Banking and Finance  » Paid Surveys Online - An easy way to make money online?

Paid Surveys Online - An easy way to make money online?

Paid surveys are being promoted as an easy way to make money

online. Some ads promise you up to $250 per hour for taking paid

surveys. Are they realistic?

Can one really expect to earn that much money from online

paid surveys? Let us find out the answers to these questions.

Such advertisements are usually put up by paid survey database

companies like Surveyscout. 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.

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

Research and Nielsen Netratings....

them and get started.

Now let us take a closer look at on 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.

Yet other companies enter you into draws for cash or gifts as

reward for taking surveys. Although many people don't like this

form of reward system, your chances of getting the prize is

quite good as the pool to select the prize winners is usually

small. Some good survey companies that follow this reward system

are Synovate, NPD Research, NOP World (Surveys.com), ECN

Research and Nielsen Netratings.

Another important factor which determines how much you can earn

from online surveys is your profile, particularly your country.

Generally residents of the USA and Canada can expect to make

more money from paid surveys, as there are more market research

companies operating in these countries. Also they get more

frequent surveys. However, participants from other countries can

also hope to make some good extra money from paid online surveys.

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.

About the author:

Shaj M is the owner and webmaster of the free survey resources

site Internet

Paid Surveys. The site has separate sections for USA,

Canada, UK, Australia and rest of the World. For example, USA

Surveys section features more than 50 free survey

companies open to members form the USA.