Investing in the "Get Paid" Market

A lot of people ask me why I got involved in "Get Paid" programs -- and I haven't always been able to give them a clear answer. The simple answer is that back in the late 90s I was spending a lot of time online (that hasn't changed), my wife and I had just had our first baby, and we were learning how to save money. And a lot of the people that talked online about how to save money were talking about a company called AllAdvantage.com that paid people to surf the net. It seemed like a pretty good idea to me, and I've been into it ever since.

Eventually, AllAdvantage crashed, and since then a lot of other programs have been created all more or less based on the same concepts -- incentivized advertising and loyatly rewards. A lot of those programs and companies have also crashed, but a few have found ways to keep going, and even prosper.

So why did I mention investing in the title of this post? Because that's generally how I think about the "Get Paid" business. You can make money by "investing" your time. Of course the value of reading email advertisements isn't huge, so you won't make a lot of money -- but it's a way to get started with nothing more than a computer and an email account.

I'm not talking about "easy money" or "money for nothing" or "get rich quick" here. I'm talking about being paid for your time and your attention. Of course the money's got to come from somewhere, and the best way to increase the return on your investment is to add value.

One way to do that is to re-invest a portion of your profits back into the market. In Paid to Read programs, you can do that by buying ads. As I've said before, reading advertisements is never going to pay much. But it's a start, and all you need is time.

So that's why I'm still involved in PTRs and other "Get Paid" programs. Because I think its a good way to get started making money online. I think you can get started using nothing but your time, then use some of your earnings to re-invest in the programs, and eventually you'll be making enough to move beyond PTRs.

But you've got to start somewhere.