Online Scam or Not?

With all the scams out there, how do you know what sites are legit? 

I’ve compiled a quick little tutorial on how to find out if a site is a scam or not. In this tutorial, I use the Points2Shop and Cashle sites because I personally know they are not scams. You do not have to join these sites unless you want to.

Check The List

Check out this forum post on dreamteammoney.com HERE. It has a very long list of known scam sites.

Do Research

Type the site you are interested in+scam into a search engine such as Google. For example. Lockerz+scam. Read up on a few of the links. Don’t read one and go “oh it’s a scam” or “oh looks perfectly fine”, read a few.

Also, avoid Youtube. It is LOADED with people trying to refer you to the site. They will say anything and everything to get you to go. They will promise laptops, consoles, and many other things to get you to click their link. True, some sites do give you the laptop, but they can take awhile to achieve.

Look up forums that talk about these certain type of sites. 4ums.com is a good site that I found discuss these kinds of sits. It also has a lot of information on making money online in general. 

Find Out What You Have To Do To Earn

See if they have some page on the site that tells you how to earn money on the site. For EXAMPLE. 

Most sites are a GPT (Get Paid To) or a PTC (Paid To Click). With a GPT, you usually do surveys and offers. Surveys can range from 5-30 minutes. They just ask you questions about products and services for research. Offers, are an advertiser trying to promote something. Most of them, you need to sign up for with your phone number, email address, and actual address. Here’s how deal with that.

-Email Address. Create new email addresses. Do not give them your personal email because the WILL spam you. I use gmail, but many use yahoo. I create a few email accounts a week. It’s not hard to do, and it saves me from Spam.

-Phone Number. There are two companies that seem to help with deterring telemarketer calls that you will receive from completing offers/surveys, brring.com, and laservoicemail.com. 

The way it works is:

–> You sign up for one of the services, entering your phone number

–> The site will give you a “secondary” number that is yours to keep for free, and is linked to your phone number

–> You enter that secondary phone number when doing offers/surveys
–> When the company goes to call you, the secondary number plays a song while connecting to your main number
–> MOST telemarketers will not wait around for the song to end
–> The secondary number is still using real info because it’s linked to your real first number

Home Address- Usually you don’t have to worry. They most likely won’t send you anything because it’ll cost them to send stuff to a potentially fake address. You may get one or 2 pieces of junk mail, but hey, who doesn’t get junk mail these days.

Check If They Have Proof

Check and see if they have a proof forum or some other type of way to show that users have received stuff from the site. For Example, Points2Shop has a very excellent forum for users to show what they have received. If the person is lying about the prize the received, Points2Shop will know, and they will delete the thread in order to prevent lying. Check out this forum HERE

Find Out How They Pay and What The Minimum Payout Is

Some sites claim they have daily payout but they forget to mention that there is a minimum, and that they only pay with something like Alertpay. See what they offer. Again with the Points2Shop example, below is a list of how they offer to pay users and what the minimum is. *Note* At Points2Shop, you earn points. Their sister site Cashle is the same exact thing, but you earn money.

Cash out and get payment by:                 and now gift cards from:

        Check ($5 minimum, $.50 fee)                Amazon ($10 minimum)
        Paypal ($1 minimum)                             Best-Buy ($10 minimum) 
        Alertpay ($1 minimum)                          Gamestop ($10 minimum)
        E-Gold (no minimum)                            Target ($10 minimum)
        Liberty Reserve (no minimum)                Futureshop ($30 minimum)

Find Out What You Have To Do To Earn

Most sites are a GPT (Get Paid To) or a PTC (Paid To Click). With a GPT, you usually do surveys and offers. Surveys can range from 5-30 minutes. They just ask you questions about products and services for research. Offers, are an advertiser trying to promote something. Most of them, you need to sign up for with your phone number,

Sign-up Bonus?

Try to find out if the site has a sign-up bonus that is real. Like I said with Youtube, most people will say anything and everything to get you to the site. “You will get a FREE Macbook just for signing up” is a total lie. Usually you have to check the site out yourself. Most sites will tell you on the home page what the sign up bonus is. Then again, there may be a sign-up bonus, but who is eligible? Again with the Points2Shop example, only users from the United States and United Kingdom get a sign-up bonus. Canadians used to be able to, but then a lot of Canadians went inactive, so that ruined it for the rest of them. Cashle, the same thing. Sign-up bonuses for these sites are:

Points2Shop- $2.50

Cashle- $0.50

Limited Users?

Find out if the site is limited to only certain countries. Many sites are limited to only the united states. Others are limited to other various countries. With Points2Shop, only users from the UK, US, and Canada can earn points to buy things from amazon.com. Fortunately, Cashle allows you to earn money that you can withdraw and you can use to buy anything from anywhere with.

Customer Support

Nobody likes getting lost and not knowing what to do. Most GPT sites have some type of shoutbox. A box where you can pose a question and someone can answer it rather quickly. There is usually a forum as well. At Points2Shop, they have a “Send A Ticket” feature. You can send a ticket for anything. Account issues, questions, suggestion, and anything else, you can send a message and the admin of the site will get back to you as soon as they can.

Like I said, you do not have to sign up to the sites mentioned. They were just examples for this tutorial on how to check if a site is a scam or not. If you wish to find out more about Points2Shop and Cashle, check this SITE

So remember, before you rush into joining a site that promises you the world, do a little research first. There are a lot of scams out there and only few trust-able sites. Don’t fall into the scams out there.