How many times have you seen advertisements telling you how much money you can make after paying them a small fee? They all try selling you the “work at home” dream and yet most of them are nothing more than scams. Trust me, I've tested some of them and the others I know from experience how hard it is to actually make money at it. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is! And if you could really make it rich off of someone's brilliant secret they're mysteriously sharing wouldn't everyone be doing it?



Of all the “make money online” ideas I've tried myself (besides building my own websites) the ONLY one that has worked continuously well is taking paid surveys. Believe it or not, they really do pay!

I started off over 3 years ago by signing up with a couple of the larger survey companies I could find. After a couple weeks I had my first $20.00 check in my hand and it only took 3 or 4 surveys to earn it. I started scouring the net and came up with a large list of companies and went through the pain-staking task of filling in my info for each one. Sure it was a pain but it paid off and it's still paying off 3 years later! Better yet, they now have programs out there that will fill your information for you! My, how times have changed…

You've probably seen those ads stating, “I made $8000 last month taking surveys!!” What a pile of rubbish. You won't become rich from taking surveys! You will make some good money though. If you're in the U.S. and you live near a large city like New York or Los Angeles there's a good chance you will earn enough from paid surveys to live comfortably. Outside the U.S. you will still make a lot of extra cash. If you live in Siberia and only get 2 invitations a week for $5.00 surveys – that's still an extra $40.00 in your pocket every month. You have to remember that the surveys add up.

I receive an average of 20 survey invitations every day. There's usually a brief preliminary questionnaire to see if you qualify for the particular survey. If so, then you'll be sent to the actual survey in need of completion. The companies will tell you beforehand what your incentive will be and a good half of them award an extra ballot into a large prize draw. I admit that I rarely waste my time on these ones because I'd rather know I'm getting paid for my time than wasting it on a chance – although I have won quite a bit through the draws including a $2500 prize! It does happen sometimes and I'm not a lucky person! Some of these draws have odds as low as 1 in 100 so sometimes it's worth taking a 5-minute survey for a chance.

You may have heard of focus groups. These are basically surveys done in person. You may be alone or with a group while an interviewer will spend an hour or 2 with you asking questions about a specific topic. Don't let this scare you off – these are the high paying jobs! Last month I attended a focus group on car washes and was paid $65.00 for 2 hours. I'm not in a large city where these happen regularly but I wish I were because this is where some people make the most income. I was invited to another focus group this week paying $100 for only 2 hours but it was looking for men age 35 and up – I'm only 31! First time I've been bummed about being too young since I was a teenager.

Why will these companies pay you? Sometimes the large companies want to test a new product on a small number of people to see how it is taken. They would rather fork out a few thousand dollars on testing than spend millions on promotion and production to find out their new product sucks. It's like video game makers hiring video game junkies to test the new games before releasing them. They have to know what the public wants and they'll pay generously for the input. Without survey panelists these large companies would be losing millions of dollars. Think of it as a part-time job working for a lot of different Fortune 500 companies.

So in closing, I should stress that paid surveys are not a scam, however, paying for a list of them is. This is the Internet where you can find almost anything for free. Whether I've made 5 dollars or 100 dollars I always go to bed happier knowing that I made some easy money rather than wasting my time playing another online game. Taking surveys are very rewarding in more ways than one. Sure, some of the longer surveys can be boring but they'll pay you more for your time – it's completely worth it!