Paid Surveys Explained
The Reality

Most sites we've encountered that offer paid surveys information don’t really inform you at all. They just offer ads to their affiliate paid survey programs. Here you will learn what these programs are and some basic features of what many of the websites provide.

Market research firms have been paying individuals to participate in surveys and focus groups for a long while now. With the advent of the internet the research is accomplished much faster and in a much more cost effective way.

Despite what some popular websites claim, you will not retire anytime soon by participating in these programs. You can however earn an income worth bragging about if done properly. It basically depends on what you want to do for a living. Do you want to sit at home in front of your PC giving your opinion for the betterment of a product or service or do you want to do something else?

Demographics play a considerable role in the amount of money you can earn. On average men (working 9 to 5 jobs) bring home more money than women, but on average women spend more money than men. If you wanted to find out how to market a product that both men and women use, who would you want to survey? Generally, women will make more with paid surveys then men. That’s not to say that men can’t earn money. They just don’t as a whole earn as much.

For the most part, survey sites send you invitations via email to take each particular survey that you qualify for. Some require that you login to the site to see which surveys are available to you. It's recommended that you set up an email account specifically for this venture because of the amount of invites you will receive. This is not for spam purposes as these companies won't send you a significant amount of advertisements. There may be an occasional ad, but advertising is not there business. They seek to get your opinion to find out how to advertise to others.

Continue reading to find out exactly how paid survey programs work, or you can visit our list of free paid surveys sites.

Paid surveys are online surveys where the participant is rewarded through a structured incentive program. The most common incentive programs are money per survey, sweepstakes drawings, and points per survey; whereas the participant’s points accumulate and the participant then exchanges the points for money, gift certificates, or additional entries into sweepstakes drawings. These surveys are used by marketing firms to collect quantitative information about the participant’s personal and economic habits to test new advertisements.

Online focus groups are a marketing research tool in which a group of people engage in discussion of selected products. The focus group discussion is directed by a moderator who guides the discussion in order to obtain the group's opinions about the product. Online focus groups provide qualitative information from a predefined target audience to aid businesses in marketing and development.

Many of these websites now offer you the opportunity to take phone surveys (Which pay more than online surveys pay generally.), watch movie trailers, and also let you keep the products you receive from them when you participate in focus groups. Some offer other incentives like mystery shopping and eating at a restaurant and then providing a review. We don't participate in these two programs, but have read excellent reviews on the subject. These incentives have extra perks, but are more difficult to qualify for.

View our list of the free paid survey sites that we participate in.

Feedback about the list we provide will go far in determining the future of the programs listed.

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