Paid to Surf

Paid surfing is a type of pyramid scheme and draws heavily upon the functioning of typical MLM programs. To really make money, credits, points, or get free gifts, you have to rely upon getting other people to surf.
Practically speaking, you have to surf specified websites for fixed periods of time. In return you get paid for clicking through to the websites you are surfing. An offshoot of this is "paid to read email" - whereby you have read emails and click through the links contained within them.
A lot of wild claims came with paid to surf, such as "make anything from $1 to $150 just for reading one email". Fortunately, paid to surf has pretty much died out in the US and UK, though it still exists in other countries.
All of these programs are a huge waste of your time, and you will not make any money, except a few cents a week!

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and (or) sale provided through his or her efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying a finder's fee for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination. Merchants like affiliate marketing because it is a "pay for performance model", meaning the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are realized. Some e-commerce sites run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Some businesses owe much of their growth and success to this marketing technique, although research has shown in general the increase to be approximately 15-20% of online revenue.

Why participate in an affiliate program?

It allows you to work part-time. It gives you the opportunity to build a generous residual income. And it makes you an owner of a small business. Affiliate programs have already created lots of millionaires. They are the living testimony of how hard work; continuous prospecting, motivating and training others pay off. If ever you are deciding to join one, you must take note that you are getting into something that is patterned to what you are capable of. This will be an assurance that you are capable of doing anything to come out successful. How do you choose a good affiliate program to promote?
Here are some tips you may want to look over before choosing one:

1. A program that you like and have interest in. One of the best ways of knowing if that is the kind of program you wish to promote is if you are interested in purchasing the product yourself. If that is the case, chances are, there are many others who are also interested in the same program and products.

2. Look for a program that is of high quality. For instance, look for one that is associated with many experts in that particular industry. This way, you are assured that of the standard of the program you will be joining into.

3. Join in the ones that offer real and viable products. How do you know this? Do some initial research. If possible, track down some of the members and customers to give you testimonial on the credibility of the program.

4. The program that is catering to a growing target market. This will ensure you that there will be more and continuous demands for your referrals. Make inquiries. There are forums and discussions you can participate in to get good and reliable feedbacks.

5. A program with a compensation plan that pays out a residual income and a payout of 30% or more would be a great choice. There are some programs offering this kind of compensation. Look closely for one. Do not waste your time with programs that do not reward substantially for your efforts.

Have a thorough and intensive knowledge about the affiliate program and network you will be promoting on. Knowing the kind of program you are getting yourself into will make you anticipate and prevent any future problems you may encounter.

Paid Survay Scams

Another very heavily promoted scam is "paid surveys". You must have come across claims such as "Earn $100 per hour filling out simple surveys". How this scam works is that people are asked to pay a fee ranging from $35 to $50 dollars in order to gain access to a list of companies that offer paid surveys. The surveying companies themselves do not charge people for taking surveys, rather they pay participants who complete their surveys subject to certain requirements such as age, demographics, gender etc. Many, if not most, paid survey offers do not deliver the rewards they promise. There are a number of ways that paid surveys mislead or inconvenience participants. Many of them compile personal information about participants to sell to marketers. Others require people to pay to access a database of survey opportunities that the participants could find on their own for free. Survey databases can cost participants money. Many databases let people have access to lists of paid survey opportunities for a subscription fee. Once people have paid the fee, they discover that many of the surveys listed do not pay, and that nearly all of the listings are available elsewhere for free. Many of these offers seem legitimate because they feature phony testimonials from satisfied users. A few people might be fortunate enough to earn some regular money, but it will never amount to much, no more than a few hundred dollars per month at best!