What is PTC?

PTC - Paid To Click

PTC

PTC - Paid To Click is an online business model that draws online traffic from people aiming to earn from home. Paid-To-Click, or simply PTC websites act as between advertisers and consumers; the advertiser pays for displaying ads on the PTC website, and a part of this payment goes to the viewer when he views the advertisement.
Even though advertisement is the most widely known method for PTC to stay alive, most of the profit comes from the direct sales of fake referrals which are created virtually by the PTC owner at his will. To cover up all this scheme, PTC owners inject some normal ads from fictional advertisers, thereby keeping the system running smoothly.

Scam, although exposed on various PTC forums, are still heavily used by newcomers who are drawn in to the websites by search engines. Scam PTC sites are known to attract new users with cheap offers for upgrades and referrals and disappear without trace after a short time.
Nowadays there are two variations of PTC websites - Bux and GPT.

History

Paid-to-Click business model is close to Paid-to-Surf - that became popular in the late 1990s. Essentially, a company uses income from advertising placed on members' screens to pay them for time spent surfing. The first and most well-known pay-to-surf company was AllAdvantage. It launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members in little over a year with the multi-level marketing system of recruiting new members. The scheme capitalized on the notion that anyone could make money on the internet without much effort.
AllAdvantage’s success attracted many imitators. At its peak, there were several dozen pay-to-surf companies. AllAdvantage had US$175 million in venture capital; its imitators did not and thus their members were never more than a small fraction of AllAdvantage's.
After 18 months, even AllAdvantage ceased operations. At that point, AllAdvantage had paid out over US$160 million to its members. Many members of smaller pay-to-surf companies were never paid when the companies shut down.
As with many Internet business models, pay-to-surf companies attracted people trying to defraud the company out of money. First, as noted above, the companies had to deal with spammers, often having to terminate member accounts. They were also required to get parental permission from members under the age of 18, many of whom flocked to these programs as an easy source of income. Finally, utilities started appearing which allowed users to simulate surfing activity.
These programs and devices allowed users to get paid simply for leaving their machines on. This began an arms race between the pay-to-surf companies who built fraud-prevention software and fraud program developers, with each releasing increasingly sophisticated versions of their software.

Modern PTC system overview

In the last 2 years of PTC business development many changes have been taking place. Many of the “old school” sites such as bux.to and IsabelMarco which have prospered because of their popularity, are seeing the threat of newer PTC sites that offer better features.
Payouts
The problem with the older ptc sites is their payout turnover rate. Many of these sites take months to pay its users. In fact bux.to has had so much trouble with their payouts that its taking up to 6 months to get paid. The next generation ptc sites are offering instant payouts. This gives its members several advantages. Obviously you get paid quicker, and this allows you to reinvest faster thus building your earnings from the site. Also its much easier to determine if the site is legit or not because you don’t have to wait months to get paid. So why can’t older ptc sites offer instant payouts you may ask. This has to do with the difference in revenue models. Older ptc sites offer per click earnings higher then what they generate in advertising alone. Thus leaving them with a negative cash flow for advertising. For example, IsabelMarco standard members earn $0.01 per click and $0.005 for referral’s click potentially costing the site $15.00 per 1000 clicks, yet they only charge $10.50 for 1000 advertising clicks. This is a negative cash flow of $4.50 per 1000 clicks. Thus they are required to make money in other ways such as membership upgrades and selling referrals. This creates the long waiting periods as they must recoup the difference before they can pay its members. Newer sites have higher advertising rates, but are self-sustainable on advertising fees alone, allowing them to pay its members instantly.
Renting Referrals
Another common theme among the new PTC sites is offering the ability to rent referrals. This feature allows members to build their downlines quicker since its cheaper than buying referrals outright. Another great aspect about renting referrals is the ability to recycle them. You can recycle as often as you want to keep your pool of referrals active. Most of PTC website are selling bots which are programmed to not allow people to get the earnings they expect but only some predefined amount which is profitable to the PTC website system.
Active Members
Many newer PTC sites are implementing policies to promote active clicking. They are doing this by requiring its members to click ads in order to get credit for their referral clicks. Sites are adopting the two times multiple for clicks, meaning if you click two ads the previous day, you will get maximum credit up to four clicks per referral. So if your referral clicks five ads current day, you only get credit for four.
Better Account Management
Some of the newer sites also offer better ways to view your referrals activity. They offer charts and statistics that you can use to analyze such as average clicks per day, and date of last click. This greatly increases your potential to get more out of your referrals and saves you time.
Security
Many newer PTC sites also have much better security then its predecessors. Some offer second password protection and even a graphical interface to click letters instead of typing them in to avoid keystroke loggers. Many also offer PINs for added security when it comes to cashing out or changing account information. The better of the newer sites offer SSL connections throughout your sessions whereas none of the older sites do. Most of the older bux scripts don’t even encrypt user passwords in their database, making you very vulnerable should they end up in the wrong hands.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_To_Click
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_to_surf
http://www.ptcauthority.com/113/the-next-generation-of-paid-to-click-sites/

Posted in: Definition of MMO