Why do some people fail in this easy Internet business activity? Generally because they did not know what they were doing and/or were poorly advised. Most failures fall into one of three categories: Poor choice of where to start, poor choice of guide company or failure to follow through and do their part.

Problem 1: Poor choice of where to start -- They answered an ad and jumped in, not realizing that they were dealing with a sales company trying to look like a paid online survey company, but just wanted to sell them things. Or they tried to go the "free" route and got tangled up with marginal, unscrupulous companies. Their contact info got sold to others, the company took kickbacks from survey makers to send them gullible survey takers and finally they got "paid" with lottery tickets, or didn''t get paid at all.

Solution 1: Deal only with reputable paid guide companies. You want to be paying your guide company, so it looks out for your interests. A "free" guide is being paid by someone else to guide you into places to which you would rather not go!

The Process of Completing Free Online Paid Surveys

In order to start making money fast through free online paid surveys, you will need to sign up with a website that offers paid surveys. Usually, this will entail setting up a member profile where you inform the administrator where you live, how old you are, what your educational level is etc. These are just basic personal questions so that the administrator knows which surveys are appropriate for you. If the website and survey is legitimate, you can assure that any information given is kept confidential. After completing the free online paid surveys' member profile, you can expect to get notified when the administrator has found a survey that matches your background. This notification will tell you how much you will be getting paid, for merely offering your honest opinions, how long the survey should take you to complete, and where you can find the survey. Finally, you will complete the free online paid survey by giving your opinions on the questions posed through either an open-ended or closed-ended format as discussed above. Usually, free online paid surveys do not take longer than 20 minutes to complete. Though payment varies and can go up to $50 per survey, the sky is the limit in terms of how many surveys you can complete a day.

Just a few pointers on avoiding scams

Many websites claim to offer home business opportunties. Some people do make money at home through online jobs, but many of these so-called opportunities are scams. How do you know the difference? Here are some tips for avoiding home business scams.

First, use some common sense. If you are looking because you''re short on funds, it can be easy to talk yourself into believing the promises you will read online. Try to look at the offers objectively. Many scams try to convince you that you will become wealthy with little effort, and you might even see on the website that this is some "secret" for making money that is just now being revealed. Much later they reveal the cost for learning the secret. Before buying this kind of information, take a moment to wonder why it''s being sold. If it''s really that effective, the person selling it should be wealthy and not need to sell anything.

Second, don''t get involved in a pyramid scheme. These are programs that pay you to recruit but don''t really have a product to sell. You make money by getting other people to join the system. This only works for those who start the pyramid scheme, and is illegal in several states. Note that this is not the same as home party or similar plans where you get a percentage from what you sell in addition to a percentage from those you recruit.

Third, don''t pay to stuff envelopes or make products. In fact, don''t pay to work for anybody.

Avoiding home business scams means avoiding anything that offers easy wealth. It also means avoiding paying to work for somebody. Don''t expect anything online that makes no sense in the real world. Don''t get scammed

The list continues:

Reliable- and Trusted-Site Logos - Some questionable paid survey sites display these logos to indicate that they are self-regulating in compliance with the standards represented by the logos. But even legit logos can be stolen, such as those trademarked by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), with a simple right-click of the computer mouse. Click the logos to see where they lead. If they don''t lead to valid reports at reputable sites (such as the BBB''s official, national reliability site, the URL for which begins with https://www.bbbonline.org/) or the reports are unfavorable, be wary.

The "fine print" at questionable paid survey sites often contradicts much of what their hype implies. (That''s how they try to cover themselves legally.) Don''t let the hype alone sell you. Read all of the fine print too and ask questions if it''s vague or you don''t understand it. Think twice about submitting your personal information to any paid surveys site that does not provide a clear privacy policy or arouses your suspicion in any other way. Also read disclaimers, terms, conditions and any other fine print. Avoid sites that don''t answer your questions in a satisfactory and timely manner. Be wary of conducting business with sites that list only email or PO box addresses for questions and other matters, as they might be fly-by-night, paid survey scams.

Perform "whois" lookups to reveal if paid survey sites were registered by proxy. If so, be wary of doing business with them too. Site owners might be hiding their contact information behind proxy services, because they''re running paid survey scams. Whois lookups will also tell you if different sites were launched by the same owners (unless they were registered by proxy). If so, be wary about that too. Owners might have launched multiple sites so to make their "industry" appear to be more legit, dupe you into buying the same list of paid surveys more than once, or both.

The bottom line is, if the hype for online paid surveys sounds too good to be true, it likely is. That''s the safest way to screen out "offers" that hype big rewards for small investments of time or money. Don''t be fooled by:

Testimonials - Ropers and shills typically write these for scams, not satisfied customers.

Documented Proof - Some questionable paid survey sites provide checks and other documental replications as "proof." But just because someone made money at least once, doesn''t mean that you will. Besides, with today''s computer technology, anybody can counterfeit just about any document and make it look authentic.

