PTC Industry turned to a total scam mostly because of referrals. "Tell your friends and earn more" is the slogan. Yeah, right...
Ref bonus is 50-100% in most sites and it is very high of course. Ref bonus shouldn't be more than 30%, average 5-10%. Yes 5% ref bonus. It is very low, but very sustainable. Don't forget, we are talking about Paid To CLICK, not Paid To REFER.
A site which pays $0.01 per click, in total pays to its members $15-20/1000 clicks. Already we explained why advertisers will not pay more than $1/1000 for PTC traffic. Self sponsored ads is the only way and...
How owner earns money then?
Simple answer, very simple: Bots and premium memberships. I really wonder why a PTC has a "premium" membership option. Higher rates and more self sponsored ads are the benefits of premium membership. But why? Can you tell me a good reason?

Bot referrals = Fake referrals = Robots which will give you a few clicks and then stop OR Robots which will be very active and will give to member virtual profit and to site huge debts.

Don't expect profit of course. In case #1 it is obvious that member will not have profit. In case #2 the result is a huge debt for site. Only a few lucky (and probably *** kissing) members will be paid, before site dies.

Why bots will not give you profit?
Bots don't click ads usually, because there is no reason to click: Almost all ads are... self-sponsored! Also owners, if are not fool enough, will not cheat the few advertisers they may have. Average price is $1/bot and usually this is the only income owner has from a bot. Since bots don't click on ads, there are no extra earnings from advertisers (if any). Income for site from bots is only the $1 members are paying per bot. If a bot is very active site will have loss. That's why in most cases bots will stop before the $1 limit, user will lose money not site.

Some retards (read below) do not have problem if their refs are bots! Bots are very active at the beginning. But after a few days, bots are "dying", sometimes all of them at the same day!
Owners have everyday available lots of 500 ref packs for sale. PTC sites with millions - according to their stats - of members, in their forums have only a few thousands registered members (bots don't talk obviously). Best example is bux.to: 12+ million members in main site and... ~65.000 in forums! (stats taken on August-2008)

Some admins admitted that only the 10-20% of their members are unreferred. Most members are registering following a ref link (downline builder, ref deals/exchanges/from a blog etc). How is it possible then, for a site with a few thousands members for example to have everyday plenty of 500 ref packs available?
Many people are trying to hack PTC sites, some of them successfully. Also sometimes admins do not have any problem to say publicly (but indirectly) that their members are completely idiots. Have a look:
Bots Pic 1 (admin of crewbux)
Bots Pic 2 (taketheglobe index - bot scripts)
Bots Pic 3 (timebux index - bot scripts)
Bots Pic 4 (reliableclix - lol, very reliable - hacked admin panel)
Bots Pic 5 (07bux - was using same script with bux.to - hacked admin panel)
Bots Pic 6 (taketheglobe - hacked admin panel)
Bots Pic 7 (What a nice script ptcpay is!)
Bots Pic 8 (Bananabux - Site lasted more than a month - 40 days - and this is a great achievement!)

How can I understand if a site sells bots?
All PTC sites with "buy/rent refs option" are selling bots. Some sites may not sell bots, but are using other ponzi tricks such as multiple upline & split clicks. For example if a ref clicks 4 ads/day, 2 ads will be given to upline no1 and 2 to upline no2 etc.

If you want to buy referrals better burn your money. At least, fire will warm you!

Since most PTC sites are running with self sponsored ads, bots are unavoidable. To make it more clear: All PTC sites with "buy/rent refs option" are selling bots or are using other ponzi tricks.

Even and one of the biggest PTC sites, neobux.com sells rents bots. A smart bot script and smarter administrative team guarantees that most users will not understand that their refs are bots. All standard members do not have profit from rented refs and many golden members are complaining too. Few days after first day of renting - somehow - ref clicks are studying the free-fall phenomenon!
Seems that neobux now cannot attract easily new members (= new investors) as it used to. After direct ref limitation, new tricks will be invented, tricks that will possibly help neobux survive. Direct ref limitation is an excellent reason why neobux is nothing more than a ponzi scheme: Active human referrals are doing a lot of damage to neobux, like in every bux site. Therefore members must be forced to buy some bots.



But why neobux survived until now (and possibly will survive for a long time)? Instead of promising high ROI and as result creating extremely high debt, neobux earns only a few cents per bot per month. A classic bux will try to earn much more and will fail soon. For example if neobux receives $10 from a user, returns back $9.60-9.80. User cannot understand if has earned money or not - don't forget $0.04/day from self sponsored ads.

Have a look here or here for some interesting stats (thx Sabbie @ talkptc.com). How many (human) members neobux has? Do the same and for bux.to: You'll be impressed with the stats of this 12 million baby! Bux.to is up and running for years but it is a well known scam. That means scams do not necessarily disappear.