Well, I personally did registered with a few companies before, did a few of their surveys and earned some quick bucks from them. Therefore I personally think you can really get paid for taking surveys.

Of course, there are some things you need to take care of before you can really start earning from your opinions. For that, I leave it to other days to make further explanation.

For now, we shall concentrate on why and how can one get paid for taking surveys.

Well, in fact without me even saying this, many of you already know the answer to the above question. It is because there is a market for it. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

I believe most of us already know that companies are often very willing to spend millions of dollars in advertising. However what other people may not know is that many companies are also willing to spend big bucks on getting feedbacks from their customers. That is where your opinions get to earn you money.

Those companies need to know if you’ve used their products before, if not why not? If so, how do their products fare relative to their competitors’ etc.

Are you willing to spend like 10 minutes of your time filling up a survey form for a company for free? Well, probably you will for you’re one of the generous kind of people out there. However most people are not that generous, especially not me. =P

And that is why companies are willingly to pay people to complete their survey forms for they recognize the fact that if they don’t, no one will fill any form.

Even undergraduates who need to collect surveys from the public understand how the world works. Therefore, when other people helped them complete their surveys, they’ll give them nicely decorated packets of sweets or pens as a token of their appreciation.

Come on, let’s be practical. That is how the real world works. No money, no work. No gain, no aid. It’s that simple.

That’s why your opinions are actually worth much more than what you really think. They’re some mere “2-cents” worth opinions.

So how much can you earn from a single survey? That I cannot really answer for I’m into this survey thing full time.

From my research, I noticed some website actually claimed that one can earn up to $50-$100 (or even more) per survey. How true is that? I am as clueless as you are.

Personally, I have never being paid so much before for a survey. My highest earning was only $15 for a single survey which took me approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.

Good money you say? Well, I would have agreed with you if there were more such surveys for me to complete. In fact I have only completed 3 such “high” paying surveys in a period of 8-12 months!

Now please do not get me wrong. I am not saying that you’ll end up the same as me. There are of course many other factors that contribute to my “failure” in this opportunity.

In fact, there are some people who claimed to be able to earn a stable and good income from just taking surveys at the comfort of their own home.

Now if you’re really interested in earning some extra cash for giving your opinions, there are some important things to take note of.

First of all is the type of rewards you’ll be given for your participation in the survey. Some companies are willingly to pay you in cash while others prefer to reward you in terms of coupons, reward points, sweepstakes, prizes and/or product samples.

To what I know, most of the companies prefer to use coupons, reward points, sweepstakes, prizes and/or product samples to reward you while only a minority of those companies will be willingly to pay you in cash for your hard work.

Now if you’re to receive coupons, reward points etc for your reward, there is an addition thing you have to worry about. Are you able to receive your rewards and are you able to use your coupons etc?

For example you am currently living in Singapore and you have just completed a survey for a company and in appreciation of your hard work, the company actually sent you a digital coupon to be used only in their shops located in US!

So the question is, how are you going to make the purchase with the coupon? Are you able to make purchases through their online stores? Do you have a need for their product? How about product samples and prizes? Do you need to pay for the shipping and handling fees?

Do you get my point? Sometimes even if you get rewarded, you’ll have no use for that reward. That only means you have spend your time completing that survey for nothing.

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NOTE:
Oh, by the way, reward points are just some points you collect for completing the company’s surveys and exchange them for cash, vouchers or prizes. Just in case you don’t know what is that. =D
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Even if those companies pay you in terms of cash, it doesn’t mean that you’re safe from all worry. You’ll need to make sure that those companies actually fulfill their promise and you actually get to receive your cash.

Through what means are they going to send you your cash? How often do they pay their members? When is the payout? Are there any requirements you need to fulfill before you can get your cash? For example must you have a specific type of online transaction account? Must you be a particular country citizen? Must you be above a certain age to receive your rewards? Are there any documents you need to fill up etc… …

I know there are many things to look into. However, these are just some of the more important things you’ll need to look into before making any commitments to help any company complete any surveys.

Surely, you won’t want to waste time completing a 10-30 minutes survey only to find out that you’re not eligible for their prizes.

And in additional to looking at their prizes and rewards, you also need to pay close attention to the honesty and integerity of the survey companies which you sign up with.

To state the obvious, not all survey companies are legitimate. Therefore instead of only concerning yourself with what types of rewards you can get, you’ll also have to pay the due diligent to ensure that the survey companies operate with integerity and honesty.

Most of the survey companies when you first registered with them will require you to key in your email. Those legitimate ones will ensure you that your email and personal information will not be sold to any third parties while others will do otherwise.

Also, companies which operate in accordance to the law will fulfill their side of the bargain. That is to say, they’ll give what they promise you after you complete your surveys.

Lastly, you will not need to pay any fees just to sign up with the any of the survey companies.

Taking surveys will be and must be a totally free. Therefore do not be fooled by any companies that require you to pay something up front just to join them even if they promise you that after you complete your first survey, they’ll return you your sign up fee. That is completely B.S. (bull shi*t). You pay them nothing. They should be the one paying you!

“Authenticating” those companies is in fact a hard work. One way you can go about doing it is to send emails and ask them questions on how you will be paid, in terms of what etc. Be aware of the quality of their reply and how prompt they actually reply you.

If it takes them days to reply, you can reassure that it will take them weeks or even months to send you your rewards (if they even had the intention of doing so).

Alternatively, you can do an online search for the any negative comments about any particular company. Of course, there are bound to have one or two negative comments. It is after all impossible to please everyone, isn’t it.

Therefore you will have to determine for yourself which companies can be trusted accordingly to the information you have at hand.

So what if you choose not to do the research by yourself? Well, you can then pay for such information.

There are in fact several membership sites available out there which have already consolidated and tested those survey companies listed in their database (so they claimed to be).

Therefore all you need to do is to pay for your access to their back office from which you’ll be presented with hundreds of links. These links are actually the links to the survey companies websites where you’ll have to individually register with to be included for their surveys.

Now, just a word of caution, even though such membership sites offer great convenience, not all of them are legitimate. Therefore when you joined any of these membership sites, you’ll need to pay extra attention for you’re now not only investing your valuable time but also your money as well. There’s more risk involved in a sense.

Still interested in knowing more about how you can get paid for taking surveys and the membership sites? Well, that has to wait for the next post for this post is long enough. =P