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

How it Started

Survey forms were distributed to consumer-members for filling up. These forms were actually questionnaires to get members? comments about specific products and services. Companies needed to know what products and services were popular with the market, what needed further development, and what needed to be pulled out. Surveys did this for them. When consumers, who were members of a survey link like NFO, accomplished and submitted the forms, they were paid for their time and effort. Pays ranged from 3 or 5 cents to about 5 or 10 dollars per survey form. Some companies were willing to pay more. The pay scale depended on the length of time needed to accomplish a survey form. With the advent of computers and the Internet, paid surveys online started to flourish, even globally.

Why Paid Surveys Online?

Companies discovered that unpaid surveys, like those done through telemarketing, were inadequate to get people spending enough time to answer calls and do surveys. What data they got were insufficient to base marketing decisions on. Some people were rude the moment they heard the word ?survey? over the phone. People simply didn?t want to waste time on telemarketing surveys. So what companies started doing was to have the surveys online and this time, with pay. To promote paid surveys online today, the lure was to offer ways on how to earn extra cash on the Internet. Hence, today, thousands of people from all over the world almost beg to be part of paid surveys online. And thus, too, fake paid surveys online started to pop up like mushrooms on the Internet.

What Paid Surveys Online to Choose

A lot of paid surveys online scams are so convincingly presented as legitimate schemes. But it?s simple to tell fake from real?genuine paid surveys online offer free memberships. There should be no initial or down payments online before people interested to try paid surveys can join paid survey links. There are lots of legitimate online survey links that offer access to companies that pay for such surveys.

Get on the band wagon of participating in surveys

You would first have to locate the company that you would be interested in registering with so that you can conduct the assessment of their products as per their instructions and get paid for surveys. Whether you know anything about the product or not is not important, because you will be gathering your information on the product from the research that you do and the opinion of the public. You would have to collect this information and pass it on to the product manufacturer or to the market research company that they are dealing through. What ever the modus operandi, you will get paid for surveys.

The first thing to do is to register with the company. For this, you would have to fill in a registration form, where you may also have to give an undertaking that the information you have gathered for their survey, would belong to them solely and cannot be passed on to any other companies. Most registrations are free.

Companies evaluate their products through surveys

Companies all over the world are investing in this way of evaluating their product and getting a complete feed back on the value and popularity of their produce. Some companies offer incentives for these surveys while others pay by the number of surveys conducted. Either way you get paid for surveys.

Join more than one company to increase your earnings

As most companies have only limited surveys per month, you can easily join several companies at the same time to increase your earnings. The only thing you have to make sure is that if you have signed an undertaking of confidentiality, then you would have to maintain this so that you are not black listed. This should not happen as most companies have their own products which may not be the same as the one that you are doing the research on. So the more surveys you conduct the more get paid for surveys.

Create a network of friends to help you

If you want to conduct surveys in various cities where you may not have access to information, you could rope in friends to give you a feed back on the products. What ever your method of gather information, it will be beneficial to you as you will get paid for surveys at the end of the day.

Approximately 80% try to keep a larger portion of the survey budget for themselves. They treat survey participants as people to be exploited, frequently promising much and delivering little. These low-pay/no-pay survey makers pay out little to participants, keep most for themselves and have high participant turnover.

To make money as a survey participant it is absolutely crucial to have a good list of survey makers to sign up with. You want to sign up with the ones that offer legitimate paid online surveys with serious, high-paying surveys. You want to avoid the rest, who will just waste your time.

Your first challenge will be to find a good list. Your second challenge will be to get signed up with all of the survey maker on that list (you will need at least 150 to 250 to make good money) and then further sort the list by your experience with individual survey makers, as they change over time.

To get a good list, look to good paid survey sites, where you pay a membership fee to get a copy of their list. Look for one with a strong money-back guarantee and a low (3-6%) refund rate under that guarantee. These will have good lists of survey makers that offer legitimate paid online surveys.

Avoid "free lists". They are made up almost entirely of low-pay/no-pay survey makers who pay recruiting fees to list purveyors to find them more recruits. They must recruit to replace their survey participants who quit because they were not making any money! You don''t want to go the route they already tried!

