Paid Online Surveys - Scam or Easy Way to Make Money Online?

Companies need your imput...make $1000-$3,000 a month doing surveys! Easy money doing surveys from home! Earn $20 or more for doing a 5 minute survey! Sounds intriguing, eh? After receiving about 1,000 emails one week on making money doing Paid Online Surveys from home, I thought I'd take some time to see what there was to this 'Getting Paid to do Paid Online Surveys' thing. After putting in a search for 'Get Paid to do Paid Online Surveys', I came back with numerous links and over the course of a couple days, I signed up for about 30 different companies. I quickly started receiving offers for Paid Online Surveys, but found out shortly thereafter that it was not quite as advertised. Instead of being paid lots of cash for doing surveys, I found the following to be the case;

1) Most of the Survey companies pay in Points and Sweepstakes entries instead of CASH!

The majority of the Survey compaines will pay you in points to do a survey. What this means is that if you are accepted to do a survey and complete it, you'll receive points and NOT cash. Once you accumulate enough points, you can then exchange the points for merchandise. The problem with this is, it will take you until NEXT Christmas to accumulate enough points to get anything. Yes, you could literally be doing sweepstakes for months before you accumulate enough points to redeem them for something. In conjuction with this, you're usually entered into sweepstakes drawings in which you can receive cash and or prizes, but just like the lottery, don't quit your day job in anticipation of winning one of these.

2) You WON'T qualify for most of the Surveys.

Another problem doing surveys is the Pre-Qualifiying Survey that they use to screen people to see if they qualify for the actual survey. It becomes very irritating doing a Pre-Qualifying Survey only to find out ten minutes into it, that according to the answers you provided, you didn't qualify to do the survey! It may not seem like a big deal, but after having this happen numerous times, you'll start to realize that you're spending more time doing Pre-Qualifying Surveys then actual surveys, and not making a dime for your time. Not exactly what you had in mind!

3) Surveys That Pay...and Time Involved.

Another thing that I discovered was that the companies that actually paid in cash usually paid between $1 to $5 to do a survey and not the $25 or more dollars that you were expecting to receive. Worse, these surveys usually take 2-3 minutes or so to complete, meaning that you were making about $30 an hour if averaged out over a period of time. While the companies selling the directories talk of people paying large amounts of money to do surveys, my experiences showed that the majority of the paying companies payed a good bit less than the figures quoted in the advertisements.

4) Survey's and Gift Certificates

Another type of email that you'll often receive states that you've been awarded a Gift Certificate from XXX company, and all you have to do to claim it is enter your email and fill out some information. Nah, not quite. The way this one works is once you've entered you're information, you'll be taken to a page where you have to sign up for a couple of offers in order to receive your prize. Even after that, there's stipulations involved before you can receive any Gift Certificate's. Again, not quite the way the thing is advertised.

As you've no doubt heard numerous times, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While you may be able to make some money doing surveys from home, the odds of you making thousands as claimed are somewhat dubious. The bottom line is, before you spend any money on a 'Survey Directory', sign up for some of the free survey offers. Try them out for a week or two to see if it's something that you would like to do. Best of luck, and may you find Survey Success!