The concept of paid surveys has been around for a long time. Some even say that marketing companies began using paid surveys as early as 1856. Only recently however, with the advance of home computers and the increase in home businesses, have paid surveys come back into the "lime-light" as a way to make money.
You are reading this because you want to know if you can you get paid to take online surveys. The simple answer is "Yes". Marketing companies or firms will pay participants to answer questions via surveys. They then resell the data they collect to larger companies looking to invest in a new marketing plan or ad campaign.
So your next question is most likely, how much can I make or can you make enough money to live off of? The answer is most certainly yes, if you put in a little bit of time to get started. Getting started is not that hard, and can be made incredibly easier by signing up to one of the premium sites listed on this page. These sites have designed a systems for you to streamline the entire process and make things much quicker for you, as well as get you more surveys faster, although they do cost an upfront fee, which is the disadvantage. The fee, in my opinion, is to cover the cost of the time they put in to designing it, as well as to cover the costs of running the website. There are some scams and sites out there that just don't work (even though they intend well), but legitimate paid surveys are NOT a waste of time and can be a good source of income.
There are companies and corporations that spend billions of dollars every year in advertising. You see their ads on TV, hear them on the radio and even get them on your cell phones. Obviously, these companies make money by "convincing" you to buy a product through these ads. How do they know what will make money for them and what? Good question, because they don't know. Some companies will try sample ads to a select population and then monitor their results before ramping up to a full scale ad campaign. Other companies will hire a marketing firm before launching an ad campaign in order to get the best information on domestic trends, user habits and interests. Once a company hires a marketing firm, the firm will then collect data from a select populace using web site traffic results, TV ad results and yes...even paid surveys.
By completing a paid survey, you are offering information about yourself: your habits, opinions, likes and dislikes to the marketing firm. That firm will recieve a request for certain information, for example how often you go see a movie and what types of movies you like, and will send the surveys out to a relevant part of the population, or a group of people that the business buying the information will request. The marketing company supplies the link between the business, and the vast number of survey participants such as yourself.
So, is participating in an online survey worth your time? If you don't have much free time because you are working full time and get paid well, then maybe not, but if you are like most average people and wouldn't mind a bit of extra cash then it is. Marketing firms will collect information about you when you sign up and then use that data to match you with current or future survey needs. If you are selected to participate in a survey, you will be notified and given a link via email that will point you to the survey. Four to Six weeks later you will get a check in the mail for your participation.
Surveys are a great way to make supplemental or full time income in the comfort of your own home, in your spare time, after work, or even throughout the day (if you are after the big bucks). Despite what some people say, you can earn vast amounts of money once you're set up and knocking out surveys in the dozen. Half the time you may not even have to enter most of the information in a survey because you have entered it previously, meaning you can fast-track through each one, and be paid anywhere between $5 and $100 for just a couple of minutes work. When you combine this with more surveys than you could poke a stick at, you get to choose what surveys you want to complete (based on pay and interest) and can make some serious cash. You can increase the number of surveys you get (and number of high paying ones) by signing up with multiple programs. Personally I am signed up to all the sites that I reccommend, as these were the ones worth staying with (and the best paying of them all). One is fine, and I definately reccommend signing up with all the free sites, as they are indeed 100% free. There is no scam, they just didn't put as much time into collecting business and creating the programs as the premium sites.
If you think paid surveys are for you, click sign up for the survey companies listed on the summary/best sites page for the absolute best of each, or check out the free sites for a no cost startup, and the premium sites for the absolute best programs on the net for making serious money. Remember, the more services you sign up for the better your chances are for being selected to participate. This is the key to making reasonable money in paid surveys.