If you're looking for an online home business opportunity, it won't take long before you stumble upon the paid survey links. These links are sponsored by companies that are seeking public opinion on new products and / or ad campaigns. For me, the lure of sitting home all day, doing surveys, and making supplemental income was all too powerful......so I took the plunge.

First off, I found that the majority of online surveys are only worth $0.25 - $0.50 each. Although there are some surveys that are worth $1.00 and require approximately 30 minutes to complete, the highly promoted $25-$75 survey offers were nowhere to be found. Also, there is no need to ever pay for a directory of free paid survey companies, as many of these companies can easily be found on the internet for free.

With paid surveys, you could also earn points (redeemable for nominal cash) by purchasing sponsored products or completing trial offers / subscriptions with your credit card. With this method, you really do need to know all the trial end dates on your subscriptions. If you don't, your credit card will be charged (at the trial end date) and you're stuck with a year's subscription of some undesirable product or service- not to mention the cost of purchase (yikes). Ultimately, I found myself losing money with this method, as the earned points did not offset the purchase of the products or subscriptions; and yes, I did forget a couple of trial end dates.

When it comes to getting your money out from paid survey companies, there is some "red tape". Basically, you need to accumulate about $30 in your account before you can withdraw any money. You also need to request your withdrawal by the quarterly deadline. If you miss the deadline, you'll have to wait til the next quarter to get your money out. And finally, once you meet the withdrawal requirements, don't be surprised if you have to pay a few bucks for processing fees. (good grief)

In summary, you can make a very small income with online paid surveys. However, they truly are (in my opinion) too time consuming and don't yield commensurate income for your efforts. I spent a lot of time answering demographic type questions only to find out that I either didn't qualify for the survey or that there were no surveys available. If you're like me, you'll eventually get frustrated and move on to something else.