Net Gains

With a 4-year-old son and a 9-month-old daughter, Nicole Smith was not going back to her job as a fourth grade teacher anytime soon.

So she was intrigued in December when members of her online mom chat group said they were paid hundreds of dollars each month to take surveys and try out diet pills, vitamins, magazine subscriptions, at-home movie rental plans, and other products and services.

"Immediately, I showed it to my husband," said Smith, 33, who is about to move from Maryland to Egg Harbor, N.J. "He said, 'Do you know what they say about things that are too good to be true?' "

She did. But she also knew that some extra money would help her family. So after careful research, she decided to try the Get-Paid-To site used by some in her chat group.

Get-Paid-To sites, frequently called GPTs, are actually complicated marketing tools that offer payment as an incentive to try a product or provide information that can be used for additional marketing. A few such sites have been around for a decade, but their numbers are now exploding, thanks to new software that makes them easier to run.

No GPT member will become wealthy taking surveys, which generally pay between 50 cents and $2 each. Product and service trials pay more - frequently about $20 - but a credit card is often needed to participate.

But for those looking to supplement income - mostly college students or stay-at-home parents - GPTs have become an Internet phenomenon.

Here's how a GPT works: The administrators of sites like CashDuck.com - which Smith uses - and TreasureTrooper.com post surveys, and free product- and service-trial offers from advertising agencies that specialize in Internet marketing.

These agencies are hired by companies that are looking to reach new customers. The companies pay the advertising agencies based on the number of people who take the survey or sign up for the offer.

The ad agencies pay the GPT site administrator, and the GPT site pays its members.

"I set the amount that I pay them to be slightly lower than what I get," said Kira Botkin, 23, whose CashDuck.com site went live in October.

Some of the companies using GPTs are not widely known to consumers. Many of those running surveys, for example, are themselves marketing companies, looking for e-mail addresses to sell. But others that use this type of incentive advertising are household names - two biggies are Netflix and Blockbuster.

As an Internet-based company, advertising to people who are already online has always been a natural for Netflix, said spokesman Steve Swasey.

The company's confidence in its ability to satisfy its customers is why a free trial makes sense, he said. "Once you try it, it's pretty much guaranteed that if you like movies, and enjoy the Internet, you're going to love Netflix," said Swasey, who would not reveal how many new customers GPT advertising had netted for Netflix.

GPT sites have been around in some form for about a decade, but the number is constantly growing and is now rapidly rising, said Dan Johnson, 27, who founded TreasureTrooper.com in July 2005 and is now the chief executive officer.

"Up until a year ago, there were half-a-dozen sites," said Johnson, who lives in Chicago. "Now they are popping up a lot more."

Johnson came up with the idea for TreasureTrooper while on a hiking trip with his brother. He heard his brother screaming, as if in pain. He was joking, but Johnson hurt his ankle en route to the rescue. No longer able to hike, Johnson, who had taken online surveys himself, devised a business plan. He employs his brother and four others.

TreasureTrooper paid its members - now numbering about 250,000 - more than $1 million in 2006, Johnson said. "The average check was for $100. Some were making $20, some $300."

Botkin lives in Columbus, Ohio. By day, she's a cancer researcher. A former user of GPT sites, Botkin said she thought her organizational skills would make her a good person to run one. Recently, she started saving the money she earns in research and living exclusively on CashDuck profits.

CashDuck pays out about $25,000 each month, with most of its 7,300 members earning between $75 and $150, Botkin said.

Six months after Smith, 33, began answering questions about her hobbies and sampling everything from diet pills to Internet movie delivery services, she has replaced her old college car with a new station wagon. Her Get-Paid-To money covers the monthly $250 payments, helps with other bills, and pays for a fancy dinner/date night each month with her husband. She's made about $2,400 so far - $700 in April alone.

"I like that it's something I can do from home, and that I have my own spending money," Smith said. "I'm also contributing to the family finances, and I don't even have to leave the house to do it."

Dave De Vetter, a 26-year-old from Willow Grove who uses TreasureTrooper, said he graduated from Temple with a psychology degree in 2005, but has not been able to find a job in his field. For now, he works at a grocery store and uses GPT sites to help pay the bills.

He has been using TreasureTrooper since October and has made about $900 - part of which paid for a new computer monitor.

