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Unfortunately not all programs in the
GPT world have the intention of paying their members. Some will not
only avoid payment but they will also sell your personal information as
well. There are a number of things you can do to reduce this risk, time
spent in research is a lot less than the time spent working away only
to find you wont be getting what you have earned, they are;
Check the blacklists that the various forums
list programs on and search on the internet with the name of the
program and scam in the same search box, as this is the popular turn of
phrase used by members that haven't been paid by a program, that search
should bring up some of the complaints made by members/former members
if there are any to be found. Search the forums for good and negative
posts regarding the site that you are thinking of joining.
The Whois Database, this lists the
details of the person or company that has bought/registered the domain
name of the site in question. This is a very useful tool.
Consider contacting the PO / WM twice,
once to ask for details about membership and the other asking for
details about advertising. Make sure the questions you ask are
plausible and not directly covered on the homepage or in the terms. For
the membership question it could be something like "Are you planning to
introduce a particular payment processor in the future" (If they state
payments by PayPal and E-Gold, you could ask are they planning on
accepting AlertPay for example). For the advertising question it could
be something like (if you are a site owner) "I have a site and wondered
if you would consider offering me a discount for a major purchase" This
serves three fold, if the owner doesn't reply to the membership
question then thats a red flag that they may be one of those
non-responsive owners, and if you run into difficulties then this could
be a major problem. If they ignore both then they could have done a
'runner' already and you would be wasting your time, if they respond to
the advertising and not the membership question, are they just
concerned with making money but not paying it out? But if they respond
to both then that reflects well on them and the site they run and could
be an indication of an owner thats happy to assist both members and
advertisers whenever they can.
Of course there are programs that go
along happily paying members and running the site well but for one
reason or another it runs into difficulties and disappears. Whilst this
is a sad occurrence for both the owner and members, this is what forums
are particularly good for as people will start to post as soon as they
see anything amiss. Remember, fore-warned is fore-armed. | 
