Avoid Scams From Paid Online Surveys

By Amy Byland

The web is saturated with pages claiming you can make money by taking surveys. Is there any legitimacy to their claims? And how can people know if they are getting scammed? There are a few guidelines to follow when you are looking to get started making money by taking surveys. First of all, you need to use common sense. When I was doing my research on making money by taking surveys I found one page that had bright red flashing links and it said "Make $1000's now by just taking surveys!". This was obviously a scam page. It did not even look professional. The claims of instantly making tons of money were obviously aimed to make people impulsively click and sign up. Though it sounds tempting, its not possible to "make thousands instantly by just taking surveys". There are hundreds of offers like these. I know because I have researched them. There is always some catch to the offers.

Secondly, if you do find a professional looking site, make sure they say that they are not going to sell your email address! I signed up at several offer pages just to see what would happen. I immediately started getting spam in my inbox! There was the occasional survey to fill out but the pay was only one or two dollars per survey. It was not at all worth my valuable time! Finally, you need to read the web page carefully. One site I signed up at started sending me surveys in which I had to buy something to "get paid"!

What they were sending me was not actual surveys but masked targeted sales pressure. Usually it was something like I had to fill out a credit card application to "get paid". The "survey" was really just a prescreening to find out what type of consumer I was so they would know what "deal" to offer me. There are Legitimate companies out there however and they are actual consumer research companies who pay you to take surveys. The marketing industry needs information collected from these consumer research companies to know how to market to you the consumer.

How can you get connected with a legitimate company? Its best to sign up with a service site. The service site does all the research for you and presorts offers. You then only get sent the highest paying legitimate surveys and you don't have to deal with garbage offers in your inbox! You pay a small fee to register with a service site but it is worth it because you would otherwise spend hours sifting through sites trying to find legitimate offers. To sum up, when you are looking to make money by taking surveys, use common sense and above all DO NOT fall for the sites that offer you "$1000's instantly". The catch is at your expense and you will regret falling for it!

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