I'm sure you have seen the advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and all over the internet that claim you can make THOUSANDS a month taking surveys on the internet. Companies claim that by paying up to $40.00 to join their club you will make thousands a month.

This is simply untrue. After paying to join these clubs you will get a list of hundreds of sites that claim to offer "paid surveys". You will then have to join each company one by one. Companies like these are just taking advantage of the fact that the average person doesn't know they can find the same information for free that they are charging $40.00 for.

I have found several companies that will pay you to take surveys, test products, and participate in online focus groups. They are all absolutely free to join. And it is the exact same information you would get if you paid one of these "survey clubs".

The truth is, You probably will not make $2,000 a month from taking online surveys. But if you follow these few simple steps you can make some extra money.

Before I go into how to get started, let me tell you a little about how this works and why companies pay you to do this......

Big companies pay billions of dollars a year to promote and advertise their products. They pay market research companies to conduct studies and find out how the public reacts and relates to their products. These market research companies conduct studies of each product and give reports to the companies that hired them. The big companies want to know what the public is thinking. So the market research companies give everyday people from all walks of life the opportunity to join their panels and voice our opinions. In return they give a small payout for your time, usually $5 - $20.

Market research studies are conducted in several ways. Online surveys, product testing, telephone conferences, and mystery shopping are some of the more popular methods. And anybody can participate in these studies.

When you first sign up with one of these companies you will be asked to fill out a profile. This profile will ask you questions about your age, income, ethnicity, marital status, education, employment status, children, and may ask about things like your health, what type of car you drive, if you own your home and other questions like that. This is so that when a company asks them to do a study of a certain group of people they have a list of qualified participants. An example of this would be:

A dog food maker wants to know how women between 18 and 24 that own a dog feel about their product. If your profile matched that they would send you an invitation to participate in that survey, or test that product. There would be no point in sending that to people who don't own dogs.

O.k. Now that I have told you why these studies are done, I will now tell you how to get started and how to avoid scams.

The first step to getting started is obviously finding companies to join. This can be hard. There are millions of companies that pose as paid survey companies so they can get your information and sell it to advertisers. You will then start receiving lots of offers to buy the types of products you said you were interested in when you took your profile survey.

A good place to start is wahmservice.com Wahmservice lists several paid survey companies and is totally free. They also have a forum where you can find other people and information on all types of work at home topics. And a blog where they rate every "paid survey" company and expose the fakes. Whenever you are considering joining a "paid survey" company you should always check wahmservice to see what they have to say about it first.

Now that you have found a legitimate source. It's time to GET PAID. The second thing you need to do is sign up for a few companies. Some companies may send you 4 or 5 paid surveys a week. And some may send you 1 paid survey a month, or none at all. It all depends on who and what they are looking for at the time. The best thing to do is sign up for as many ofthese companies as you can. I would recommend starting with 10 or so. That way you will probably get paid surveys daily.

There are about 500 companies you can join. Here are a few links to some of the best. These are major companies. You will find the alot of other market research companies will use these companies for their studies because of their large number of panelists. Therefore these companies send more surveys than alot of others.

NFO My Survey
GoZing Surveys
ECN Research
Global Test Market
E-Poll
NPD Online Research
Ipsos I-say
American Consumer Opinion
Greenfield Online
Survey Savvy
Survey Spot
Test Spin
Harris Poll
Pinecone Research
Net Ratings
Homescan Consumer Panel
Cunningham Research/Datatelligence
Poll Cast

You should sign up with all of those. It may take an hour or so. But it's well worth it. Then once you get used to it you can go back to wahmservice forums and find other companies to join. The ultimate goal would be to be registered with a hundred or more companies. That almost guarantees you will receive several surveys a day. And will have the chance to earn lots of extra money.

After being with some of these companies for awhile you may receive invitations to participate in focus groups. Sometimes these will be at an office in your area or they may be an online chat or conference call. You can be paid up to $250 for your participation in a focus group. But these are not everyday. Maybe once a month.

This article was submitted by Chris Price, owner of wahmservice.com. Wahmservice.com is a free directory of Paid Survey Companies.

click here for wahmservice.com's free paid surveys directory

Free paid surveys. Get paid to take surveys. Take surveys online for CASH!

