Section 1: The Idea

It doesn't really matter how the idea was presented to you, now you are curious and you want to know if you can really get paid for filling out surveys online.

Get paid 25-75 dollars an hour! Work 15 minutes a day! Make $1,000 a week!

I've even seen advertisements for $200 dollars an hour! With claims like these I was pretty skeptical, but also very curious myself. So I started researching the possibilities, and the scams on the internet.

Section 2: The Research

At first I was overwhelmed with information. After much effort, the conclusion I discovered is, you can make money taking surveys online. I found literally hundreds, possibly even thousands, of companies that were willing to pay for consumer’s opinions. The great news is that every one of these companies is free to join! The downside is there is no way someone could locate enough of these companies in a timely enough manner to actually make money. Even if you could locate enough, it takes so long to register with each company that it is practically impossible. Each company wants all the same personal information that the last one did, and you have to give them all your information before they will start sending you surveys.

Section 3: The Lesson Learned

After I found and joined about 20 companies over a three day period, I started to research one of the survey companies that kept coming up in my searches. The website offered a 90 day money back guarantee, so I figured I had nothing to lose. Upon signing up I got to take a welcome survey that was worth $25. So my membership fee had already dwindled to something I was more comfortable losing. The website offered me amazing support, and in my first 30 min I was able to sign up with more companies than I had in the three days prior. They had such an easy-to-navigate database I moved right down the list. The biggest difference in speed was one of the resources they provided with my membership. I put my information into this program once and with the touch of a button it filled in all the blanks for me!

Section 4: Success

As for making $200 an hour that has not happened to me yet, but I don’t mind. I have been able to participate in two focus groups that paid me $150 for an hour and a half of work! I've only taken one survey for over $60 and it took me nearly two hours to complete. I've found comfort in making all my money in $25 surveys because they usually only take me about 20-25 minutes. I also love taking phone surveys as they can be really fast and very lucrative. I don't make enough at this point to want to quit my day job, but I do believe it's possible to work up to that point (I already work at home as a Certified Personal Trainer so I don't plan on quitting). I've only been filling out surveys since January and I made 1,800 dollars in June alone. That was with about only three hours of work a day. Because of that I've been able to work less lately at my full time job. I'm also getting to the point where I can pick and choose to complete only the higher paying surveys.

Section 5: Freebie Tips

My advice to anyone interested in joining a survey company is to put forth as much effort as you can up front. The more companies you sign up with, the more survey invitations you will get. Don't get frustrated when you're not getting paying surveys back. I didn't get a real paid survey until almost three weeks after signing up. I'm glad now that I didn't give up. Be as specific as you can when providing information. You could also list someone else in the household as the main survey taker. My wife gets more paid surveys than I do (woman shop more) that’s just the way it is. Also, don’t skip prize surveys. Prizes or gift cards are just as good as money to me and pretty easy to win because people skip them, like my wife! My biggest piece of advice is to work hard, just like I would tell my clients, you're hard work will pay off. Set goals, and work to accomplish them. If you want it to be a real job you have to treat it like a real job.