"I like that I can set my own hours," he said. "My job situation isn't so great now, and this is helping to pay the bills."

Because the amounts for an individual survey or trial offer are fairly small, GPT users need to constantly sign up for offers.

De Vetter was pleased with what he'll get to try a newspaper. "I just signed up for a trial subscription to the New York Times through TreasureTrooper," he said. "I paid $4 for the month, and I get $18."

Smith gets so many packages that the woman who delivers her mail just beeps for her to come get them. "One I did the other day was for a natural-sleeping-pill kind of thing. And there have been weight loss [pill] offers. And also Blockbuster and Netflix."

Smith said she spends about 10 hours each week "cashducking" - it's become a verb in her household. "I almost exclusively do it when Aaron is at [pre]school and Cora is napping," she said.

She's made as much as $35 on a trial offer and as little as $5, with most payments coming in at about $20, she said.

Many sites also offer bonuses - from free gifts to credits for referrals that the user hasn't actually made. Referrals are a very hot commodity. GPTers also earn a percentage of what every person they refer makes.

Smith tries to get referrals the old-fashioned way: "If you are standing in line with me at the grocery store and ask me how I'm doing today, I will tell you about CashDuck," she said.

But both she and De Vetter have also earned credit for referrals they did not actually make. Some people find a site on their own, and other users can use bonuses to purchase the credit for referring them. Some sites also have games that award referrals as prizes.

Of course, all users must think safety before diving in. Because trial offers often require the person doing them to pay a nominal fee, often for shipping and handling, with a credit card or PayPal account, it is wise to be cautious at first, Smith and De Vetter say.

"I started by doing 100 percent free surveys," said Smith. She moved on to other offers once she got her first check and cashed it.

De Vetter's first experience was not as good. He began while still in college on a site whose name he doesn't remember - and he never got a check. He quit GPT altogether, until his brother recommended TreasureTrooper. Since then, he has tried many others and said he has not been burned again.

Many GPTers feel more comfortable finding ways around using a credit card. Smith uses only a PayPal account.

"It makes me feel a lot safer," she said. "There's a limited amount of money in there."

Botkin advises anyone considering a GPT site to check Google first. "If your site is bad, someone on the Internet will be talking about you," she said.

When it comes to GPTs, Johnson says, appearances do matter. "Really look at the quality of a site. A fly-by-night operation is not going to look the best."

Also check a site's privacy policy: Is it going to sell your information to someone else? And go to the members' forum and ask others about their experiences. "If the site doesn't have a forum, I'd be concerned they were hiding something," Johnson said.

Besides getting ripped off, GPTers must protect themselves from an overwhelming number of junk e-mails and their own disorganization.

Create a separate e-mail address just for GPT purposes, De Vetter advised.

Keep accountant-like track of trial offers, Smith suggested.

Most require the person trying things to cancel the subscription or service at the end of the trial period, she said. If you don't, you have to pay the regular price and you could end up in the red instead of the black.

The GPTs have risks for advertisers and those who run the sites, too. Some people go from site to site, doing the same offers repeatedly. This does not please advertisers, who are looking for new - not recycled - customers, said Shannon Foley, affiliate manager at RevenueStreet.com, an online advertising agency.

Johnson and Botkin said these problems are serious enough to cripple, if not kill, the GPT industry. Botkin has started an organization for GPT administrators, and one thing they do is share the names of users who seem to be trying to scam the system by doing the same offers on multiple sites.

Then there's this reality: The primary reason most people join a GPT site is to make money, not to find a new product or service.

Smith, the stay-at-home mom, still gets movies by mail through Blockbuster, and De Vetter, the GPTer from Willow Grove, kept Netflix for a time.

But Smith canceled the diet pills she tried. And even before the New York Times arrived, De Vetter guessed he would not keep it.

"I get my news online," he said.

Google the site to make sure that other users haven't reported it as a scam.

Check a site's privacy policy to make sure it isn't going to sell your information to someone else.

Go to the site's members forum and ask others about their experiences.

Start out with free surveys. Do not give out a credit-card number until you feel comfortable with the site. Or bypass credit cards and use a low-balance PayPal account instead.

Create a separate GPT e-mail account to prevent your regular account from getting spammed.

Keep careful records so you aren't stuck with products that you don't want.

- Kellie Patrick

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