paid Per Click (PPC). When you surf the net, you're constantly bombarded by advertisements (unless you use an adblocker, but that's another story). Instead of doing all that for free, you have a chance of earning some money for your time. Basically, you get paid for viewing and clicking on advertisements, signing up for related websites and so forth.

Now, most people are drawn in by all those flashy sites praising some new site for allowing them to become millionaires (yeah right, don't quit your day job just yet). For the most part, most of these are scams. Usually, the site requires you to pay a signup fee and recruit others to join. But, wait. Isn't that direct marketing? It would be... if they were selling something tangible like electronic goods or vitamins. No, these are MLM/Pyramid schemes. MLM stands for Multi-Level-Marketing. It involves building a network of members under you. Networking is good (so says Donald Trump, so who am I to disagree), but MLM raises serious ethical and legal questions, so much so, that such schemes are now banned in the US and other countries.

Getting back to the topic at hand, the original site that drew me in, was actually a scam of some sort. It involved downloading a browser (IE-based), and setting it up to refresh a certain website (which will remain nameless to protect the ignorant) and run in the background while you surf in your regular browser. It was even recommended to use a proxy rotator such as MultiProxy to shuffle through a proxylist, in order to give an appearance that traffic was being generated from various locations. After a few days of that, the $$$ that was suppose to roll in... didn't. Apparently, the site wised up, and no longer credited people for this sort of traffic. Rightly so, because it's just wrong, isn't it?

I wasn't discouraged. In the meantime, I had signed up for a few other sites, a few of which I have stuck with, with a lot of others that have gone the way of the dodo. I learned the ropes, the terminology (PTR, PPC, PTR, CPM, CPC) and how to distinguish the scams from the actual sites.

As each day went by, it slowly consumed more and more of my time. It became somewhat of an obsession, just clicking clicking clicking. One day, I just decided, it wasn't worth it. Too many sites, too hectic. I would just choose a few, and stick with it (until something better came along, typical human behaviour). I created a PTR List which has undergone a fair bit of modification since then, and directed all traffic there, instead of promoting individual sites.

In 2 months, I racked up a grand total of USD 30.54 and 2.00 Euros. Not bad, for a newbie. It has been almost another month, and I've received another USD 12, with potentially another USD 40 (conservative estimate). Paypal is really quite useful, but there are many others to choose from.

Then again, what have I sacrificed to get this? Let's see. Daylight. Check. Social life. Check. Sleep. Check. No kidding. I must be crazy. But, they say, in any venture, nothing is certain and anything is possible.