It’s very likely that you have learned about the opportunity to get paid for taking online surveys. However, you may not be fully convinced that this opportunity is legit. It’s good to be skeptical because if you aren’t, you’ll likely fall prey to scams who like to target gullible and naive people.
Yes, paid survey scams do exist. But not all “make money taking surveys” opportunities are scams. You can actually get paid for sharing your opinions but you could also be scammed if you are not careful.
If you are new, you may not know how to distinguish paid surveys scams from legitimate paid surveys. But luckily, you have come across this article which will give you the information you need to help you find and identify legitimate paid surveys and avoid scams.
But first, you need to understand why this opportunity is legitimate in the first place. If you don’t believe that you can actually make money taking surveys, you probably won’t even attempt to give legitimate paid surveys a try. So, let me explain why people are able to earn money taking surveys.
Why you can get paid to take surveys
Companies need consumer feedback and are more than willing to offer a monetary reward for the feedback they receive. Why would they pay for consumer feedback? Because this feedback could help them improve their product and make more money.
Once a company has collected feedback from a group of individuals through a survey, they can analyze that feedback to make changes that will make their product more beneficial and appealing – which ultimately increases the likelihood of generating better revenue for the company when their product finally hits the market.
A lot of research and development goes into many of the products you see on the market. Products aren’t just put out on the market without careful planning and market research. Millions of dollars are spent on market research every year, so it isn’t so hard to believe that someone is able to get paid for participating in market research studies.
The market research company, or survey site, is already getting paid for executing the survey and collecting feedback from those who match the survey qualifications. You can understand how they are able to pay their panelists. They are simply giving them a cut of the money they make from the companies that pay for their services.
The market research company wouldn’t do that well if they didn’t have members who would be willing to participate in surveys. A company goes to these survey sites to get quality feedback. If the survey site doesn’t have people who can participate in surveys, the company probably isn’t going to use their services.
How do market research companies get people to participate in surveys? They offer incentives which ranges from sweepstake entries to cold hard cash.`
This is how you are able to earn cash taking surveys. You take advantage of the surveys that offer cash incentives. And in order to do this, you need to sign up to legitimate survey sites that connect their members with paid survey opportunities.
How to identify legitimate paid surveys
Before you start searching for legitimate paid surveys, you need to be able to tell the difference between a legitimate survey site and one that could potentially be a scam.
Legitimate survey sites usually meet all of the following criteria:
They offer free registration
It should cost you nothing at all to join and participate on a survey site. Any site that requires you to pay a fee, either upfront or after you join, is likely to be a scam.
Never pay money to take surveys.
Legal forms are present on website
Legal forms such as “Terms & Conditions”, “Disclaimers”, and “Privacy Policy” are prominently displayed on the website. These pages can tell you a lot about a website such as how they use and protect your personal information, how they work, who’s allowed to use their site, and so on.
Disreputable sites don’t like to include these pages on their site since they are often unprofessional to begin with and they follow an unethical policy that they don’t want to disclose openly in fine print. If they did reveal their policies upfront, they would have a hard time scamming people.
They don’t make unrealistic income claims
Earn $1000 a month taking surveys! Earn $50 an hour taking surveys! Get rich taking surveys! You won’t find these kinds of claims on a legitimate paid survey site. Actually, most reputable survey sites don’t even make income claims. They just simply state that you can be rewarded for taking surveys.
They don’t send spam
Legitimate survey sites will not send you spam. The will send you survey invitations, payments, and occasional news or site updates but they won’t send you spam. If you look over a survey site’s privacy policy or FAQs page, you should be able to learn about their spam policy.
They don’t sell your information
A legitimate survey site will keep your information safe and will not sell it to third parties. If you want to learn exactly how a survey site uses your information, then review their privacy policy.
They don’t ask for sensitive information
Legitimate survey sites do not need any sensitive information from you and will not ask you for it. If a site asks for your social security number or credit card information, avoid that site at all costs. You should never supply such information to a survey site.
They provide contact information
You should be able to easily contact someone at the website if you need support or have some sort of inquiry. Legitimate survey sites always provide contact information.
They only deal with paid surveys
Sometimes, you may come across a site that says you can get paid to take surveys but once you become a member, you find out that you can also complete offers, sign up for trials, watch videos, and so on.
These types of sites are often referred to as “get paid to websites”, GPT sites for short, since they are paying members to do various things, primarily filling out offers and answering surveys.
GPT sites are often confused with paid survey sites since you can get paid to take surveys on both types of sites. It should be easy to tell how the two are different. Legitimate paid survey sites only deal with paid surveys. They don’t ask you to complete offers, sign up for trials, or do anything else besides take surveys.
In review, legitimate survey companies are free to join, include proper documentation and contact information on their website, do not make unrealistic income claims, do not abuse your personal information or ask for sensitive information, only deal with paid surveys, and they make good on their promises – if they say they will pay you to take surveys, you will get paid when you have met their payout requirements.
If you run across a site that fails to meet any of the criteria above, there is a possibility that it could be a scam and you should either avoid the site altogether or proceed with extra caution and do extra research until you have enough information to confidently judge whether or not the site is indeed a scam.
How to find legitimate paid surveys
Finding legitimate paid surveys is simple but it does take time to gather enough information to make sure that the site you are interested in joining is reputable. One reason that people buy into those fee-based membership sites that give you a list of survey companies is because the research is done for them and it saves them from having to look for sites on their own.
Do I recommend taking the easy way out and spending upwards of $50 to access one of these membership sites? No. Although it may take a bit of time to research legitimate paid surveys, it’s free and it gets easier once you are familiar with the process.
Besides, there are sites that list these types of sites free of charge. So, you won’t have to do much research in the end. But just in case you want to know how to find them on your own, here are a few tips that will help you locate legitimate survey companies.
Locating and Researching Survey Sites
Go to Google and search for a list of surveys. You can use queries such as these: “legitimate paid surveys” “list of paying survey companies” “legitimate survey sites that pay cash”.
You will come across websites that supply the information you are looking for. But since some websites can be deceitful, misleading, or unreliable, you need to make sure that you do your own research. If a websites provides you with a list of paying survey companies, research each company on that list before signing up.
To research, you can do the following:
Read reviews about the survey company. Google something like this: survey company + review.
Visit Ripoffreport.com and Scam.com and search for the survey company’s name.
Check BBB (Better Business Bureau) for complaints and ratings for the company
Search for recent payment proofs or signs that people are being paid by the company
Go to the survey website and read over their terms, privacy policy, and FAQs.
Visit online discussion forums that talk about paid surveys and see what, if anything, you can learn about the company based on forum member’s experiences. A simpler way to do this is to Google something like this, survey company + forum.