Tips and Tricks

These GPT (Get Paid To) websites provide their members with "offers" that pay between USD .50c to $1 or even more per offer. To complete an offer you have to give information such as name, e-mail address, home address, phone number, and date of birth. GPT's require you to input this information in a truthful manner, but here we have listed some ways to keep advertisers from calling you at all hours of the night or knocking down your door.

Phone number:

You can get a FREE voicemail number to give as your phone number for offers. Private Phone is sponsored by NetZero and gives you a totally free voicemail number and e-mail address. Anytime someone calls your voicemail number, and e-mail notification is sent to your primary e-mail address, so you can listen to your message online, or check your messages through your regular phone. This is extremely helpful as it saves you from having advertisers call your home.

K7 is an alternative to PrivatePhone, but does not have as many area code listings.

E-mail address:

Use your main e-mail address when signing up on a website, to ensure that you get all updates and correspondence from the sites. For completion of offers however, sign up for multiple e-mail addresses. Websites such as YAHOO, Hotmail and Gmail all offer virtually unlimited free e-mail addresses.

We highly recommend Gmail for your free e-mail address. This is because Gmail has a trick to it: one e-mail address can become many. For instance: moola@gmail.com can turn into: m.oola@gmail.com, mo.ola@gmail.com, moo.la@gmail.com, mool.a@gmail.com, and all go to the same inbox, but are recognized as different e-mail addresses by GPT companies. You can also use two periods, three periods, four periods, etc, for all kinds of combinations. The longer the e-mail address the more you can do, just don't make it toooooo long.

Cookies:

No, these are not the chocolate chip kind! These cookies are how the companies track if you have completed an offer or not. When you click on a link from whichever GPT you are using, it has your account number embedded in that link. When the offer completes the advertiser's website places a cookie on your computer, then notifies the GPT site that you completed the offer. It takes a few simple steps to clear your cookies:

Internet Explorer:
a) Go to "Tools" at the top of Internet Explorer.
b) Click on "Internet Options...".
c) Click on "Delete Cookies", "Delete Files", and "Clear History".

Mozilla Firefox:
a) Go to "Tools" at the top of Mozilla Firefox.
b) Click on "Clear Private Data... ".
c) Tick the "Cache", "Cookies", and "Authenticated Sessions" boxes and click "Clear Private Data Now".

Do this between offers and you will see a a lot more offer approvals. Make sure to clear cookies either before or after completing offers. DO NOT delete cookies while you are in the middle of an offer, because it will cease to track your progress.

How many offers to do:

Do not do too many offers at once.

Many of the offers look very similar, because they are. There are several companies that advertise several offers on GPT websites, and if you complete too many from the same company, they will not approve many offers.

When you are doing similar surveys from the same company, be sure to clear your cookies often and rotate e-mail addresses. You should complete a maximum of 10 surveys per day in order to optimize your approvals.

How far to go:

When doing the free offers, typically the response is to complete an offer "with intent to participate".

What does that mean?

From our experience, intent to participate means to fill out just the first two pages:

Page 1 - Zip code or e-mail address.
Page 2 - Personal info such as name, address, phone number, etc.

Normally I will only fill out that information at first. If the offer does not approve the first time, then I will fill it out completely. You will NEVER have to pay for anything on free offers - so when you get to the silver, gold and platinum offers, you can stop. You don't have to buy anything to get these ones to approve!

Here is a general guideline for many of the companies that provide offers on the GPT websites:

