by Benjamin Lomax

Created on: November 04, 2009   Last Updated: December 15, 2009

A few words of wisdom for those looking to make money from survey web-sites: First of all, nearly all advertised survey sites are not really survey sites at all, but paid promotional landing pages. Because these pages are paid to deliver subscribers, they make outrageous promises "$40 per hour, as many surveys as you can take". All of that is completely untrue. The hook on those landing pages usually involves a charge for "gold" or "premium" service, about $30 or so, and some even ask for a monthly charge. This is a complete scam and the information you get is no more than what you would get by finding the survey web-sites yourself. In just about zero cases are you getting anything at all for your money.

That said, there are some sites that you can find that will pay legitimate cash, but you have to look hard. Most of the sites that actively advertise are not sites you want to associate with. However, legitimate sites do advertise, mixed among the scams. There are some easy ways to spot the time-wasters, though. There are also some measures to take to find out if even some sites that do pay are worth your time.

Sites that pay you in contest or sweepstakes entries are completely worthless. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Any site that pays in "points" is almost as useless. The points usually translate about 100 points to a penny or something ridiculous like that. Even the simplest surveys take 5-10 minutes, and the point sites might pay an average of 50 cents or less per survey. This is the case with such popular sites as Lightspeed, Ipsos I Say, or NPDOR. All three you will take lots of surveys, never making enough to cash out on so infrequently that you will be making approximately $1 an hour or less for your labor.

Here is the recipe for whether a site is worth your time or not. Figure out how much per hour you think your opinion is worth, and stick to that as a minimum. A whole ream of sites, including AOL Survey, Inbox Dollars, and SendEarnings pay $1 per survey. If the survey takes 5 minutes, this is a decent $12 per hour, but if it takes 20 minutes, that's a pitiful $3 per hour, more like the point surveys. That's going to take a lot of work to make any money. Toluma.com (formerly My2cents.com) is a fairly tricky site in that they pay from $1-3 per survey, but this has nothing to do with the survey itself. Some surveys take ten minutes and pay $3, but some take nearly an hour, and pay $1. Tough gamble of time to take...

A good example

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