Paid Surveys – Are They For Real?

You have likely seen several advertisements that offer you to take part in a survey and get paid cash. You have likely wondered if these are legitimate business opportunities or if it is just a scam. You may be surprised to find out the truth. Despite all the recent attention that paid surveys are getting they aren’t new. Paid surveys have been a long used tool of marketing research firms when it comes to finding necessary information on products or services. However, the internet has started a new way to efficiently collect data. As a result many more companies are starting to offer online paid surveys and other forms of paid marketing research.

However, the issue of paid survey scams has developed thanks to middleman sites that offer easy money for taking surveys from the comfort of your own home. When it comes to offering easy money schemes there is a great deal of competition so you can expect both exaggeration and outright scams. The most obvious sign of these scams is if you are required to pay membership in order to get a list of marketing research firms that will give you paid surveys. This information can easily be gained for free just by searching the internet. Even if they claim their lists are unique the information is the same as any other list you can get for free so don’t fall for these traps.

Some scams are so bad they will try to get you to buy the same list over and over again by listing other membership sits you should try. While these sites may seem like competitors they are actually earning referral fees any time you buy memberships with these other companies. Sometimes you may even be buying membership in the same company but just under a different name. So don’t go with any survey site that seems to exaggerate how much money you will make from taking paid surveys online.

Remember that if someone is going to make considerable money from online paid surveys it is the middleman website rather than the consumers who are taking part in the surveys. Often for taking a paid survey you will only be paid a small amount of cash, goods, services, coupons or samples. Some websites don’t even offer cash and instead allow you to take part in sweepstakes drawings.

While there are some paid survey sites that offer good amounts of cash, the middleman sites will often hype the amount to something you can’t possible achieve simply by taking paid surveys even if you took one every hour for the rest of your life. In addition there is the fact that you can’t simply sit down and start taking paid surveys. Rather you need to be invited to take them by the marketing research company. You need to fall within specific demographics before they will ask you to take part in a paid survey. Right away this can limit the amount you make from paid surveys. So carefully take all this into consideration in order to find the best paid survey sites online.