I'm a newbie and of course got sucked in to a few of the scam sites listed in the complaint area. So should I cancel my memberships immediately? Does it make a difference if I just wait for awhile and see if I get paid? Or is there benefit to chalking up the lost time and cancelling all memberships to sites listed as scams?

There really isn't any point to staying a member Nicole -- you're just wasting time on these sites that you could be spending on sites that really will pay you.

We've all been there at one time or another, so don't feel bad about getting suckered in. I can understand how exciting it would be if you were new to PTR and the first sites you come across are all ones that promise huge amounts of money for very little work. That's probably the thing about these sites that makes me the maddest of all -- they're aiming for people like you in hopes you'll click on their search links and maybe buy a few ads to make some money for them....they couldn't care less about YOU as a person and to me, that's unforgivable.

Just walk away from all of them as fast as you can. Trust me, you'll never regret it. And then, after you're out, tell as many other people as you can about your experience.

Welcome to PTR -- I hope you'll soon start finding out that there are a lot of good programs and good people out there.

First of all, take all the complaints in the complaint area with a grain of salt. Since you are a newbie, I will explain a simple fact of the complaint area here.

Many complaints are made by disgruntled members who were deleted because they cheated or did something wrong. Read over the complaint threads carefully, many of the members here will put those who complain for those reasons in their place (especially when they do attack the good sites that are known to pay).

After doing that, if it turns out you are in a few scam sites, don't cancel your membership just yet. Go take a peek in your redemption area. See what sort of advertising your earnings can get you. If you have enough to get yourself some decent paid advertising (avoid PTCs, those aren't the best form of advertising really, a paid e-mail or banner impressions will get better results).

Then go join a good sustainable site if you haven't already, and redeem your earnings for the scam site to advertise the sustainable site and hopefully get yourself a referral or two in a site that will actually pay you. Or you can advertise an earning opportunity besides a PTR, anything that actually does pay.

And then you can cancel your membership, or keep clicking to earn some more ads until such time as they finally disappear.

And that is how you can get something postive out of accidentally falling for a scam.

The bad part of that, though, is by knowingly running an ad that you know no one will ever be paid to click, you're helping the owner keep the scam going. The only way for these sites to ever go away is for members to just walk out.

My own opinion is that nobody should ever redeem for ads in these sites. Yes, you may personally be getting something out of it, but it's at the expense of all the other members.

I still recommend walking away and not looking back.

(Note: I'm assuming the OP is talking about the sites that promise to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to "all honest members" and that are underselling their ads to the point of putting legit PTRs on the brink of going under because they can't compete with these "cheap ads.")

Walk away, do not contribute to others also being suckered into the scam sites by clicking or redeem for adds. Some members of those sites are not as luck as you for having found this forum. They will only findout they have been scammed when thay try to cashout in acouple of months, after long hours of clicking on ads.

That is why I am honestly of the opinion that redeeming earnings for an ad for a sustainable site is not a bad idea.

Many of those members won't find this forum to learn about these scams until its too late, but how can it honestly hurt to use earnings to advertise a good and paying site. I prefer not to totally waste my time if I make an error in judgement in joining a new site and get something out of it.

Like for instance, you can try to bring across the point that they will be paid within 24 hours by this sustainable site, and keep getting paid for years to come.

I definitely agree with not giving any money to these scam sites, but to someone who already got suckered in by mistake, they might as well make the best of it and maybe in the process get themselves some referrals along with showing some of these people who joined scams that you can indeed get paid.

Just leave them right now.