Investment

A large number of autosurfs are investment autosurfs: to earn money surfing, members must pay a fee and are then promised a certain return on their fee. The "investment" is claimed to be a membership or upgraded membership fee and the "return", a per-site commission.

In the case of investment autosurfs, members either pay a fee to join and/or to upgrade their account level. This fee can usually vary from a few cents to thousands of dollars, and the minimum and maximum is set by the site operator. The program then offers a commission based on the member's account level for viewing a minimum number of sites, for example, for a period of X days, every day that the member views Y sites, Z% of the upgrade fee will be credited and can be withdrawn from the site. The product of Z% and X is always over 100% to ensure that the member makes a profit. Members also have even more incentive to build a downline because further commissions are received based on the amount of money that referred members put in or earn.

The investment autosurf concept is against PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Historically, Paypal has blocked most autosurf programs' accounts.