With all of the paid survey activity on the Internet, it is easy to get paid to take surveys. More than 700 survey makers offer paid online surveys in the U.S. alone. Almost all of these are looking for more survey participants. Internationally you can get paid to take surveys made by over 3,000 different survey makers.

The challenge is not just to get paid to take surveys - that's easy. The challenge is to find the legitimate paid surveys that pay well, avoid the time-wasters that don't, and make money at it.

80% of the money is made through 20% of the survey makers and their surveys. From the point of view of those who want to really get paid to take surveys and make money in doing so, only about 1 in every 5 survey makers is truly worth dealing with. Another 40% are marginal, and about 40% are time wasters, to be avoided.

The key to making money with online paid surveys is in the list of survey makers that you sign up with as a prospective survey taker. You might think that it would be easy to get such a list, but it's not. The survey makers that pay poorly or not at all are constantly losing participants and must recruit new ones.

They pay recruiting fees to anyone who can bring them "fresh meat", new participants that don't yet know the ropes. These high recruiting fees mean that anytime you go to look for survey makers on the Net, you will be inundated by offers for "free lists" and ads recruiting survey participants.

Almost all of the offers and ads you will see will be recruiting for the survey makers that don't pay or don't pay well. They are trying to fill recent vacancies left by participants who were expecting to get paid to take online surveys, were not paid, were disappointed, and quit.

You generally won't find good lists where the survey makers are paying the list purveyors to recruit you.

But you can find a good list, one that will help you really get paid to take surveys, with one of those paid survey membership sites that maintain lists for their members. For a smallish membership fee they will share their list with you. You pay, so the guide will take you where YOU want to go.

When choosing your paid survey membership site, look for two things: 1. A very strong money-back guarantee, backed up by a financial company or bank. 2. A low refund rate under that guarantee. The guarantee means that the site stands behind its service; you like their service or it costs you nothing.

The low refund rate means that the current members like the service there and feel that they got full value for their small investment. You will want to join a group like that.

A high refund rate means many unhappy clients demanding their money back. This is a group you will want to avoid becoming part of.

There are sources of information on paid online surveys that can help you to really get paid to take surveys. You can start with a good, objective, paid survey review site like that cited below, for more explanation and information.