Get Paid To Read websites are sites that send you messages to read. Each time you read a message you are paid. Are these sites profitable?  Unfortunately, Get Paid to Read sites are very difficult to make money with unless you build a downline by recruiting other people. If you recruit others to get paid to read, you will get a small percent of their earnings and you can build income that way.

Jill Carpenter aka Avenue Girl of Internet Marketing Plan recently wrote about Get Paid to Read sites on a popular marketing forum.  Her insights clarify how Get Paid to Read sites work. With her permission I have shared her post below.

“There are companies on the web where when you have a sales page you want to test conversions on, you can submit your sales page to these “paid to read” companies and they will spit your sales letters out to their list of readers. As someone testing a page, you may get some sales, you definitely get some traffic, and you can collect data to see what is converting.

As a “reader” for one of these companies, you are sent alerts in your mail box when there are new messages/sales letters to be read. So, you click to read them and you are on a timer so you have to stay on the page for a designated period of time before you can move onto the next ad.

Typically, you get maybe 2 cents per letter/email that you read. These companies usually have a payout that requires you to make a 20 dollar mark or so before they will pay you. You may only get 10 messages per day to read – and a lot of times there is a sign up bonus of 10 bucks or something.

So as a reader, lets say you sign up and you get 10 dollars credit but you now need to read enough emails to get to that 20 dollar pay out. At 2 cents per message at a 10 message per day average, you will be making 20 cents a day and it will take you roughly 5 days to make a dollar – so from there you can figure it will take you 50 days to get to your 10 dollars needed to get your payout.

(these numbers are not set in stone, but are probably a fair example)

So, why would anyone do this?

Well, readers can build downlines. For each reader in their downline they get a penny for each ad their immediate downline reads, and there is more to be had as the downline grows below the first tier.

It is possible to build enough people below you so you can make 20 – 30 dollars a day while you just read your 10 ads and are done. But to build this downline you will need to recruit. They don’t just fall into your lap. And you need to help them build their downlines or they won’t stick around long – so again this is some work.

The best way to do this is to offer extra assistance to those who sign up below you in helping them build their downlines. So while you thought you could just get away with a few minutes work it is really a lot of work to make some money.

Why do I mention listbuilding in this process? Well you will be interacting with your downline for the best success and you can start building a list to have a way to communicate with them.

Your downfall is when successful ads suck the reader into buying the products they are suppose to be “reviewing.’

You are essentially a guinea pig for the advertisers to see if they can get you.

The host or company you are working for will try to get you to buy as well by holding contest – and when you do make a purchase from certain sites you can get entered in a lottery of sorts to win bigger cash prizes.

You can expand by doing more than one of the paid to read companies, and get your downlines to sign up under you on the additional companies as well.

In the end of all of this, you can learn – and you can study sales copy of what works and what doesn’t – but these are things you can learn faster elsewhere without spending so much time for very little money.”

As you can see from Jill’s post it is very difficult to make money with Get Paid to Read sites. 

As I researched this Get Paid to Read article I studied one of the most popular Get Paid to Read sites on the net. They made it sound easy and profitable. But when I explored the Get Paid to Read forums I discovered a little piece of information that made if very clear how unprofitable Get Paid to Read sites are. 

 This particular Get Paid to Read site requires that you sign in at least once every sixty days to keep your account active.  In the forums they listed all of the members who had not signed into their accounts and so their account had been deactivated. They do this every month and there were literally hundreds on the list.  That says something right there.

There are much better ways to make money online than with Paid to Read sites. Check out my ebook “PAYDAY – Top Ways to Make $100 or More Online“.  I also recommend using a surfing site like Swagbucks to earn prizes easily and use legitimate survey sites instead of Get Paid to Read sites.