How Paid to Clicks/Paid to Read Programs Work

What is a Paid to Click (PTC) and a Paid to Read (PTR) program?

A good way to start out online is to work the Paid to Click (PTC) and the Paid to Read (PTR) sites. These sites are free to join and offer an opportunity to build up a little start up money for other online ventures. Like all the other online opportunities, you can really start to make larger payouts if you develop a downline but unlike most it is not a necessity to get a payout. A PTC opportunity is one that you click on advertisements and get paid to view them. You join up with a program and sign into their website to view the advertisements. Once you sign in, you are given a listing of available advertisements that you can view. When you click on one of these advertisements, a web page will open usually with a timer on it. Once the timer runs down you will usually have to click on a link to receive your credit for viewing the website. These advertisements will usually pay between $0.001 to $0.05 per advertisement viewed. A PTR opportunity is one that you get paid to receive e-mails to read. These e-mails usually have links in them that you have to follow in order to receive credit for reading the e-mails. They may also have timers with them in order to receive credit. These programs usually pay between $0.005 and $0.10 per e-mail read.

Why would they pay me?

Advertisers are always looking for a cheap and effective way to get their message in front of potential customers. These advertisers pay the PTC/PTR programs for visitors to their websites. The PTR/PTC programs give a portion of their revenue to you as an incentive for you to visit the advertiser websites. So it is not a something for nothing scheme. You get a small amount of money in exchange for visiting each website the PTR/PTC directs you to. The PTC/PTR gets advertising revenue in exchange for directing traffic to advertiser websites. The advertiser gets potential customers viewing their products in exchange for paying the PTC/PTR programs. It is a perfectly legitimate method of making money and advertising.

How much money can I earn?

You are not going to get rich quick using the PTC/PTR programs. Remember, you are going to earn a few cents per click or e-mail maximum. Any program that is promising you 20 cents, $1 or more per click or e-mail is more than likely a scam. The strategy to making money with these sites is to join in multiple programs and to earn a little bit from each of them each day. I would recommend that you find 10 to 20 programs that you really like and earn money from all of them. It is easy work to do but it does take some time. I will often sit in my living room after the kids are asleep and check out my PTCs/PTRs with the TV running in the background. If the phone rings or the kids need something, I can walk away from my computer then come back and pick up right where I left off. Almost all of these programs offer upgrades and referral earnings to supplement your income. Upgrades vary in price and benefits but they usually give you additional earnings per click or e-mail and additional earnings on referral clicks or e-mails read. The upgrades will many times give you some free referrals and access to additional click or e-mail opportunities. To determine if the upgrade is worthwhile for you need to compare the cost of the upgrade to the additional earnings that you will make over the lifetime of the upgrade. If you plan on remaining active in the program and pursuing your online income it is often worth it to upgrade in your favorite PTCs/PTRs. The referrals can really make the difference in your earnings from these programs. Most of them pay you for the clicks or e-mails read by the people that you refer to the program. Some even pay you for multiple levels of referral earnings (the people that you referred and the people that they then referred and so on for multiple levels) but each one has specific rules for this. An example of this would be:

You click on 20 PTC links in a day at $0.01 per click = $0.20 in earnings
You have 20 referrals that click the same links = $4.00 in earnings
Total per day for that program = $4.20
You repeat this with 10 PTC/PTR programs = $42.00 per day
Approximately $1,260.00 per month
Approximately $15,120.00 per year
Repeat with 10 programs total = $151,200 per year

Remember, this is just an example and is not as hard or as easy as it may sound. I have not achieved this level of income yet but I have made some great supplemental income through online programs so I know it is possible. It will require a little work but 20 referrals are not hard to get. Your referrals will come and go and you will need to continue to generate them in order to maintain your levels. But, if you can generate more referrals in all of your programs than you can see your earnings grow even more.

What should I have to get started?

