by Sean Bennett

Created on: May 18, 2010   Last Updated: October 21, 2010

Believe it or not, paid online surveys are real. There are ten times the amount of scam surveys compared to legitimate ones, so I can see where so many people don't believe you can make money with them. But, if you do find real paid online surveys, you can expect to make at least make a couple hundred bucks a month. Unless you are the lucky winner of a monthly or quarterly sweepstakes that most of the survey sites host, you're not going to get rich, though.

Just so you're not left scratching your head anymore, lets get into what an online survey is. Companies need to know how they're doing in terms of their customer service, business concepts and product quality. They hire market research firms to put together a survey with specific criteria from them, to either as wide of a selection of people or narrow down to who they want.

This criteria can be as simple as inviting women between the age of 18-30 who drink coffee, or a little more specific like; men and women between the age of 18-45, who live in Tennessee and drive their personal car for work 1000 miles or more a month. These people are then selected to answer a series of questions about a product of business concept, which averages about fifteen to twenty minutes. The average pay for a survey is between $1-$3, but can be more.

If you're looking for something on the Internet for making money, this is about the best you'll find. Unless you're very Internet savvy and can come up with the next hot website, there isn't much else. Finding the legitimate survey websites isn't that easy, though. Like I said earlier, the number of scam sites far outnumbers the legitimate ones. 

Using Google or Bing mixes the results with scam and legitimate sites, so one never knows what they're going to get until spend a lot time going through them. The best way to find real paid survey sites is to use a free survey directory. You should never pay any monthly fees for one of these, some are out there, but you get exactly the same thing with free sites. A few examples of the free sites are: Survey Directory, www.mysurvey123.com and www.surveypolice.com.  

If you're signing up with some of the sites listed in the directories and still aren't sure if they're legitimate, look for affiliations with CASRO, the BBB, or TRUSTe. They ensure that ethical business standards are being followed and maintained. If, in the rare occasion, you have any unresolved and ongoing problems with any of the websites, you can contact the BBB to file a complaint.

Will something happen to the company that runs the website? Maybe not right away, but at least if there are enough complaints against them, it will definitely hurt their chances of getting new clients, or losing current ones because of their background.

Keep in mind that any extra dollar you can make doing online surveys is more than what you already had. Plus, you get to make money in the comfort of your own home!

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