sounds too fishy for me and I bet no real advertiser would allow us to promote them like that.
You're not too far off. I have a lot of experience with PTC/GPT since I played around a lot with them when I was a kid and wanted to make some pocket change. I've also run my own PTC site once for a short period.
Since PTC-sites barely get any advertisers at all, the site owner puts up his own PPC/PPS/etc-ads and pays users to click them. This, however, is usually not sustainable on its own since the site owner usually pays more per click than he makes in revenue on average per click. To sustain the site, the owners add the option to upgrade your account at a high cost. The primary incentive to upgrade your account is that you get more referrals (the main source of revenue for users comes from other users they have referred to the site. You usually get a certain percentage of their earnings. Yes, PTC-sites are usually pyramid schemes.) and get a higher percentage of referral earnings. You can often also buy referrals from the site, but the catch is that these referrals are actually usually bots, not real people. They are often programmed to be profitable for the user in the beginning, but then suddenly they stop "clicking". Eventually, most PTC sites become completely unsustainable as people don't buy enough account upgrades and referrals, eventually turning the site into a scam.
So yes, PTC/GPT is definitely shady.
