Legitimate Paying Free Programs, Hard To Find

Are there no legitimate free programs that actually pay their members what they promised?

One of my Yuwie friends had mentioned on her blog that she was trying one of those get-paid-to-surf programs, and it seemed to be working pretty well. It starts you at 45 cents/hour for fairly effortless web surfing of their advertisers' pages, with the chance to earn up to 75 cents/hour.

I guess it was a weak moment for me or something, but I went ahead and logged on to sign up for it too, using her affiliate link. I got almost all the way through the registration process, but then it stalled on the last step and said it couldn't establish my account at this time and to try again later. Odd.

So then I Googled to see what I might be able to find about it, and sure enough, it turned out to be pretty much a known scam. The one I'm talking about is called Surfjunky, and anyone that takes a minute to Google it can find plenty of reports of how well known they are for closing peoples' accounts just in time to avoid paying out what they owe them.

This just reminded me that I broke my own rule and didn't research the program first before deciding to sign up for it - and in turn probably waste quite a bit of time before I found out the bad news firsthand.

All it takes is a minute to Google things that you come across, BEFORE you agree to spend your time - or worse, your money - to promote things that you think may be worthwhile. Just because things are free, it doesn't mean they can't waste your TIME...and that might be even worse than wasting your money sometimes.

So don't let your guard down like I did. Remember to do your research before getting involved in any kind of investment of time or money. There are no secrets on the internet, so you can usually find out pretty quickly if others have had bad experiences with whatever program you're considering. You just need to remember to take a look.