Life got a little chaotic for me the last few months, so I haven't been spending much time on this site. I figured it was probably time for new news, haha!

In the last few months several more sites have gone belly up. For more information about those, I recommend checking out one of the GPT forums out there (my personal favorite is Global Friends Online, but there are several others.) The only one (so far) that hit me was Ocean PTR. I had joined it only two weeks before it died and hadn't purchased any upgrades yet, so I lucked out.

Other sites have changed hands or have come back online, or done both. One such example is the set of sites owned by Sherise (Bang the Links, Princess Mails, and School Bus of Cash). Princess Mails was given to/taken over by a person who goes by the username of cocochinel, and who appears to be paying. School Bus and BTL are both online, though Sherise made a statement saying she wanted to get rid of BTL. I strongly recommend staying away from these two programs. I can't speak for Princess.

A whole slew of sites were taken over by Carole Stacy, who is doing a bang up job of destroying them. Great thread here.

The owner of Sea Turtles PTR announced that she was leaving PTR due to family needs and turning all of her sites over to new owners. All of them except Sea Turtles are now in new hands, and no further announcements have been made concerning that site. The new owner is supposed to be Kandy, who appears to have a good reputation. So we'll see where that goes. I'm planning on sticking with the program until I see how the new owner handles things.

In my little corner of the PTR world, I joined a couple new sites and am contemplating leaving a few. I just have too many on my plate right now and find myself only doing the bare minimum numbers of clicks at some! Two of the new (to me) sites I joined have me really impressed, and I'd like to focus more on sites like them.

My current favorite site: Vale PTR. I really wish I had listened to everyone raving about this site and joined ages ago! This site is amazing. It's huge - I mean HUGE - so you can easily make 20 cents a day, more if you're a tier 1/2 country, and that's not including PTP. (PTP at Vale pays $0.55 CPM for free members, $0.75 CPM for upgraded members, and there's also a $0.10 CPM no tier, free for all link.) There are 1600 members so your ads are viewed very quickly. The admin (Inya) is wonderful and quick to respond to inquiries. She pays once weekly, usually on Saturdays, though only pays those who request payment (it's not automatic). I was so impressed with this site that I bought my very first affiliate page ever after only belonging a few days! I've had it for two months now and am averaging 30-50 hits daily to each of my affiliate page PTCs (more when I advertise the page more heavily, about 30 if I don't advertise at all.) Each affiliate page link is worth 3 points, which when converted equals 0.03c ($0.0003), which is a decent rate for affiliate pages. If you don't belong to this site don't delay for months like I did. Join now and I bet you can earn your first payout before the New Year. : )

My second favorite right now is 1 Cent Mail. I kept getting this one confused with other sites that use a similar name and are scams, so I avoided joining for a long time. Finally I found a short discussion that clarified that 1 Cent Mail (run by Susan C who also owns Firecracker Emails) is not only not a scam site, but one of the better sites out there. So far my experience there has been wonderful! This is another large site, though the membership here is closer to 800. There is a manual surfer and she recently added an option to limit your surf views to certain countries, like many traffic exchanges offer. There are a ridiculous number of emails daily and also tons of PTCs, affiliate pages with 0.03c links, and even personal PTC pages. You can easily earn 15-20 cents daily here, though not quite as much as at Vale. The link values are on the high side - usually 0.03c-0.05c. There's also PTP, paying $0.55 CPM for free members, $0.75 CPM for upgraded members, and there's also a $0.20 CPM no tier link that can be used by anyone and in conjunction with one of the other links. Susan is very professional and quick to respond, much like Inya. This is another one I regret not joining earlier, but I'm making the most of it now!

That's all for me today. If I don't post again, I hope you all have a great rest of 2009 and start the new decade on a positive note!

Related Links:
Jenn's Reviews - Links - Info on some of the sites mentioned above and many more
Global Friends Online - A message board for the GPT industry
Vale PTR - My current favorite PTR
1 Cent Mail - Another great PTR