​​​​​ There are a couple of tools that I would highly recommend before you get ​ ​started on your PTC/PTR programs. The first thing that I would recommend ​ ​is a web browser with good pop up blocking capabilities. A lot of the sites ​ ​that the PTCs/PTRs will bring up have a lot of pop ups and without this you ​ ​will have little web pages all over the place. My favorite browser is Mozilla ​ ​Firefox. This is one of the most popular web browsers out there and it is ​ ​absolutely free. You can download it ​​​​​​​​​​here​​​​​​​​​​.​
​I would also recommend that you have up to date virus protection and ​ ​spyware protection on your computer. This will help prevent any nasty ​ ​surprises out there for your computer. There are a few good ones out there ​ ​for free but I would recommend AVG for virus protection and Ad-Aware for ​ ​spyware. They are both free to download. You can download AVG ​​​​​​​​​​here​​​​​​​​​​ and ​ ​Ad-Aware ​​​​​​​​​​here​​​​​​​​​​.​
​ Another important thing is that you set up separate e-mail accounts for your ​ ​PTCs/PTRs. You will receive e-mails from them and it is much easier to ​ ​have them going to a separate inbox other than your personal one. There are ​ ​many free e-mail servers out there that allow for multiple e-mail accounts but ​ ​I would currently recommend Google’s g-mail which you can get for free ​​​​​​​​​​here​​​​​​​​​​.​
​One of the most important things that you will probably need is an alertpay ​ ​account. Most programs pay you by paypal, check or alertpay. Alertpay is a ​ ​very common pay program for them. It is similar to paypal and I have had ​ ​good experiences with them. Most programs will ask for your alertpay e-mail ​ ​address for payment when you sign up. You should create your free account ​ ​​​​​​​​​​​here​​​​​​​​​​.​ ​​​​​​​



​​​​​​​​​​​​​​How can I build my referrals?​ ​​​​​​​​​

​​​​​ Remember, the PTC/PTR programs will pay you even if you do not have ​ ​referrals, but the referrals will really boost your earnings. It is not that difficult to ​ ​build up referrals for your PTC/PTR programs. There are two main ways that ​ ​you can build up your referrals. You can advertise your PTC/PTR programs to ​ ​attract people to them or you can purchase the referrals from the PTC/PTR ​ ​program itself. I go into a number of different ways to build and maintain a ​ ​downline on my ​​​​​​​​​​Online 101 page​​​​​​​​​​.​
​ I think that advertising your program for others is a great way of building up ​ ​your referrals. You can spend a lot of money on this or you can do it at ​ ​absolutely no cost. If you want to generate sign ups and are not worried about ​ ​the cost then you can use services like Google ad words or Yahoo Sponsored ​ ​Search. These services create the advertisement links on Google and Yahoo ​ ​search pages. I am not going to cover this too much at this time because it ​ ​can be very expensive and usually isn’t the best way to start out. You can find ​ ​out more about this in my ​​​​​​​​​​Online 101 page​​​​​​​​​​. ​
​ Another less expensive form of paid advertising is to use the actual ​ ​PTC/PTR services to advertise. There is nothing at all wrong with advertising ​ ​one of your PTC/PTR programs through the services of another PTC/PTR ​ ​program. Each one of the programs will give you a referral page which you ​ ​can then pay to submit to the other sites. You can usually use your earnings to ​ ​buy this type of advertising.​
​ There are also a number of free ways to advertise your PTC/PTR ​ ​opportunities. First of all, tell your family and friends about what you are doing. ​ ​Many people are embarrassed to do this for some reason but you should not ​ ​be. Let them know about it, you would be surprised to find out how many ​ ​people would like to make some extra income from home. Many of the ​ ​programs will allow your spouse or another member of your household join as ​ ​long as they use a separate computer with a separate e-mail account (Please ​ ​check each program for their rules on this as some will kick you out for doing ​ ​this while others have no problem with it). ​
​ Another free method to advertise is to use the traffic exchange programs. ​ ​These are similar to the PTC programs, but instead of earning cash for ​ ​viewing websites you earn traffic to your websites. For example, many of them ​ ​are set up so that for every two websites that you view they send one visitor to ​ ​your website. Unlike PTC/PTR programs you do not need to build up a ​ ​balance before you get the reward. They will usually start sending you traffic ​ ​on your fist day. For more information, please visit my ​​​​​​​​​​Traffic Exchanges ​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​page.​​​​​​​​​​ This is a good time to mention that before you start advertising, you ​ ​should always click through your referral page to ensure that your account is ​ ​showing up as the referrer on the sign up page.​
​ You can also quickly generate referrals by purchasing referral packages ​ ​from the PTC/PTR programs. The programs sell off what they call unreferred ​ ​signups. These are people that signed up for the programs but did not have a ​ ​sponsor. Sometimes you can get a good deal on these and it is very quick ​ ​way to build up your referrals. The prices on these vary so always do a ​ ​reasonable cost/benefit analysis on these before purchasing.​ ​​​​​​​

Check out my blog post links on the left for a listing of Paid to Click/Paid to Read Program reviews. Add your comments to the relevant posts and good luck with everything.