The logical theory: If you have a full-time job making less than $12.35/hr, in theory you could make more (if you have 2 computers at home with an internet connection) if you just stay home and do paid to read email programs. Using paid to read email programs to make the equivalent real-world job pay rate of $12.35/hr is possible, in theory.

I am sure someone somewhere that often receives a lot of junk emails one time said "Oh if I had a penny for every junk email..." This is pretty much what the paid to read email (PTR) system is. Before I continue, let me say this. I do have a full-time job, and it does pay less that $12.35/hr, and I do have 2 computers at home with an internet connection. The reason I don't quit my job and do the PTR at home is because this pay rate of $12.35/hr is how much I could make in theory, it is not guaranteed (the $12.35/hr is based on the gross pay rate of most jobs, after taxes the actual pay rate would for such a job would be $10/hr in a real job). So if you can make a pay rate of $10/hr with the PTR, then that is equivalent to a job pay rate of $12.35/hr.

There are 100s of PTR sites which are paid to read email sites. What you would normally do is sign up with one of these sites. They will send you advertisement emails. You open the email and click on a link. Doing this will give you a certain amount, depending on the site. That is basically what you do. However, these emails don't really pay too much. Most of them are on average around 1 cent per email (there are some that offer more than this, and some less than this). Additionally, when you open the email and click on their link, it will open a new window with the advertisement. You will have to have this window open for a certain amount of time before you can be credited for the amount the email is worth. The amount of time the window needs to be open is on average 45 seconds per 1 cent. The less your link is worth, the shorter the amount of time you will have to have the ad window open. In addition to this, many of the sites only allow you to read one of their email at a time, so you have to wait the entire 45 seconds and only THEN can you open their next email. Also, a lot of the ads are for search engines, and the PTR site you are signed up with will prefer you use the search engine (in the ad window, do a search, click on a result link and let the new window load). This is usually considered a valid search and will allow you to receive more PTR emails than normal from you PTR site. Now, let us see how much this would be in an hour. 1 cent per 45 seconds translates to 80 cents per hour. So your pay rate is going to be only 80 cents/hr if you follow this kind of a procedure. That is not much, and is why a lot of people think it is not worth it to do PTR emails. However, in theory, you can make $10/hr.
In order to be able to make that much with PTR emails, it would require a lot of time and effort to get started. Out of all of the PTR sites out there, you need to find the best ones that send emails worth the most and a lot of emails. Generally speaking, there are a lot of sites with at least 1 cent per email and send out 30-40 emails per day. If you are an active member, they send out 50-60+ emails per day (if you do the searching and are actively reading their emails like previously mentioned). For our calculations, in order to make $10/hr (1000 emails/hr) the biggest problem would be running out of emails to read. For example, if you wanted to work 5 hours/day on this, that would require 5000 emails/day. If we assume you are active and make valid searches and get about 50 emails from each site, then you would need to sign up with 100 sites to be able to receive this many emails. This is the biggest assumption that would be able to find over a 100 sites which will send you over 50 emails/day. In theory, it is possible, since there are 100s of sites each usually offering about that many email to active members. This would be part of the difficulty in starting out. You would have to sign up with all of the sites and stay active with each of them. If we assume that getting enough emails is not an issue, then all we have to do is figure out a way to read 1000 emails/hr. This would appear difficult since normally sites require you to have an ad window open for at least 45 seconds per email that is worth 1 cent, but can be done in theory.

The biggest assumption we have made is that we will have an infinite number of emails to read. In other words, when we feel like we have done enough work for one day opening emails, there will still be more to open. Running out of emails will not be a concern. This will be true if you sign up with 100+ good sites, and if you are actively searching using the search engines they provide in the paid email. This will easily get you 50-60+ emails per day, which will be more than enough to keep you busy even if you decide to work at this full-time.

Before I begin, let me say apparently there are some free email services where you can open an email account and will get paid for opening any kind of mail. zwallet is one of them, but I don't have an account on there so don't know if it is any good or not. Additionally, some PTR sites might send you emails for more than 1 cent. Also, there is the referral program. Depending on the site, you get 10% of what the people you refer get. Different sites have different levels of referrals. All of these things should be taken into account when doing the calculations. For our calculations, we will disregard these factors. So in actuality, we will end up making more than what our calculations say.

Now, our main goal is to be able to open a lot of emails really fast, preferably about 1000/hr. There are programs which can be used to do this, but that would be considered cheating by the PTR sites, so I wouldn't do that. Before you register with any site, you should open a new email account (or two) to be used just for the PTR emails. Then you can even create filters which will put the emails from all the different PTR sites you are signed up with into their appropriate folders for easy navigation. When you register with the site, they give you an option of sending the emails to your email or to your site inbox. I would suggest to your email. Then there is a section of your interest. I would select all except for the ones that are there to avoid cheaters. When you click on a paid email link, they will usually ask you to prove it is a human reading the mail by asking you to click a certain number they show on a graphic. This is done only for the first email you open and for the rest of them, you can open regularly.
Once you have done all of the hard work of registering with the 100+ sites which seem reliable (google their name and look through discussion forums to see what people are saying about it). I would recommend making a filter for every site so that email from each site goes to its corresponding folder. The only problem with this is you will end up running out of filters with most free email accounts, so you might need to get more than 1 email account just to get more filters. Assuming you are at the point where you have a filter for each site you are signed up with and the email from a certain site will go into its unique folder, then you will be ready to start earning. At the start you will only get 3-4 emails max from most sites. What you need to do in order to make sure you consistently get 30+ emails is to remain active. Depending on the site, this can mean just opening the emails they send, or doing a valid search (search for something, from the results, click a link and let the new window load) from the search engine that is within the email ad.

Keep in mind that whenever you open a paid email link, there is usually a banner on the top which tells you that you will earn 1 cent after 45 seconds. Then, after 45 seconds, it will change to tell you that your account has been credited or something like that. So you will know when you can close the window and open the next one by looking at this banner.

There are some sites which allow you to open multiple emails that they have sent at the same time. Others however, only let you open one of their email links at a time, if you try to open another one, it will tell you to wait for the other one to get credited before opening a new one. One thing you should do is figure out which sites allow you to open multiple emails at the same time, and which do not. Sort them into separate email addresses if possible. That way you will know that all the sites you have signed up with for one email address allow multiple emails and all the sites for another email address don't allow multiple emails to be open.

Thanks,
Ramki