The Endless Fight Against Get Paid Scams And Paid Survey Scams

The year was 1999 and the internet advertising industry was booming. Seemingly out of nowhere, a company named AllAdvantage appeared, offering to pay people for running and viewing an ad bar on their desktop computers (known as ''pay to surf''). Alladvantage was backed with millions of dollars of private investors money and wasn't afraid of throwing it around either. Initially offering users 50 cents per hour to run their ad bar, their membership numbers swelled into the millions in a short amount of time. Yet in less than just two years, AllAdvantage went out of business. Why? Even at it's peak, the internet advertising industry wasn't bringing in enough revenue to justify what Alladvantage was paying its members. Even after AllAdvantage adjusted its payout model, they still quickly burnt through all their venture capital and quickly went the way of so many .com busts.

The ''pay to surf'' concept wasn't limited to AllAdvantage. Copy-cat companies started popping up in droves within just months of AllAdvantage's launching. The end result was the same as nearly every company ended up going bust within a few years of their inception. Some companies made payments, others were fly by night companies which took their members earnings and vanished. Fast forward to 2006 and you'll find no major pay to surf company still exists that actually pays users to surf the net. However, some other types of ''get paid'' site still thrive. Incentive shopping sites, which offer their members cash back to complete offers and shop online, such as MyPoints and Netflip are quiet popular and have solid business models which allow them to stay afloat.

A popular spinoff which has transpired since the collapse of pay to surf has been pay to read e-mail sites, where advertisers will pay users to read email ads. These types of sites are plentiful on the net because the scripts that run these sites are available to anyone and rather cheaply at that. Unfortunately, easy entrance to a business always results in many of those businesses failing because the owner simply doesn't understand the work involved in following through over the long haul. Low barriers to entry also creates opportunists, out to make a quick buck with no intention of honoring payments promised to their members.

Years ago, it was a daunting task at best to research a site to make sure it was reputable. This was the case until end users started to create websites and forums where users themselves could report disreputable companies and which companies withheld payouts. These sites have accumulated thousands of visitors and members. Their stated aims are to name the offending companies, and to urge others to stop using them. Through its easily accessible lists, users can quickly identify which programs are disreputable, or of questionable integrity. These lists are populated by the visitors of the sites, who do their part by reporting bad companies and using the popular discussion forums to its full effect. The sites have been successful in identifying a large number of disreputable companies, many of which have had to close down such was the damage caused to their reputation from being listed. The swindlers, thieves and the dishonorable among the get paid site owners had better watch out as it is never long before they are reported and their scam is exposed.

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About the author

Stan Brock is a writer and avid blogger on a variety of topics. Paid Survey Scams

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