Treachery in the GPT Industry
The GetPaidTo business has been floundering for years. GPT Sites appear almost overnight, either to flourish, or to wither away quickly. What was once a strong, unified industry has suddenly become a den of apprehensive, wary site owners. How did this transpire? How did such a robust business suddenly turn sour?
It all started back a few years ago, when the first tremors spread throughout the industry. An extremely popular set of offers, called the Tickle Tests, were pulled en masse from sites after it was discovered that the fraudulent leads vastly outnumbered the legit ones. Reversals flooded the sites, causing some to fold up from the monetary loss they suffered. One site stated that they had lost close to several hundred thousand dollars in the fiasco.
Affiliates were on edge after that. They constantly monitored sites, and ran network-wide IP checks for fraudulent users. Those who were found, were listed into a national database of banned users, and were never allowed onto the sites again.
Then the second catastrophe hit.
An affiliate discovered that some sites, in an attempt to make up for their diminishing returns, were surreptitiously running what are termed “non-incentive offers”.
There are two types of offers that GPT sites run from advertisers. The main ones are “incentive”, which means they are allowed to give people a reward of sorts for completing the offer, such as cash or points. Non-incentives are the exact opposite. Any offer of a reward to people for completing it, and the site is automatically in violation.
Yet, sites were running those exact same non-incentives, offering large cash amounts to anyone who completed them.
Resentful of this flagrant behavior, several affiliate networks withdrew from the GPT industry. Completely.
Sites were stuck with many offers completed by users, with credit requests…but they couldn’t pay them. The affiliates had left them to face the music, and to deal with the consequences of what they had done. Now, not every GPT site was guilty of this, but the affiliates were so disenchanted by the behavior of the ones who did run the offers, that they didn’t even want to deal with them.
Now...back to the present time.
Many of the affiliates still will not associate themselves with the GPT industry. Several of the main affiliate networks, such as MaxBounty and ValueClickMedia, will automatically deny any sites that offer any sort of incentives. The other affiliate networks are very careful now, and only accept certain applications, because they fear certain sites.
Sites like GPTFreebies.
Recently I was contacted by several people in regards to this site. The first one was a “heads-up” of sorts from a sharp-eyed site owner. She was interested in joining his site, but noticed a few “shady” offers listed on his site. The very next day, I received ANOTHER email from a member of his site, mentioning something she thought sounded funny. Apparently several offers on the site were pulled, and the owner asked his member to complete the offers using the links on his blog. There, he could monitor who completed it, and he would then pay the people via his GPT site.
Curious, I checked the offers out. Doubtlessly, something was up. I myself went to his site, and checked. My suspicions were confirmed – non-incentive after non-incentive was listed on his site.
Was this an accident? Or were they posted with a more devious intent? Part Two of Treachery in the GPT Industry is now available!
