Can you really make money from home with surveys?
This is a fairly controversial question. Some say it’s very easy, others say it’s all a scam and a lie. Some people are happy with the money they make doing surveys, others consider it a colossal waste of time. The truth is that you can make money with surveys… but, only a very small amount. Most people who actually try making money with surveys wind up disappointed with their earnings, if they even have any.
Don’t paid surveys scam you?
It is true that there are many “make money with surveys” scam sites out there seeking to cash in on the survey craze in any way they can. These companies put a lot of effort into making a big splash online, usually charge you for access, and seldom have any real paid surveys in the end. They snare people looking for work at home jobs, or to make money taking surveys with unrealistic hype.
What about the $50+/Hr claims you hear about?
Some paid survey sites promise great returns for taking surveys, claiming to pay as much as $50 to even $100 per hour or more, and this is deliberately misleading. Yes there are people who claim to have made that much hourly, but in those cases, they are invariably referring to a single high paying survey or two, and not something that you can do every day, or even every month. You’ll never find an actual person who has ever made close to this amount when you consider all the time they spent in total to get to the point of being eligible and chosen for the high dollar survey.
So are there any legit paid surveys?
Of course there are companies willing to pay for consumer market research surveys, as this is highly valuable information. Being able to find and work with legitimate sites is critical for any kind of success taking online surveys. Going to google and typing in “paid surveys online” for instance isn’t going to be fruitful. Generally the best way to find good survey companies in my experience, is to go into forums, and find people who do have good experiences with surveys, and see what they recommend. Especially look for people who have some history and credibility in the forum, and aren’t just trying to gain referrals for their program.
Now, before you go and equip yourself with a long list of the most legitimate and highest paying survey sites, it’s still a good idea to ask yourself if this is going to be worth the time for you. Even the most savvy survey takers will tell you that the money is very meager when compared to the time spent with it. After everything is said and done, even the most highly paid survey takers hardly ever clear $5 an hour.
Sure there may be surveys once in a while where you make $50 or $100 in an hour or less. But when you add up the time spent in participation to get to that point, and all of the overall effort, it brings the hourly rate way down. The only people who tend to have any kind of satisfactory experience with surveys are people who find them “fun” to take, and who are not too concerned about the return for the time spent. For most of us it’s agonizingly tedious, torturously boring, and in the end just not worth it when you consider the plethora of much more lucrative work from home opportunities.
You see, what happens when you join a survey site, is they give you a few surveys to determine your demographics (gender, age, shopping habits, etc). People who participate more, and especially those who fit particular target demographics, get more offers for surveys to complete. People who don’t fill out the surveys that are sent to them, and people who don’t buy much, tend not to be invited to complete the better, higher paying surveys.
In order to (try to) stay busy doing surveys, you have to figure out which companies are legitimate, then join all, or as many as you can. You must be very responsive to do each survey they send you (regardless of pay), plus you have to be the kind of person who’s opinion they care about. If you do that, you might get lucky and get selected to participate in some high paying surveys, once in a while. For a great deal of effort and many tedious hours of time spent, you might earn several hundred dollars a month at the very most.
The bottom line is that for most people, participating in paid surveys, or trying to find survey panels that work is a complete waste of time, and totally not worth the effort involved.
If you are still interested in taking surveys for money, here are the basic guidelines:
Never pay to join a survey company, none of the legitimate ones will charge you a fee upfront.
Never pay for a “list” or “database” of the best paid survey sites. Most of these lists are worthless.
Find paid surveys reviews by searching forums with a lot of traffic and experienced users such as the Warrior Forum and Scam.com in this way:
Go to google and type:
site:warriorforum.com surveys
site:scam.com surveys
Spend some time reading the threads and getting familiar with the people who post on this topic. There you will be exposed to real, genuine information, and not just people bent on hyping it up in order to sell you on it.