Perhaps you've tried paid surveys and haven't made any money from or, perhaps you've only heard about them and are intrigued, or maybe you're skeptical. It is possible to make decent money from paid surveys but it is important to remember that, like any other thing in life, you have to be willing to work the system. Here are a few things to bear in mind before you get started.

Patience is a virtue
When you get started with paid surveys, don't expect to make thousands overnight. You've heard endlessly about the profits and people working from home and whatnot but maybe you haven't seen any of these mythical profits. Like other ventures, what separates the success stories from the rest is good, old-fashioned perseverance. So persevere and eventually you'll start making money. If the rewards were immediate, everybody would be doing it. However, over time, as you sign up with more companies you should be receiving more offers from these companies. Remember, not all companies will send you offers immediately, some can take weeks or even months.

SCREENERS
Particular surveys are usually aimed at certain demographics and so companies will offer what is known as a preliminary 'screener' to see if you fit the bill. I recommend that you be honest rather than cater for what you think companies want to hear; for one thing, people usually guess wrongly and, for another, companies are usually good at spotting inconsistencies. To make the whole process easier, I recommend you look into a program called 'Roboform', which basically makes the whole process automated.

Miscellaneous tips
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. To maximize your profits, join as many paid survey companies as you can - this is half the battle.
Keep your info up to date, especially your email address. When signing up for paid survey sites, they usually send you a confirmation email to verify that you did sign up in the first place. And, of course, you'll be receiving surveys through your email address. Also, make sure your spam filter isn't so effective that it catches surveys as well as junk mail. I recommend setting up another email account dedicated to paid surveys.

So there you have it, paid surveys can be profitable if you approach them from the right angle and put in the required amount of work but (and this is important) you have to actually be willing to DO the work.

While you shouldn’t necessarily quit you day job to take online surveys, it can be quite a lucrative field if you just devote some time to it. There’s a lot of hearsay floating around the internet about how all paid survey sites are scams, you can’t make any money of surveys, etc, etc. This is simply not the case. The people who are propagating these rumors are probably the people who never took it seriously in the first place. You know, the type of people who look for that ‘magic button’ that will make them $100 a click for doing next to nothing. Let me just make one thing clear: surveys are NOT that ‘magic button.’

Sign up to lots of survey sites
If you want to make some serious cash from surveys, you need to take every (and I mean EVERY) opportunity that you can get. It’s simple: the more companies you sign up with, the more surveys you get and, hence, the more you ultimately make.

Earning potential
Depending on the length of the survey, you stand to make anywhere from $5 to $75 a survey; shorter surveys pay you less, longer surveys pay you more.

Paid survey sites
There are services where you have to pay a one-time fee for them to send you surveys – I highly recommend signing up for one of these. Most people will tell you that you can find the surveys that these companies send you for free if you look long and hard enough but I ask you: how much do you value your time? Because you ARE going to be looking long and hard. Remember, taking paid surveys is, by its very nature, a job. Would you rather be paid $5/hour or $30/hour? Of course, the latter. The point I’m trying to make here is that, although, you might be able to find the surveys on your own independently, the money you save is not a cost-effective trade off for the time you’ll waste, time that could be spent on doing more surveys and earning you more money.

Surveys are great and a popular way to make money precisely because of the flexible hours. Even if you have a full time job you can still make time to do a few surveys, in fact, some people (including myself) find them to be a relaxing way to wind down after work, made all the more relaxing from the fact that I’m getting paid for the surveys. Granted, most internet money making ‘opportunities’ (and I use the word loosely) have flexible hours but a lot of them are dubious at best. Here’s something that actually works, all you need to do is take it seriously.