How to discover scammers before they scam you

Posted by Admin on Jan 27, 2011 in PTC Guide | 9 comments

Staying safe from scam PTC Sites is a vital part of your PTC business but this can be extra hard since more than 95% of PTC sites are scam. Extra hard it may be but it’s not impossible. First let’s take a look at what type of scams are out there:

1. PTC Sites that are legit, have honorable owners but eventually go out of business and are closed due to various reasons.

2. PTC Sites that have only one goal in mind: make as much money as possible of your back by scamming you.

We can divide this category in two, thus resulting:

a. Small scam sites with not so clever or broke owners who start a small site with a poor script and never pay a dime to their members. They usually are online a few months or even under one month.

b. Big Scam sites with cunning owners who put together a good site and gather a lot of members. They pay their members who populate the internet with payment proofs and good reviews. Then they cause delays in payments and latter on they won’t pay at all, invoking different reasons and excuses.

However they are still paying some of the members who bring new payment proofs and supporters thus leaving hope to the unpaid members who continue clicking, renting (most probably bots) and upgrading. These are the most dangerous sites, the ones that cause most damages and the ones that you have to run from.

The question arises then: If they managed to get a good, stable and profitable PTC Site up and running why still scamming their members? Well, there are only two main reasons why an apparently stable PTC site may scam you:

1. The site is very profitable to standard members and can’t be sustained in the long run.

2. It’s a lot more profitable to make another scam once every few months then it is to manage a site for a few years. And count on the fact that with each scam made they are getting better at it and come up with new ideas to scam people in the future.

Yes the world we live in isn’t perfect…
Now the scammers may be smart but we aren’t chimpanzees either. Due to the large number of scams out there a lot of sites are dedicated to showing you which sites are scam, which may become scam and which to trust. You can also find this kind of information here on PTC-Sites.com.

How to identify a scam site

Before you join a PTC site you must do some research. Researching PTC sites is a vital part of your PTC business. It will save you countless hours of work and many dollars, probably hundreds in the long run.

1. The first thing you have to do is a google search for “site’s name scam” for example: neobux scam, bux.to scam or palmbux scam. See what answers come up. If there are many complaints about the site, it most likely is a scam. Don’t just click the first few answers though, as those may be sites highly SEO optimized that only want to sign you up as their referral and are rarely updated. Instead check also pages 2 and 3.
2. Whether you conclude that the site is a scam or not check PTC investigations to see what they have to say about it.

3. If the site isn’t scam come back here to www.ptc-sites.com to see how much you will make by joining it and decide if it suits your earnings goal.

If you do not find enough info by doing the above steps start a mini research of your own.

This is what you have to take note of:

1. See if the site has a forum, if it does see if you can view posts not being a member, if you can’t it’s a really bad sign. If it doesn’t have a forum at all it’s even worse.

2. Check for payment proofs in the forum and on the internet. If you don’t find any it’s still OK, maybe no one has reached minimum payout, but keep in mind that no one has been paid yet.

3. If it’s a new site give it extra attention as new sites scam far more often than older PTC sites.

4. If the script is poor or the site looks crappy and scammy it’s a really bad sign.

5. If the owner uses free services like free domain, free hosting or free script it means that it didn’t have any money to buy those or he didn’t want to spend money. Do you think he will “spend” any money paying you?

6. In the news section or forum the admin posted months ago. Most likely he abandoned the site but still keeps it online to make a few more bucks.

7. Has one or no ads. Or promotes many scam sites. Again this is bad.

8. If the owner had another PTC site that scammed people. He will scam again.

9. Read the TOS, understand it and be on a lookout for absurd rules like “after payment all your direct referrals will be removed.” You wouldn’t want to join a site that thinks like that wouldn’t you?

10. It does not have TOS at all. This is really bad.

11. It only pays premium members. Don’t join these sites.

12. The TOS does not mention the minimum payout. Why do you think they are hiding it?

13. The TOS changes frequently.

14. If the value for standard ads is bigger than $0.03 then the site is scam. There are so called rich PTC sites that state they will give you $10 or $100 for ad or e-mail read. The payment is usually at $10000. No one will pay you never $100 for a click, all these sites are scam, don’t be drown by them.

15. If everything looks OK and you decide to register you still have to check one more thing before you make your final decision: Post a message in the forum introducing yourself. If the message has to be approved by a moderator before being published it means that the forum is censored.

This is done to keep the forum clean of complaints and negative feedback when in reality that forum it should be filled with these because the site is a scam. One of the best examples is bux.to. However this is highly unlikely to happen because if you have done the above steps you would already knew the site is scam. This advice is here because you must be aware of it too.

The golden rule

There is a golden rule in regard to PTC sites: “One site may pay you today and scam you tomorrow” You should always be aware of this, especially before you invest money in PTC. Ideally would be to check on each site at least once a week, even though it may be time consuming. You will waste more time on Scam PTC Sites than you will spend checking them out.

You don’t have to search the entire internet, just do the following:

1. Go to the forum of the site you want to check. Look at the payment proofs thread and also at issues and complaints thread because if problems occur they will be posted here first. Assuming that complaint posts won’t be deleted.

2. Search google for “site name scam” to see if people start to complain about the site.

3. See if PTC Investigations have made any updates regarding that site.

And, for your safety, before you start your clicking session each day spend one or two minutes checking the news in PTC world http://ptc-sites.com/category/g-ptc-news/ You should bookmark the page for easy access.

The only way to stay safe from the cunning owners who scam the hell out of some users is, as I said before, check the sites you’re a member of least once a week and check the news daily.

Yet another good piece of advice is this: only upgrade if you have a hefty amount of direct referrals under you. This is in case the site you upgrade your membership becomes a scam later, this way you will have a greater chance of making a profit. There is an old saying: “Never give the sparrow in your hands for the crow that’s on the fence.”

I sincerely hope my advices will help you.

Any feedback and comments will be greatly appreciated and if you need any help just post in the comment area and I will get back to you as fast as I can.