Paid4 scene

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paid4 (“paid-for”) means “paid for” and in a narrower sense describes the possibility of being paid for viewing advertising on the Internet. The user must have a (free) membership with a provider of such a service (paid service).

The Paid4 scene is understood to mean the online community of providers, users and beneficiaries of Paid4 providers. Most of the providers work according to the network marketing principle.

Well-known Paid4 models

  • Paid surfing (using special software, a so-called surfbar)
  • Paid homepage views
  • Paid email , so-called paidmail
  • Paid text ads (for webmasters )
  • Paid SMS
  • Paid opinion portals and forums
  • Paid search forms (for webmasters )
  • Paid banner ads (for webmasters )
  • Online currencies
  • Begging games
  • Paid gaming
  • Paid participation in promotions (bonus promotions)
  • Paid listening to advertisements over the phone
  • Paid viewing of commercials on the Internet

principle

In general, the Paid4 scene includes operators, users (webmasters) and sponsors.

The principle is simple: the user (English users ) registered for free with a provider and consumed advertising in the offered form. If he runs a website himself, he can incorporate various advertising media and pay for it with a click / view. As soon as he has collected enough credit, he can withdraw his earnings to his account. Many providers offer a so-called referral program in which a user can advertise other users using a special URL , the referral link, and receive a percentage of their earnings, often even over several levels (downline). No credit is deducted from the referred user, this bonus is usually factored in by the provider and financed by the advertising income. The sponsors in turn provide the advertising and pay for the hope of one or the other new customer.

development

Since at the end of the 90s many Internet users were hoping for quick money, a scene around the so-called paid4 services developed. As a result, many private websites were paved with advertising banners from various Paid4 providers or created solely for the purpose of distributing referral links . Most users did not shy away from entering personal data in anticipation of the big bucks. Some surfers even ran several surf bars at the same time. The earnings were much higher than today, the best-known Paid4 provider FairAd.de paid up to DM 1 per hour. More and more large and small providers tried to position themselves more or less professionally on the competitive market. Those who paid for something could expect a lot of money-hungry surfers shortly after their start, who advertised each other in relevant forums.

User interest in money was high, but interest in the advertised products was low. There was a shortage of sponsors and advertising was paid significantly less. Many of the Paid4 providers mainly faded in advertisements for other Paid4 providers, so that ultimately only a redistribution of funds took place. Many users were no longer able to withdraw the virtual amounts of money they had asked for because the provider had meanwhile become insolvent.

With the exception of opinion portals such as Ciao.de , the large companies have withdrawn from the Paid4 scene. Most users get tired of it after a short time because they quickly notice that they earn too little.

There are few large companies that actively run websites this way, but there are more private and small business operated websites. The Paid4 scene is always about the question of whether the respective provider can pay out its users or not. This market is often inundated, especially nowadays, by providers who want to lure unsuspecting users with unrealistic remuneration and who ultimately do not pay out when the payout limit is reached. Therefore, the providers in various Internet forums that deal with this scene and the topic are often divided into so-called blacklists and whitelists , which are created by users for users in order to warn them of fraudulent providers.

Since 2008 there has been a significant change in the income opportunities of the paid scene. In the past, users received their remuneration for clicking on a banner or looking at an e-mail. Today, Paid4Lead and Paid4Sale campaigns are primarily marketed, which in the scene are usually called bonus campaigns. The typical paid mailers are more and more dying out due to the rapid drop in e-mail payments, instead one can find primarily bonus portals and bonus mailers today.

In the field of advertising for webmasters, offers with context-oriented advertising in the form of simple text links are developing as an alternative to the often suppressed advertising banners and pop-ups . The best and most famous example of this is Google AdSense , which is also used by professional websites and websites of larger companies.

Approx. In 2014 there was a boom through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Co. The paid4 scene didn't overlook this either, and new business ideas in the form of paid likes and paid followers quickly developed. Facebook in particular had to struggle with this, as individual users gave over 1000 likes a day within a very short time. As a result, the maximum number of likes per user was limited. As a result, this area quickly became uninteresting and a lot of big pages ran off from one day to the next - with the users' earned money.

The so-called payback system has so far proven to be the best, as profit is generated on each side. With Payback, the user buys through the shops offered by the provider (mainly online shops) and receives a fixed or percentage part back. This type of reimbursement, which arose from the bonus campaigns of the Paid4Szene, has now made some large companies socially acceptable and also expanded. Well -known companies such as Payback.de also offer the opportunity to earn points with every purchase in normal shops if you scan your Payback card and these points can be exchanged for rewards or used directly for shopping in various shops. The Deutschlandcard also became famous through this system .

