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Word is out that there’s a new Pay-to-Search website in town. SlashMySearch is a website which allows you to earn money by using their search engine to surf the net. There’s been a plethora of search engines that offer similar rewards to users. Some of them include the now defunct Kazook, Zotspot, Blingo and Winzy.

I’ve been covering get paid-to-search websites for a few months and I think it’s about time to review pay-to-search websites as a means to make money online.

SlashMySearch pays users based on time-based activity, which means that you’ll make approximately $0.25 cents an hour. They offer 3 levels of commission earnings and have a payout rate of $50. For more information on their program.

I’ll primarily focus my review of Get Paid-to-Search websites on Zotspot and SlashMySearch because they are websites which pay their users to use their search interface. Bling and Winzy offer daily and monthly prizes but unlike the two other websites above, do not guarantee that you’ll earn any money from using their websites.

Why Current Pay-to-Search Websites are Lousy Ways to Make Money Online.

• Consistent active participation is needed. Requires personal effort and time.
• High payout limit and low payment rates. It’ll take a few months to earn a small sum of money.
• Bubbles. Pay-to-Search engines are potentially unstable and tend to implode and go bust. Kazook is a good example.
• Weak search results. Excessive advertising and poor search results plague most pay-to-search programs with the exception of Google-powered Blingo.

Reinventing the Pay-to-Search model

I think the main problem most of money making websites experience is the lack of legitimacy. As a startup, you need to prove that your company is legitimate and the best way to do that is to pay your users.

Herein lies a lesson for most entrepreneurs who are planning to start a website that offers monetary benefits to the public.

In my opinion, setting a high payout rate is ridiculous because you’ll be entering the industry with only promises and very little else. If I were the owner of a pay-to-search, I’ll probably explore the following marketing and monetization strategies.

• Set a low payout limit so that some initial users can get paid. They’ll probably spread the word out of gratitude and you’re basically getting free aggressive word-of-mouth advertising.
• Offer referral bonuses. The basic user will get $1 for every 10 users that they recruit. This does two things: 1) Allows your initial batch of users to get paid. 2) Legitimates your website even during the initial buzz period and rapidly increases your user base.
• Start a well-designed blog or website that is consistently updated. Once a month updates won’t cut it with users (hear that, Zotspot?). For most consumers, silence and inactivity on your company front can easily lead to distrust.
• Leverage more on private advertising and integration with social media. Why not allow users to search del.icio.us, Reddit or Digg? Perhaps include social video websites? Why not integrate your search engine with start pages like Pageflakes or Netvibes?
• Include a blog search option that allows blogs to pay for sponsored listings for specific keywords would be very handy indeed. There are millions of blogs out there and I’m sure quite a few wouldn’t mind paying for some prime advertising if you have a strong user community and traffic ratio.

There’s so many loopholes in current get paid-to-search startups and I would love nothing better than to create a perfect website that integrates all these principles.

My only concern is that I don’t have any statistics to confirm if Pay-to-search websites are actually profitable. Will they make money? Or are they just a waste of time?

It should, however be an interesting venture to explore.