There is good money to be made in taking legitimate paid online surveys. Paid survey sites offer lists of survey makers to their membership and it’s easy to sign up and get started.
Paid online surveys are a big business on the Internet with thousands of surveys being made every week. Tens of thousands of survey participants are receiving checks in the mail or deposits into their PayPal accounts every month for surveys they have taken. There is money to be made here!
But not all survey makers offer legitimate paid online surveys and not all survey participants make money. Why is this?
Large companies negotiate with survey makers to make the surveys and get the market research information needed for their future planning. The survey makers are then responsible for finding a representative number of survey participants to take their surveys and provide the answers needed.
Some of these survey makers (about 20-25% of the total) pay their participants well, on time and as agreed. They respect their privacy and treat them in a responsible, professional manner. Consequently they have low turnover amongst their participants and have no problems with finding enough.
Others (the remaining 75-80%) underpay and mistreat their participants so they can keep more of the total survey fee being paid by the sponsor. They use “smoke and mirrors” pay plans with drawings and promises for the future instead of cash. As a result their survey participants get little or nothing.
Sometimes they even sell participants’ data to sales companies that bombard them with offers for unwanted merchandise.
As a result, these survey makers have high turnover, are constantly losing survey participants. They must hire recruiters and pay them high fees to recruit replacements.
To participate in paid online surveys, you will need to get your hands on a list of good survey makers to sign up with. The paid survey sites can provide these, but also you will find “free list” sites out there on the Net, loudly telling you not to pay for something that they will give you for free.
Anyone with a list to offer, whether a paid survey site or a “free” site, has only two ways to get paid. They get paid by membership fees or they get paid by recruitment fees. The “free” sites ONLY get paid by recruiting fees. The paid survey sites get paid by membership fees, but some also collect recruiting fees.
It is clear that, as a potential survey participant, you want to avoid the free lists of low-pay/no pay survey makers. But how can you find a paid survey site that is 100% on your side and will give you a good list of survey makers that only offer legitimate paid online surveys that really pay?
The key to sorting out the paid survey sites is to listen to the opinions of their present and past clients. You can see these opinions clearly expressed in the refund rates of these paid survey sites.
You should only deal with paid survey sites that have STRONG money-back guarantees backed up by a bank or financial company such as PayPal or ClickBank. Within this group, for which clients have the option of getting a refund if the paid survey site does not perform to their satisfaction, look at the refund rates.
Low refund rates mean happy clients that tried the list they got, made money and were satisfied with the value received for their membership fee. High refund rates mean many unhappy clients who did mot make money and are demanding their money back!
So pick a paid survey site with a low (3-6%) refund rate. Avoid any with refund rates that are either unknown (means high) or are as high as 9-10%.
When you pick your paid survey site, join up and get your copy of their list of pr