Paid
Surveys Online - An easy way to make money online?
by: Shaj
Mohamed
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 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 http://www.internetpaidsurveys.com.
The site has separate sections for USA, Canada, UK,
Australia and rest of the World, each of which reviews
free paid surveys for that particular country. For
example, the USA Surveys section features more than 50
free survey companies accepting members form the USA.
