Many people are blogging these days about online paid survey sites, but is it true what they say? Depends on who you listen to and what their motivation is. The truth is that if an online paid survey site doe snot ask you to pay for surveys or information about surveys then it is probably not a scam. I say probably because there are still a handful of other sites that still are, but they are few and far between.

The Ugly - The sites that want you to pay for their list of survey companies and promise to make you rich if you simply join with them. These sites typically tell you that they have surveys available that you can't find on your own, but this simply is not true. To get access to these "special" surveys they want you to pay a membership fee, anywhere from $39.95 and up.

I have personally joined over 200 different online survey sites and every one of them was 100% free to join. You should never ever pay to take surveys or to get a list of paying survey sites. It isn't necessary at all when the information you need is freely available. In fact, legitimate market research companies are forbidden by law to make you pay to take their surveys. It would provide a bias and they don't want that and neither do their clients.

Avoid any site that wants you to pay for access to its database of survey companies. Avoid any site that says you can make thousands of dollars a week or hundreds of dollars a day. If it sounds too good to be true it very likely is. You will make money with online paid surveys, but finding them is free and registering for them is free as well.

The Bad – It's not really that bad, but I just want you to know that you won't get rich taking online paid surveys. You can make several hundred dollars a month easily though in your spare time and that's not bad. I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this could use a few extra hundred dollars every month for doing something as easy as taking online paid surveys.

When you begin taking online paid surveys you should be both persistent and patient. This may or may not be bad depending on what type of person you are. Typically you will find that there is a minimum amount before you can get paid so you may need to wait a month or so until you can start getting paid from some survey companies. Not really bad, but it does require some persistence and patience.

The Good – Online paid surveys are the easiest and most risk free ways you can use to make money on the internet. Almost all of the free online paid survey sites you'll find are legitimate. They may have minimum payment requirements that take time to meet, however all of the sites I have requested payment from have paid me. Let's face it, many of the online paid survey companies are small parts of offline market research companies. They have reputations to protect and are not going to jeopardize their businesses by being unresponsive to the very people they get their data from.

As long as you follow these rules you will find that it easy to make money with online paid surveys.

1. Never pay to get a listing of online paid survey sites.
2. Join a variety of sites. Start with 20-30 surveys sites and expand from there as time permits.
3. Be persistent in taking online paid surveys. The more reliable you are the better paying the surveys become.