When you're looking for ways to make cash online, one type of opportunity that is all-but-guaranteed to pop up is performing paid surveys. Honestly, if you join the right mailing lists or input your e-mail address into a form on certain websites, you'll probably be overrun with opportunities to join a paid survey program. So, while the opportunities to perform paid surveys are abundant, is the paid survey model a good way to make cash online?

In order to answer this question, it's important that you understand what paid surveys are and why they exist. Now, you likely to have a general idea of what surveys are, but unless you've already filled them out for money, all you have to go by is the hype that you read and e-mails and websites promoting paid survey websites. In this case, hype and reality can differ significantly.

The different flavors of paid surveys

The idea behind a paid survey is very straightforward -- a company pays you to answer questions. Now, beyond that simplicity, things do get a little bit more complex, depending on the company that you're working with. Some companies, rather than paying for each individual survey that they receive, opt to pay in the form of a cash drawing, or a ?prize pot?. In these cases, once you fill out a survey and submit it to the company, your name will be placed with other names, and the winner will receive cash while the others who participated in the survey will likely receive nothing.

If you are looking to make cash online, the hope of payment really isn't anything to get too excited about. However, there is another type of paid survey, and that is a survey that will guarantee payment for the completion of a survey -- no ?luck of the draw? required.

These types of paid surveys, generally speaking, allowing you to answer questions for a company and receive a paycheck in 30, 60, or 90 days. The thing is, though -- marketers and website owners who promote paid survey programs oftentimes grossly overstate the earnings potential for paid surveys. If you look at paid surveys as a whole, the average pay per survey is a few dollars up to $20, and the length of time that a survey requires to complete can range from 10 minutes to 45 minutes or more. Paid surveys are not a fast cash solution, nor are they typically large moneymakers.

It's unfortunate that marketers have painted paid surveys in the way that they have, because performing surveys are a good way to make cash online. It is a legitimate business model, and people do get paid for answering questions, but at the end of the day -- the earnings, and earnings potential, just doesn't live up to all the hype.

The bottom line is this -- you can make cash online performing paid surveys. However, just don't expect this business model to provide a sustainable, full-time income.