Paid Surveys as a source of side income areon a rising trend. Particularly for at-home-moms, college leavers or people who just want to make extra income. It’s easy and fast and you can get some money just by having as little as few hours of work.

When something is popular, that’s when scammers attack. What can they do to you?

Well, they can ask you to join in their program which you got to pay some money, and poof! nothing happens – except you losing your money. Some scammers also use your details to sell it to marketers and you’ll end up having spam emails to your mailbox, which everyone just hates that.

Or, and this is the worst – you paid in some money, spent some good hours to complete the survey and – YOU GOT NOTHING from it. Happened to me before and that really ticked me off.

So before you get into a paid survey program, these are the things you should do: 

Tip No 1: If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is

Ever get into those websites that promises you to earn thousands per month doing online survey? And you’re telling yourself are they for real? Well, most of the time they probably are. As online surveys gives small pay outs when they are completed usually in the tens of dollars – now how many surveys can you do to actually get thousands of dollars?

Tip No 2: Visit forums on scam to check out the paid survey website.

Forums on scam such as www.scam.com provide a lot of reviews on websites and story from people on how they got scammed. Check out the paid survey website on these forum. If something bad comes out from it, then avoid the website.

Tip No 3: Look for reviews

Some genuine paid survey website will have  good independent reviews about them. What you shouldn’t do is to read the review directly from the paid survey website – coz it can just be another marketing gimmick. Just search at google and type “<website name> review” and you might get something from the search.

Tip No 4: Check out the company profile

A genuine paid survey profile normally have a good write up on the profile. Not just a one-liner. And they would also mention how many years they’ve been around. This is important – coz you don’t want to end up getting involved in a fly-by-night programs.

Tip No 5: Check the support from the paid survey website

This is one useful test to do. In the “contact us” from the website, check out the email or phone number that you can contact them. You can post a simple question to the email and see how fast they respond and how is the quality of the respond. If they don’t respond at all then you should be worried.

What happens if they don’t even have a “contact us” page? Then you really should be worried.

Tip No 6: Where is the location of the company and are they big companies?

Sometimes the scam websites put up a big list of the companies that wants you to do the survey. Just make a random check on these companies on whether they actually exist and whether they are big companies or just small companies. Remember, normally the big company pays you money for the survey. Small companies give you mystery gift (in which you probably wont like or use anyway).

Tip No 7: Avoid mystery shopping

Mystery shopping is just what it is – a mystery gift or a shopping voucher. Why is it called a mystery? Coz if you know what it is upfront, you probably won’t be interested. So, if you got into a website that promises more mystery gifts than real money, you should give that website a skip.

Tip No 8: Be careful of free sites

Ever heard of the saying – nothing comes for free? Well, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong about free sites, but if what you want is to make money, free sites are not the best place for it. You may get into mystery shopping or something like that but  you don’t normally get good money from it.

Tip No 9: Be careful of pop ups

Try to avoid paid survey websites that suddenly jumps to you out of nowhere – a typical pop-up kinda thing. Coz most pop-ups can lead to scams. Some are genuine no doubt – but it’s rare.

Tip No 10: Trust your instinct

After reading and looking and checking out the paid survey website – how do you feel about it? Is the website something you are comfortable with? Coz if you get into their program, you’ll be using the website for a lot of times. If you gut feeling tells you something can be wrong – maybe it’s time to take a step back and think again. After all, you got to trust your gut feelings.

To summarize: 

There are good and genuine Online Paid Surveys out there. And yes, people do  make money from it. You have to spend a little amount of time to check out the website and the program and hopefully you won't get into another scam.

What next?

These are some paid survey websites that you can try below. I’ve checked it out and it looks ok to me.

• SurveyScout.com (recommended)
• GlobalTestMarket.com
• Online-Paid-Surveys.net

I hope you have enjoyed this post and it's been useful for you. If you like to find out more, please check out the related posts in my other hubpages or please visit my website  www.nil2million.com