More than likely you have seen ads like these all over the internet. And like most people
you are probably wondering if they are true. Can you really get paid to take surveys
online? Or is paid surveys just another scam? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. You can actually
get paid to take surveys online.

There are many companies that will pay you to participate in online surveys, focus groups,
and even product tests. These are market research companies that are paid by large
companies to find out what the public feels about their products. They want to know if their
advertising camppagns are working and how everyday people feel about their products. Large
corporations spend billions of dollars a year on advertising. So to pay you a few dollars to find out
if their advertising is working is not that big of a deal. So they hire these market research companies. And the market research companies send out surveys to everyday people to find out what the public is thinking.

There are also several misconceptions about taking paid surveys online. Many advertisements will tell you that you can make up to $250 an hour taking paid surveys. Although it is possible to be compensated $250 for participating in an important study or focus group, the average paid survey will pay you between $2 and $20.

There are also a few different kinds of paid survey sites. There are paid survey directories, or databases, and there are the actual paid survey companies. A paid survey, or market research company, is the actual company that will send you the paid surveys. And also the one that will compensate you for your participation. An example of a paid survey company is NFO My Survey. NFO has been around for over 20 years and is one of the major paid survey companies on the internet. When joining a paid survey site like NFO you are notified by email when your participation in a paid survey is needed. You can then choose to take the paid survey or simply ignore it. You are told how much you will be paid for taking each survey and how long the paid survey should take to complete. Companies like NFO My Survey are always free to join. A legitimate paid survey company will never ask you to pay a fee to join.

An example of a paid survey directory, or database, is wahmservice.com .
Sites like wahmservice.com provide directories of paid survey companies. These are the sites
you go to to find companies that will pay you to participate in online surveys. There are several
databases you can join. But most online paid survey databases are not free. A site like SurveyScout charges about $35 for their directory of 490 paid survey companies. Others charge anywhere from $20 to $60 to access their paid surveys directory. Many people are fooled into thinking that when they join these membership sites they will automatically start receiving paid surveys. A membership site like SurveyScout does not actually send paid surveys. they are only a directory of companies that you join that send paid surveys online.

Before you spend $35 dollars for a paid survey database do some looking around. Sites like wahmservice.com have everything you would find in a paid membership site and is absolutely free. There is no need to pay to find paid surveys. In fact, why would you want to pay for free information? Paid membership sites are simply taking advantage of the fact that most people don't know where to look for this type of information. And once they pay and then find out that they paid for a directory, most people feel like they have been scammed. My advice would be to bypass a paid directory. And use a free paid survey directory like the one I mentioned earlier.

If you are looking for a full-time income online, paid surveys may not be the thing for you. Although you can make some good money taking paid surveys online, more than likely it will not be enough to make you rich. On the other hand, if you want to make some extra money without much effort then paid surveys is the way to go.

The key to getting paid to take surveys online is joining as many of these paid survey companies as possible. Most paid survey sites will only send a few paid surveys a month.
So the logic is, the more paid survey companies you belong to the more paid survey invitations you will receive. And the more money you will make. I'ts a good idea to start off with around 10 to 20 good paid survey companies. Each one will only take a few minutes to sign up for and is well worth it. Wahmservice actually has a section that list the most popular paid surveys online. There are around 500 paid survey companies listed on wahmservice. And once you have joined the main ones you can go back and join others to receive even more paid surveys. Of 500 paid survey companies I would have to say that there are about 50 that will send you paid surveys on a regular basis. The rest may only send one a month or even less. So starting with the top paid surveys is obviously the best way to go.
You must answer a few screener questions before taking a survey to see if you fit the profile for the type of person the company is interested in. After taking a few screeners you can start to see how you should answer to make yourself qualify. for instance, most paid survey screeners will ask you if you work in a certain industry, or any type of market research or advertising business. The answer to a question like this should almost always be no. They do not want people who know the market research business taking their surveys. And you will almost always not qualify for the paid survey.

Well now that you have all the information you need it's up to you to decide if paid surveys is for you or not. If you are interested in paid surveys I highly reccommend NFO My Survey, Global Test Market, Survey Savvy, Survey Spot, E-Poll, ECN Research, Lightspeed Research,
American Consumer opinion, Test Spin,GoZing surveys, Greenfield Online, and Opinion Outpost. There several more great paid survey sites. These are just my personal favorites. These can all be found at the free paid surveys directory link below.
Free Paid Surveys Online