There are a lot of great GPT (and similar) sites out there on the internet that I haven’t joined, and I thought I’d share what I look for when joining a new site. There are a lot of great sites, and also some scam sites (or just awful ones) out there.

So what do I look for?

Payment Proof
I look for payment proof off-site somewhere, such as my own blog Geek Dad. Posts like Geek Dad’s Guide to Free Stuff are very helpful to me. That type of payment proof means more to me than payment proof on the site or forum.

Forum
Now the thing about the forum is that it doesn’t have to be super active, it just has to have payment proof and just some kind of activity. If it hasn’t been used in 6 months I question it. Also, how does the staff treat the users? How do other users treat the users?

Reviews
What are people saying about the site? I try to weigh out the good and bad, and figure out whether people are being honest or did something wrong. Two people may say they were “banned for no reason” when 100 other people were paid. I had my account removed from a site after finding one or two “payment proof” posts and reading around 50 experiences (off-site forum & blog posts) involving being banned when they reached the amount of points needed for payout

Proper English
Don’t stone me yet. I’ve seen several websites that were written in “Engrish” – this does not impress me at all. I don’t feel comfortable giving my personal information to a site that can’t write a clear privacy policy (among other things).

Ads everywhere
When I find a GPT site that has a zillion ads all over the site that have nothing to do with the GPT part of the site, I have to wonder how horrible the site’s income is. “My GPT site sucks, so click these ads!” – I don’t want to see a zillion ads on a regular site, but at least there having a few of them is understandable. On a GPT site? The entire site is about ads.

Those are a few things that I look for, and here’s one thing I don’t care about at all:

GPTBoycott
I see this button and link on several GPT and similar sites. This doesn’t mean squat to me! I’ve joined a few very, very crappy and shady sites that were “supporters of GPTBoycott” and regretted it. There are also some good ones I’m sure. Somehow these guys got it into peoples’ heads that if a site isn’t a “GPTBoycott supporter” they’re not legit. This is not true. There are some excellent sites out there that aren’t a part of this ring of sites. Please don’t let that influence you in any way. There are good and bad sites that are “GPTBoycott supporters” and there are good and bad sites that are not.

Be smart, do your research on the sites, and make sure to check the tips above for help determining if a site is right for you.