I am sure that this will be an inconclusive debate but it will be great to get some opinions. Do you think it is better to buy referrals or get free ones? Do you think it is better to buy them directly from the site or from other websites that sell them?

If you buy referrals would the be active enough to make a return on your investment? Seems like it would be a touch chancy if you are looking at ref commissions coming in.

Yes that is true. I have bought referrals from two sites - Adbux and Bux.to. I have made my money back quickly and easily from Bux.to but Adbux I have only made back about half of what I put in. I guess it can depend very much on the site.....

Re incentivized referrals, there is no guarantee that the referral will be "active", just that they will join. The incentive may be 0.10 on a PTC site. If the person just signs up and isn't active, you have an email and a "lead" you can now target. Some have had success with this and have estimated getting anywhere from 30% to 60% active referrrals. But, you could also get zero. I just started a new paid to signup campaign that costs me 20 cents each for my Hits4Pay account. When I consider advertising costs, I feel my cost of $2.00 is reasonable. Hopefully, I will gain a few active referrals, and at a minimum have some email leads I can follow up on.

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I guess it is all a bit risky in this business. We are even taking a risk that the site will pay us once we reach our minimum payout amount. We just have to do our best to access the risk.

You are right, doing your due diligence is important before you start out. I like the sites that say that they have been in business for years, yet when you look up the whois for the domain it is less than a year old.

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