You've probably seen ads for Free Online Survey companies on search engines, ebay, and even work at home forums like below :
Make $50-$150 Cash per Survey Free to join.
Survey Companies Paying $25-$100/hr
Simple. Make extra money from home. Anyone can do it. Start Today.
Paid surveys are being promoted as an easy way to make money online. Are they realistic ? Can one really expect to earn that much money from online paid surveys? Lets try to find some answers.
How does Paid Surveys work?
Paid survey lists is one of the oldest internet scams on the Internet.Such advertisements are usually put up by paid survey database companies. They charge you for giving access to a database of market research companies, often in the range of $30 to $60. They typically have 400 to 500 survey companies in their database.
Is it worth paying these companies to get access to such a database? Whatever information you get from these companies, you can get for free on the internet on many free online survey sites. Secondly, these survey database companies do not send any surveys by themselves, and you have to join each market research company in their database individually to get any surveys. In addition, most of the survey companies in their databases are good for nothing. Only about 40 to 50 survey companies are really worth joining.
I have see over 500 ads out there promising to make you rich just filling out simple surveys from your PC. But why are there so many? We all know it would be fantastic to work from home giving our opinion on the products we buy. Almost everyone wants to have a huge check delivered to their door, just for saying whats on their mind. We've all seen the screen shots of checks, or financial banking statements on the paid survey web sites. We've seen the fantastic claims people make about making tons of money, AND how they can show you how to do the same thing. I can tell you right now that 99% of these people are total frauds. You may have even fallen prey to one of these scam artists, selling you their latest survey company.
Kinds of Reward:
Now let us take a look at the rewards offered by paid online surveys. Survey companies can be divided into those which reward you with cash for each survey, those that give you points which can be redeemed for cash, and those which enter you into sweepstakes or prizedraws.
Survey companies that pay CASH give $1 to $20 or more per online survey depending on many factors. This group includes many of the best survey sites like American Consumer Opinion Panel, Surveysavvy, Ciao Surveys, Greenfield online(Gozing) and Pinecone Research. You can expect to get 1 to 4 surveys per month from each site.
Surveys that reward you with POINTS let you accumulate reward points which you can later redeem for cash or gifts. Some of the most reputed market research companies like Globaltestmarket, Opinion Outpost, NFO Mysurvey and Lightspeed Research reward you in this way.
What does this mean?
If you are planning to try online surveys, you NEVER have to pay anyone. You can get the list of the best survey companies for free on the internet. You can join them and get started. Genuine Paid Surveys are and definitely should be absolutely FREE ! All said and done, the maximum earnings an average person can expect from doing paid surveys is not more than $200 to $300 per month. This can be a good source of extra income for some people. But the claims that paid surveys can make you rich or replace your real job are largely unfounded. Hence, it is always best to stay with free paid surveys.