When I first started out in answering online paid surveys to earn extra cash, I found it hard to find ‘real’ sites—those that will not spam you or not compensate your work. I discovered there were several of these in the Internet. It was a terrible experience. But after several tries, I soon discovered how to find legitimate paid surveys.
Here are some guidelines on how to spot legitimate paid survey sites for all you who are new at this:
– Make sure to create a separate email account. You can be swamped with survey requests from different survey sites that you sign up with and if you use your personal email, you may find it difficult to organize your mail.
– Keep a list of your usernames and passwords if you plan to sign up with several online survey sites.
– When searching for sites to sign up with, make sure to not go with those that appear on pop-ups. These are mostly advertisements that will only send you spam. Although they are not designed to hoodwink you, they can be very inconvenient. They will ask you to provide some information which they will only sell to marketing companies.
– When a certain site asks you for a fee, leave right away. Legitimate paid survey sites will not ask you to pay anything, not even a dime. Access to online surveys should be free.
– Legitimate paid surveys will tell you upfront what to expect in terms of payment. They will not mislead you the way fraudulent sites do. Such sites will entice you with promises of earning hundreds, even thousands of dollars and other great prizes. This is not plausible because you will not earn that much by answering online surveys, unless you are registered with more than 10 sites. On the average, a survey will pay between $5 and $20.
– Stay away from sites that ask for your credit card or any bank information.
– Legitimate paid survey sites would have certain logos like AMA, BBB, and Castro. Look for these.
– Be careful with survey sites that are heavily advertised. When a site is full of advertisements all you see are boxes of ads, you can be 90 percent sure that it is not designed to provide you an opportunity to earn money. Another thing to note is that survey sites that advertise another survey site can’t be fully trusted.
– It would help to go through the sites first. Read their company profile and find out as much information as you can. Look for their FAQs page. This should have the answers to your inquiries.