Guarantees - Don''t believe guarantees that promise the Moon. paid survey sites can''t possibly guarantee you much of anything, except that they''ll refund your fees if you''re not satisfied. But good luck collecting your refund if it''s a paid surveys scam.

Making money and free paid surveys. Are you looking for free good paid surveys, or to take online surveys and earn extra cash, or even temp jobs to earn extra money? Online free paid surveys and focus groups are currently one of the easiest & fastest ways to earn money online, but whether you will make good money will depend on two things - your patience & discipline to complete the surveys on a consistent basis.

Basically, you get paid on a one-time basis by various companies to take a survey of your opinions about either a product, service, movie, or any consumer item you can think of. Usually people are telling you to keep your opinion to yourself, but now you can share it, and better yet, get paid for it!

These companies either pay cash or give away free products for people to evaluate their products because they need legitimate, real-world opinions about how good or bad their products are.

These surveys are done ALL the time across a wide spectrum of companies and products, and it is very cost-effective for these companies to do them. So instead of pushing the product into mass production which may be a hit or miss, doing online surveys will be much cheaper & more accurate.

The online paid surveys and trials market is a multi-billion dollar industry all on its own! And as you see, earning money and free paid online surveys do go hand in hand. Because there will always be new products being rolled out by successful companies in order for them to remain competitive in their market space, there will therefore always be a steady flow of surveys that will pay people to evaluate their products.

This is how anyone can make a decent living if they wish to pursue this kind of online work full-time, from the comforts of their own home.

So how do you find the good ones? Here is the formula, in brief.

Find paid survey sites with strong money-back guarantees, backed up by a bank or financial company. Then within that group, look for low (3-6%) refund rates. Avoid any with refund rates that are unknown (means high!) or are as high as 9-10% or more. The refund rate reflects what the past clients thought of the site.

A low refund rate means happy clients, who used that site''s list of survey makers, took surveys and got paid for them, returning their small membership fee many times over. A high refund rate means unhappy clients demanding their money back. You want to join the happy clients. Insist on a low refund rate.

That way you will find and sign up with the survey makers that pay, and you will happily get paid to take online surveys and make good money doing so.

Today the nice thing is you can take surveys from the comfort of your own home utilizing the Internet. You can get paid for your opinion and you can do it on a part time basis.

You can Google search the words take paid surveys to come up with websites that have survey companies you can deal with. You can also go directly to companies such as Cash Crate or Inbox Dollars and have offers to complete in a couple minutes after you sign up with them.

One thing to consider is why do you want to take surveys? Of course everyone wants to make money doing it but there are also other benefits such as having an opinion on products you find in the marketplace tomorrow. If you are opinionated this will appeal to you.

You should also understand you will earn money in various ways. It could come in the form of cash, but it could also come in the form of points, certificates, rewards, and so on. Some people enjoy taking surveys because of the fun it is for them.

Another way to make money taking surveys is to recruit people. There are survey companies who will pay you to recruit people to take surveys with them. Social networking is a good way to do this and if you enjoy dealing with people and helping them this might appeal to you too.

Did know that everyone who takes paid surveys are not in it strictly for the money? There are numerous reasons for you to get involved with this type of opportunity and we will talk about some of them in this article.

1. Convenience is a big factor in why a person wants to take surveys. Today you can do it on the Internet as long as you have Internet access.

This means you can take surveys at work in your spare time or log in and take it right from the comfort of your own home. If you are on the road with a laptop you can do it in a hotel or if you're visiting friends or relatives you could take surveys there as well.

2. Some people really enjoy taking surveys because it is fun. It's not a boring job because each survey is different. Some survey companies have discussion forums where you can interact with other people and get to know them which are fun too. It can be a great change of pace in your home based business by simply taking a break from your daily home business routine and completing a survey or two.

3. You control your own schedule which is important when you're looking for things to do on a part time basis. Everyone is busy today and having the flexibility to schedule your own time is a great thing about taking paid surveys.

4. Are you an opinionated person? You can make your opinion count by participating in paid surveys and discussion groups. You get to help shape the products of tomorrow by offering your opinion today.

5. Some people enjoy being on the computer no matter how they do it. You will certainly become better at using your computer when you take paid surveys because you are developing much needed skills.

6. We have saved the best for last and that is the ability to make money working from home! Regardless of your age, income level, or experience there are surveys you can make money taking. Companies require various things from their survey takers so not every survey you apply for will you get to take.

The problem here is that there are well over 200 paid survey sites and they have two ways to get paid. One is from the fees they charge and the other is from recruiting fees paid by (generally low-pay/no-pay) survey makers who need more survey participants.

Free list sites live off of recruiting fees. Ethical paid sites live off of their clients'' membership fees. Less ethical paid sites "double dip" and collect both. So how do you find the good, ethical ones?

You listen to the counsel of recent clients of the sites. Here''s how you do that.

Look for paid survey sites with STRONG money-back guarantees, backed up by a bank or financial company. Within this group, look for low (3-6)% refund rates and avoid any with refund rates that are either unknown (high!) or are as high as 9-10% or more.