Survey Participant

Paid Online Surveys

by Gary McLaren

You've probably seen them.

The offers on the Internet to "Make Money Taking Online Surveys" and "Get Paid For Your Opinion". They're everywhere. And yes, they probably even appear in the Google ads on this site.

But are these paid online surveys for real, or are they scams? And is it worth paying $30 - $40 fee to access their database of companies and surveys wanting to pay you for your opinion?

Well, if you could easily earn more than the $40, then the question above would be a no-brainer! But everything is not always what it seems, or is claimed. Especially in the case of getting paid for taking surveys.

Obviously whether or not it's truly worth it depends upon the quality of the database. I wanted to find out what other people thought who have already paid up. So I did a little research.

What I quickly discovered was a lot of unhappy people. Many who paid felt they were scammed. Many people who felt they had been scammed couldn't get a refund. You can read some threads on this topic here:

If you want to make money doing surveys, here are some tips:

Be realistic in your expectations. You will probably not receive many surveys per day or even per week.
Many companies will only let you take a survey if you fit the exact profile they are looking for. So although the database you pay for may be large, only a small percentage of opportunities will match you.
If you are not living in USA, Canada or UK your opportunities will be even more limited.

So be very cautious. We want you to make money working from home, not lose it! Before you pay for access to any database of survey sites, do some research online and try to get some feedback from other people using that site. Try to find companies and survey organizations that will not charge you money to be involved.

A couple of such places are http://www.mysurvey.com and
http://www.surveyspot.com . You don't have to pay anything to get involved at these two sites.

To conclude, I believe there are much better ways to make money working from home than taking surveys. However, there are some people doing it, so if that's what you really want to do, hopefully the advice here has given you some direction.

About The Author

Gary McLaren is the editor of Worldwide Freelance Writer, a site with a huge database of 1,500 publications that are looking for articles for writers right now!