One of the most popular work at home internet business opportunities is for paid surveys, but consumers need to be wary when choosing this option for a home based business as there are many dubious offers available, and it can be difficult to decide which ones are legitimate and which ones are scams.

Getting paid to take online surveys is a legitimate work at home Internet business opportunity but unscrupulous characters have given this home business a bad name in recent years and many unsuspecting customers have lost money instead of developing a home business.

It does not matter to the scam artist that the would-be survey-taker has probably lots of debts or is trying to make extra money to support a family or have some little extras in life. The scam artist will take the money without any sign of remorse and move on to the next unwary consumer.

Research Your Home Survey Market

Numerous sites that offer work at home Internet survey business opportunities are really only offering you the opportunity to pay money up front for a listing of those who will pay you to take surveys. The vast majority of these firms could have been found by simply researching the market, saving the consumer the cost of this unnecessary wasted fee, and some of the companies on the lists are not even current.

A lot of them have ceased trading as a result of bad publicity and the almost inevitable exposure by consumer organizations as being scams. One consumer advocacy group reviewed hundreds of sites and firms offering survey taking as a work at home Internet business opportunity and out of all these sites they reviewed they were able to recommend only five.

Work At Home Scammers

Anybody can set up a home Internet business website offering to pay users for taking online surveys and it can easily be up and running, and open for business within a few hours. More often than not there are no surveys available from this site and these types of sites usually turn out to be only a work at home Internet business opportunity for the scam artist that set up the site.

Everyone who applies to take surveys will have to pay up front and get little or nothing in return. Even if the lists the scam artists offer are any good or the links work, which many times they do not, these are quite often companies that again want money in advance for a dubious home survey Internet business.

Take The Money And Run

Some of these scam sites ask for fees for the list of directories that can be as much as a hundred dollars, but what the consumer actually gets for their money is usually a directory that is out of date, links that do not work, phone numbers that are disconnected or reassigned, and email addresses that bounce back. Customer service is non existent despite the advertised offer of a refund if the consumer is not satisfied.

As soon as a refund is requested due to the inability to start a work at home Internet business opportunity from the material that was paid for, the scam artist refuses to reply and then the site is shut down after several disgruntled consumers start complaining. These scam artists are not gone though, either are their scams.

They reappear on the Internet just as quickly as their previous site disappeared, but this time they are under a different name and a different domain. But even when these dubious work at home Internet business opportunity sites are live, their navigation is generally poor, information such as contacts is inadequate and some of the pages do not work.

Genuine Home Surveys

Anybody looking for a genuine paid survey home Internet business should not be put off by all the bad publicity attributed to the home business scam artists. There are some genuine home paid surveys available if the consumer is prepared to look in the right places and not to be enticed by these other dubious home business sites.

The five sites that the consumer advocate agency recommended as legitimate paid survey work at home Internet business opportunity firms also charge advanced fees of up to sixty dollars but they actually have staff dedicated to helping the consumer find survey clients and assignments.

They all also offer a genuine one hundred percent money back guarantee after as many as forty five days. These agreements have been verified by the agency as having actually been honoured with each of the five paid survey firms.

The Money IS In The Lists

Nobody is going to get rich quick with work at home Internet business opportunities from these paid survey sites, but it can be a good income and at least the consumer is not being ripped off by the home business paid survey scams. What the consumer can expect for their advance fee is as many as twenty five offers each day to take online surveys for which they get paid an average of about twenty dollars each.

Some of them pay as much as seventy five dollars, though I have to say that these are in the minority. The lower end payment surveys take about ten minutes to complete, give or take a few minutes, while the higher paying surveys might take about a half an hour. So, a thirty hour week would provide you with a modest monthly income of two thousand and four hundred dollars which can be a life saver for some.

This is also not bad for something with the many benefits of a work at home Internet business opportunity that has little if any overheads, has no set dress code, needs no training or any experience required, and you have the added bonus of choosing your own working hours, making this a genuine home business opportunity.

Bargainmen 2006