Through these companies, the paid4 scene has changed significantly and is no longer limited to the Internet. In many cities, the change has ensured that bonus cards are issued with which you can collect points in local shops and then exchange them in one way or another for services or credit. This strengthens the regionally based companies that do not always belong to a large chain of stores.

The paid4 scene has also grown again in the field of market research, so surveys on all kinds of topics (e.g. new product ideas, political views, etc.) are now being offered and paid for by the companies behind them.

Paid4 scene in English-speaking countries

Since the German providers usually pay little or work with point systems, many people go to the American or English-language sites. There you often get more money for an email from the Paid4Mail providers thanks to the large number of inquiries for “search mails”. Lately, many sites have been swearing by PayPal , Moneybookers and similar online payment systems such as AlertPay. However, since there are black sheep (also known as “ scams ”) who lure users in with excessive offers such as US $ 40 per e-mail, the paid4 scene in the USA faded more and more into the background.

The email area has now almost completely passed, in English-speaking countries the PTC (Pay To Click) pages are clearly in the majority. Here, the operators rely on above-average payments per click. These providers have built up a specific system. The normal user can register and earn a few cents a day, but he is forced to take out a premium membership for almost every one of these sites, he has to pay for this, but gets more to click and some other advantages. In addition, these services are advertised as much as they can so that a useful additional income can be built up, but most normal users achieve little and often give up before reaching the payout limit or put their credit in advertising on the site. These PTC sites (also called BUX or PPC) usually only offer payouts via an online payment system. Examples of this would be paypal, skrill or bitcoin.

Since these providers are often located far outside the EU, it is a matter of luck whether and when you will be paid by these services. Legally, there is hardly a chance here if a service refuses to pay out. This is why the area is highly praised by some and frowned upon by others.

Advertising networks

In order to create an interface between the website operators and the sponsors, many advertising networks / affiliate networks were formed relatively quickly. For a small commission, these offer a platform on which both parties can register for free. In this way, both sides do not have to look for sponsors / website operators, but can do this via the networks.

Networks offer technical interfaces in order to be able to deliver the advertising booked by sponsors to the website operator. There are also usually detailed statistics, many different forms of advertising and of course comprehensive support for questions on both sides.

With the change in the scene, the smaller and more private networks have largely switched from the click area to Payback in order to earn something, so the usual operators hardly have a choice here. But there are still large providers for these purposes who offer everything you need to run your site. For example Adcocktail.

Some networks do not want paid4 pages, others openly advertise accepting so-called special case pages, these are then often divided into two areas or rule out normal forms of advertising for special case pages from the outset.

Payments are usually made directly by bank transfer or PayPal, with the latter the fees are often borne by the webmaster.

Autoregger

Some websites offer so-called autoreggers, which enable the visitor to automatically register with several paid mailers with a single registration. The providers of such autoreggers usually promise the user higher income, since the Paid4Mail services they have selected are supposedly particularly reliable. Often, however, it is a question of car harriers to the veiled attempt to recruit as many new users as possible via their own referral links and to receive commissions for them.

The new data protection regulation is likely to be particularly critical of these services, as private and sensitive data are easily sent to several sites and stored there. Although many of these providers write that you should read the terms and conditions of the services that you offer yourself, very few stick to them. This quickly leads to a number of registrations without having read the associated page, their terms and conditions, and their privacy policy.

Data protection regulation

After the new data protection regulation came into force on May 25, 2018 ( GDPR ), many providers have disappeared without comment. Since with Paid4 services with data such as names, addresses, date of birth, email address, IP address and much more. Worked and sometimes traded, switching the site to https ( SSL certificate ) would be a must. It would also take a lot of effort to equip the pages with a customized data protection declaration and then of course to implement this.

The fact that many providers use cheap, ready-made scripts and do not know how to edit them creates problems, because some of them do not check the login data (especially the e-mail address). As a result, even a typing mistake would undesirably be thundered at a completely different person with advertising emails. Since the GDPR provides for severe penalties in this regard, it is understandable that these providers are looking the way.

A change to the terms and conditions would also be necessary due to the changeover, as this would, depending on the content, also entail the so-called special right of termination and that would result in immediate payment, this would be the financial low point for some site operators.

Many of the small providers are barely above water or operate the projects as a hobby and are therefore not willing to make these changes or to pay someone for them. Only a few small pages and the really big ones in the scene have implemented these requirements.