Total Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post, but I do stand to benefit if you click on my referral link.

A couple of people have asked me about paid to surf programs after I posted about CashDuck.

So I did a little research, and most of the people I’ve talked to haven’t been scammed by their paid-to-surf/paid-to-click, it’s just they didn’t really make that much money. At only a few cents per click, you have to click twenty times to make $1. If takes quite a bit of time to make money, but there’s no capital investment. Still, do research on each site before you join.

The secret to paid to surf or paid to click programs is that you don’t make your money off of doing the actual surfing yourself, you make your money by referring other people to the program and getting a percentage of their earnings. If you convince a few friends or family to join, you’ll make about 10% of what they make on the average. So if your mom is an overzealous clicker and makes $50 in a month, you’d get about $5 of that. Chances are, however, that most of your referrals will never click a single link or they will give up on the program within a few weeks.

Like CashDuck, you won’t be able to make a living off of Paid to Surf referral programs unless you have a large site with a ton of visitors or a massive newsletter. On the other hand, free money is free money.

Pay2Surft.net is my paid-to-surf of choice. The payout is between $.09 to $.40 per click and the referral payout is 15% I’m not making enough to quit my dayjob, but it’s enough to pay my hosting bills and domain registrations.