Are Online Surveys Sites All That They Say They Are

When I first logged onto the Internet I got the perception that everyone on the net was making heaps of money and naturally I wanted to get into the act. The idea of being able to ditch my old job and being able to earn more than a comfortable amount from home also appealed to me. Like a whole lot of saps I got sucked in to one of those sites that promised me that I could earn $1000’s of dollars per month. What a lot of absolute bullshit.

I Still believed that there was money to be made so I endeavored to find these sites for myself. What I did discover was that whilst you can make money doing surveys, it’s not going to be anywhere near the amounts promised by these rip off merchants. As a warning to others and to give them more realistic expectations I wrote this article.

I’m sure that we would all like to make lots of money and the thought of doing it from home is very appealing. How many of us have seen Paid Survey sites offering the following as an incentive to join, these may vary from site to site but in general they are very similar.

Need money? Want to work from home? Then sit back, and get paid for what you think.
Get paid to take online surveys – $5 to $75 per survey!
Get paid to participate in online focus groups up to $150 per hour!
Get paid to try new products – keep the products and get paid too!
Get paid to preview movie trailers $4 to $25 per hour!

You will then generally get a sales pitch telling you how many companies they have on their books etc. and will usually end with something similar to the following:

Look at how much you can earn taking surveys online all from the comfort of home!
If you took 2 surveys a day @ $10 per survey = $140 per week or $560 per month or $6,720 per year!
If you took 4 surveys a day @ $10 per survey = $280 per week or $1120 per month or $13,440 per year!
If you took 4 surveys a day @ $20 per survey = $560 per week or $2240 per month or $26,880 per year!

So you can make all this, and all they will ask is for a small fee of between $30 & $60.

Lets quote an old cliché, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What really lets these sites down is the final pitch they make to suck people in.
Lets examine point where you can make $6720 per year. It is very unlikely you will get anywhere near this amount as you would be extremely lucky to get even 1 survey a day let alone 2. Few surveys pay $10, most will pay between $1 to $3. Also usually before getting to complete a whole survey you will get asked a few screening questions, depending on your answers you may not be accepted for the survey. Now its hard enough getting 1 survey a day at $10 a survey, what do you think your chances are at getting 4 surveys at $20 a survey.

The other thing you have to be wary of is the pitch where they tell you they have hundreds of companies online who are screaming for people to join and start taking surveys. In reality in many cases what you get is many duplicate or out dated links. The sole intention of these companies is to put their hand in your pockets to extract money from you not to put it in.

I am not saying that all these sites are crooked, there may well be some honest ones just make sure you do your home work before joining.

All being said you can make extra cash doing surveys just not the unreasonable amounts being offered. Of course the more companies you join the more surveys you will be offered. Remember to fill out all your profiles as completely as possible. The more complete your profile the more surveys will be offered to you.

Join enough companies and who knows how much you can truly earn!