Step Two. Get out your calculator: Look at the advertising packages the site is selling, and then look at how much the site says they are going to pay each member per click. Does it make any sense? A PTC site needs to sell packages to advertisers in order to survive and they need both income to pay members who are there to make money and income for a profit in order to pay the web hosting bills/for themselves. Here is how to tell. Say for example the site says it pays $0.01 per person who clicks on Link Ads. Then look at what they are selling Link Ads for. Lets say the site says it sells 1,000 Link Ads for $20.00. $0.01 x 1,000 clicks = $10.00. They are selling the Link Ads for $20.00. What does that mean? It means by selling that package for $20.00 they get paid $10.00 to pay their members who will click on the ad the advertiser applies to their site plus $10.00 for the owner of the site to keep for personal profit.
This is an example of a GOOD setup and means the site is probably legit.Now my example is a little exaggerated by profit margin as it depends on how much the advertiser wants to keep but you get the idea of a GOOD setup.
A BAD setup example is this: Say the site says it pays $0.01 per click from its members. However they are selling 1,000 Link Ads for $3.00. Lets do the math on that one. $0.01X 1,000=$10.00 right? But by their ads being sold its the following: $3.00 divided by 1,000= $0.003 per click.
See the problem? If they are PAYING members $0.01 per click how on earth can they pay people that price if they are only charging $3.00? This means the site is unsustainable and obviously cannot afford to pay its members and keep afloat at the same time.
Another sign of a scam site is if what they charge is equal to what they have to pay out.
$0.01x 1,000- $10.00. If they are charging $10.00 to advertise 1,000 hits they cannot survive either. Reason is because they have the money to pay people, but no margin for profit. So either they will go out of business from getting paid and all the money going back out to members and the site goes down from being unable to pay their hosting bills, OR, they keep all the money and only pay a few select people but not everyone, OR no one at all and keep all the money.
Step 3. Google Search is your friend!: Last step is to see what reputation the site has. Do a Google Search for the site's name and see what comes up. If you see payment proof screen shots from people's PayPal/AlertPay accounts, positive feedback's, and if PTC Investigations says its legit, then most likely your safe to click!
On the flip-side if the top ten results on the page are that of people spitting mad about not being paid, no screen-shot proof in sight (or screen-shots that are obviously forged in Word or Photoshop), andPTC Investigations says its a scam, then forget the site. Also learn the nickname of the site owner.
If you notice a lot of ads in the Link Ads area that go to the site owner as an affiliate, it means its a self sponsored ad and the owner isn't getting paid for that ad being seen. Although this is not ALWAYS the case, some legit sites owners do advertise their other programs and in their case its cause they are making enough money to do it and it doesn't really matter
Step 4. How to tell if a site is about to go scam or in trouble:
Lets say you found a site that works. You have been paid a couple of times and all is good. But what are the warning signs your site is about to go scam or in some sort of trouble?
First off, not ALL sites that go scam intended to go that way. I know one site once where the owner died and the site wound up abandoned and no one got paid and the site eventually went down from lack of anyone being there to pay the hosting bill.
But MOST either get lazy and greedy or think "Hey! Look at all this money I am making! Lets keep it all!"
But here are the main signs: If the site seems to be switching hosts a lot, it might mean they are having trouble paying their hosting bills from lack of funds.
If the site has a sudden large influx of new members, you may see the owner dropping their ad prices to ridiculous levels. Basically if the prices drop below sustainable range (like I showed you above) to something insanely stupid like 25,000 PTC ads for $0.10 and they are supposed to be paying you $0.10 per click...yeah, you get the idea. They do this thinking the insanely low prices will draw more sales, which it may, but point is they wont be able to pay anyone that way.
Another sign is they are having "mysterious technical issues" that seem to conveniently happen at "all the wrong time." For example, on payday they put up a notice like: "Site had a glitch and we cannot see who needs to be paid" or do something to everyone's payment emails that members input into the site so they can say "Well...your payment failed!" OR (my favorite one) they rig the cash-out button to raise the minimum payout level up a few dollars so you can't cash out. For example your cash-out is $2.00 and you go to ask for a cash-out and you get "Were sorry, you must have $3.00 in your account to cash-out!"
Next it goes up to $4.00 when you click and get there, then $5.00 and so on.
And then, there is the rigged forum: All of a sudden, you notice that only the posts that enforce positivity into the site are seen. You notice when you post a legitimate concern about the site it does not get posted. Pretty much, if your site does not say something positive about the site a installed communist-acting bot programed to filter certain types of posts is to blame. Either that or they delete the forum all-together!
And the most important sign its turned into a scam site: If you have yet to be paid after a decent amount of time.
Hope this helps