- Brand Survey Panel - Submit the 2nd page.
- Consumer Expression - Do until you see message in black at the top that reads "Thank you. Your information has been received successfully...blahblahblah". There will be an additional survey beneath this message. Do not do it.
- Consumer Promotion Center - Submit the 2nd page.
- Consumer Beat - Do until you see message in black at the top that reads "Thank you. Your information has been received successfully...blahblahblah".
- My Elite Rewards - Submit the 2nd page.
- My Insider Deals - Submit the 2nd page (choose one offer).
- My Select Gifts - Submit the 2nd page.
- Net Panel - Finished when the progress bar in upper right corner shows completed and when you see "Exclusive Bonus Offer...blahblahblah" at the top of page. When you get to this page the progress bar will be empty again, but you are done.
- Opinion Direct - Do until you see message in black at the top that reads "Thank you. Your information has been received successfully...blahblahblah".
- Rewards Gateway - Submit the 2nd page.
- Savings List - Submit 2nd page (choose offer).
- Survey Networks - Do until you see message in black at the top that reads "Thank you. Your information has been received successfully...blahblahblah". Typically Survey Networks will only approve one offer per e-mail address.
- Winning Surveys - Do until you see message in black at the top that reads "Thank you. Your information has been received successfully...blahblahblah". Typically Winning Surveys will only approve one offer per e-mail address.

Keeping Track:

Some offers require a credit card to complete the offer. This normally requires you purchase something, pay shipping & handling, or pay for a trial offer.

Many of these offers do not send confirmation e-mails (as they want you to forget you ordered it), so it is a good policy to read the Terms of Service of EVERY paid offer, and write down the phone number that is listed for customer service or cancellation. When you complete the offer, look for an account number or account name, and make sure you know what e-mail address you used to sign up for the offer. This way you can contact the company once the offer clears, and cancel your free trial to avoid further charges.

I use one e-mail address for all Credit Card offers, and I usually only do one or two at a time so I don't forget about them and wind up paying extra money for something I'm not using.

If you want to do a credit card offer, but do not feel comfortable using your credit card, or you do not have a credit card, you can always purchase a pre-paid credit card such as a Pre-paid Visa.

Doing more than one GPT:

Many people participate in several GPT's at once, which can get a little bit tricky when trying to track your offers. A recent development in GPT's is the banning of members who do the same offers on different GPT's, which is cause of concern for multiple GPT members.

Our recommendation is to keep a spreadsheet with the GPT website used, the name of the survey completed, the date it was completed, and what e-mail address was used. For instance:

This will help with the organization of offer completions and will keep you from overlapping your offers, and potentially getting yourself banned from all GPT sites. Believe me, it can happen.

Several offers pending:

This is normal for any GPT program. Many companies give the GPT program several offers at one time. They are looking for unique information. If you do every one of the offers from a company in a short amount of time, chances are that you will not get a great approval rate.

To keep that from happening, we recommended that you complete between 5 - 10 new offers per day, and try not to do too many from the same survey company. In addition to limiting the number of offers completed, make sure you rotate e-mail addresses.

If you have offers in pending that you really want to go through, you can re-do them, but try to limit re-doing offers to 2 - 3 per day, and only if the offer has been pending for 2 weeks or more.

If you find that your approval rates are very slow or a lot of offers are getting denied, then it means it is time for you to create a few new e-mail address's.

Credit card offers:

Many of the credit card offers are very appealing, but do pose some risk. If you fail to cancel a trial in time, or do not calculate shipping & handling into the overall profitability of the offer, you may end up very unhappy. Here are some suggestions for keeping you happy AND getting you paid for completing credit card offers!

1) Use a pre-paid Visa Gift Card. You can buy them at your local mall, grocery store, or at several online retailers. Some GPT's even offer visa gift cards as prizes.

2) Track all offers carefully. Use one main e-mail address for all credit card offers and keep all confirmations.

3) When you first see a confirmation screen pop up, make sure you write it down as well as the customer service phone number. This will keep you from stressing just in case you don't get a confirmation e-mail.

4) Read the Terms of Service VERY carefully! Some of the sneak hidden charges or fees into the offer via the Terms of Service, so please take the time to read carefully, it will save you a lot of frustration.

5) Only do 1 - 2 credit card offers at one time. Many people forget to cancel their trials or send back samples, and end up getting charged the full-amount instead of the promotional FREE or S&H only. By doing 1 - 2 at one time, it is much easier to keep track.

6) Check your credit card statements very carefully every month for unauthorized charges, this is to protect you. Some companies try to sneak stuff past you, so ensure you know what you are getting charged for!

7) If you have an unauthorized charge on your card, or you don't know what you may have ordered, contact the company listed. If they do not respond, contact your credit card company and dispute the charges.