How to Spot Paid Survey Scams

By eHow Careers & Work Editor

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Many people are looking to work at home and one of the more popular paid jobs are surveys. However, there are many survey scams and you should be on the lookout for them. The following will give you some ideas of what you should look for when you are researching paid survey jobs.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Promise of high return. The truth is that you probably will not get rich doing paid surveys. Therefore if the site proclaims you can make thousands a day ,it is probably a survey scam. Although you can make some money for surveys, you probably won't make thousands a month, let alone a day.

Step2

Understand what you are getting for your money. Most survey scams only give you a list of sites that may not be valid or that will charge you even more money for nothing. They will tell you that by joining these sites you will receive so many surveys a day, but never follow through.

Step3

Check work at home forums. See the Resource section for forums you can check to see if a survey site really pays. There are plenty of forums and sites that will give you this information for free.

Step4

Talk to other people who are working at home to get information on the site you are interested in joining. Even if you don't know anyone who is working at home on surveys you can always post in the forums for information about the site.

Step5

Research the company by doing a Google search. There are articles out there that are listed in the Source section that will help you to find out if the company is legitimate or a survey scam. The key to spotting survey scams is research.

Step6

Spot the surveys that ask you to "Compare Burger King and McDonald's: Who has the best burgers" as scams. These are not even real surveys.

Tips & Warnings

Chances are if you are asked to put up money, the site is a survey scam. However, there are a few legitimate ones that ask you to pay money.
There isn't a reason to pay for the information that you can get for free. So even if the survey site is legitimate, when they are asking you for money you can probably get the same information for free on another site.

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Comments

Macherella said

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on 7/31/2008 I have found three FREE paid survey sites that I currently am signed up to and am (slowly) making a small amount of money from. It won't make me a millionaire but I figure by the time Christmas comes around I will hopefully have a few hundred dollars extra to spend! The best free site that I have found is Pure Profile:
http://account.pureprofile.com/Login/?referrer=3109386

I have only been a member for two weeks but have already made $15 for answering a few short, simple surveys. One you earn $25 or more you can cash it out for direct bank payment (in Australia, not sure about other countries).

Another site which I have found reputable is Email Cash:
http://www.emailcash.com.au/Join/Default.aspx?refer=fairliew

The problem with this one is it takes a long time to earn enough points to get a $30 cheque posted to you. So far I am one third of the way there... but at least it do

AdamPoole said

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on 6/19/2008 I have a lot of legit paid surveys listed on my web site
they are all free to join and I have personally made money with all of them.
http://www.top-paid-surveys.net

kevkev227 said

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on 6/3/2008 I have been taking surveys online for almost a year now and I have made thousands of dollars so far and counting. The key is to sign up for as many of the good ones as you can. The best ones are the sites that pay well and send surveys consistently. I have written a blog about this which includes links to some of the best paid survey sites I have found. You can check it out here: http://legitimatepaidsurveysitesforyou.blogspot.com

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