I'm writing this today hoping to save you a severe disappointment.

One of the most popular ways of earning money from the 'net is by participating in get-paid-to programs, maybe the most popular of them being get-paid-to-read-emails (GPTRE). In case you're thinking about being involved with them, here's what I can tell you about it.

* You sign up to many of these programs.

* You agree to receive emails from them.

* They send you "paid emails".

* When you click on some of the links in the emails your account balance is incremented accordingly.

* After a while, when your account has reached the "payout level" either the program automatically sends you a payment or they pay you upon your request.

Well, I checked into the concept around two years ago and here are my experiences.

First, there are a lot of them that are obvious scams. Some of them are not so obvious, and I have to admit I joined one of them (Tasias Paid Links) and did my part of the job for a while. I reached the payout level, expected to be paid accordingly and, well, I never got paid what I was owed and my account was deleted for no reason. I tried to contact the webmaster to fix the situation with no results.

Eventually I looked on Google for "Tasias Paid Links scam" to confirm my observations and, no wonder, there were a lot of reports from other scammed people with similar experiences.

So, if you want to avoid the scams go to this page.

And if you're considering joining some program that is not listed there, try a Google search for "Your Program Name scam" and see what it brings.

Even with the non-scams, there's a problem with many of these programs. They send you emails at such a low pace that even if you clicked on every one of them you wouldn't reach the payout level for your personal clicking efforts even in many, many months.

And to make matters worst, the sites could stop sending you "paid emails" anytime, most precisely when you were about to reach your payout level.

Another way to theoretically earn with these programs is by referring new email readers that sign up under you, so you would get credited for a part of their work...

Well, maybe that works for somebody, I don't know. The problem is I only recommend a site to somebody else if it has worked for me, so I just couldn't build a network of sub-readers when I wasn't paid in the first place.

I'm not saying that every get-paid-to-read-email program is a scam, only that the ones I tried did not produce any money for me in the, hmmm... three to six month period I was involved with it.

Anyway the concept is too much of a "work" thing, so it never was too appealing to me. I don't mind to work hard, but only to setup automated income streams that do the work for me over and over again.

At this point I would recommend you some GPTRE programs that worked for me, but unfortunately none of them did, soooo... no recommendations today.

Take care,

P.S. - Next week I will tell you about my first automated income stream, and this one *did* pay. :)