Where can you get GOOD information on paid online surveys? Where can you get the straight facts, without bias, without "spin" and without hype?

From the recent clients of paid survey sites.

[For clarity here, paid survey sites are membership sites that maintain lists of survey makers. To take paid online surveys you need a list of good survey makers to apply to, who will then send you invitations to take paid surveys. For a small, usually one-time membership fee, these sites will give you a copy of their lists.

There are over 700 survey makers in the U.S. and over 3,000 worldwide. About 20-25% of these make legitimate paid online surveys that pay in cash or equivalent. The rest may say they pay, but, in reality, do not. To make money with paid online surveys you need to sign up with the paying group, not the others.]

The best, most factual, least biased, straight information then, comes from the recent clients of paid survey sites. Their opinions about the quality of the services and the quality of the list of survey makers they received from the paid survey site in which they bought a membership, are factual and right-on.

High gas prices hurt. Economic uncertainty causes all of us to have sleepless nights at times. I know. I have had my share of those... But it is interesting to note that the way you write "crisis" in Chinese is to use two characters together. The characters used are the one for "danger" and the one for "opportunity"!

So where are the opportunities in the current economic situation? Well, consider:

1. High gas prices will increase the popularity of the Internet. You don''t have to buy gas to shop on the Internet like you do when you go to the shopping mall. Employers will be looking for more "virtual assistants" and workers who can "tele-commute" over the Internet. Time to look into how to benefit from these trends.

2. Hedge your income bets by developing different income streams over the Internet. In uncertain times, there are more surveys being made as large companies try to identify new trends and public awareness. Maybe you should look into getting paid to participate in paid online surveys.

3. Take advantage of the coming surge in Internet shopping by becoming an Affiliate Marketer, helping to market and sell existing products for a share of the sale price. It costs very little to get started; maybe $0 to $100, mostly for educating yourself.

4. Develop your Internet and computer skills by becoming active on the Internet. There is a great deal of money to be made there. Uncertain economic outlooks are an excellent reason to get started, develop new skills, get some cash flow coming in that does not depend on your day job.

5. Sitting around worrying about things does absolutely no good. Be proactive. Do something positive. Prepare for the wave of change and ride it! Don''t just sit there and wait to see if it''s going to drown you! ;-)

The enormous growth of the Internet during the last few years has spawned several new Internet Based Business activities and at the same time benefited several others. One activity that has benefited from this boom is without doubt Paid Online Surveys.

Today many aspirants looking out for a Home Based Job or Work at Home Jobs often think of Paid Online Surveys first. The perception that this is a quick and easy way to earn money propels aspirants towards Paid Online surveys. Very often this is their first step in their foray into the Internet Business world. Let us see how far their presumption is correct.

No need for Special Skills

The main reason for the popularity is that you don't need any special skills to do Paid online surveys. You are required to express your opinion for the questions asked or statements made. It is Your Opinion that matters.

Secondly to enroll and participate you should have a computer with access to the internet. That's it. Can there be anything simpler?

Easy to Join:
Thousands of companies spend millions of dollars every year to conduct Paid Online Surveys and reward the participants by awarding them either cash, gifts, or points which could later be redeemed for cash. Identifying these companies and contacting them becomes a real hassle and takes a lot of your time and energy.

Work any time-You are the Boss:
Another reason for the popularity of Online Surveys as a work at home job is that you could do the survey at anytime most convenient to you. You can schedule your house work so that you can slot in the surveys, since the surveys don't take much time. The surveys of course have to be completed before the stipulated date.

Anyone can Participate:
Since the online survey companies need the opinions from a wide spectrum of participants everyone irrespective of age or sex has an opportunity in enrolling and participating in surveys e.g. Students, stay-at-home moms, senior citizens, retirees and persons with special needs. Hence the popularity of paid online surveys among the vast cross- section of internet users worldwide

Yes, you really can get paid for online surveys. Yes, you can take surveys for money. But first, there are three things you should know. Paid surveys are for supplemental income, not all surveys are good and expect to need to invest some in getting yourself set up. Let's look at these one at a time.

1. Supplemental Income, Not Mortgage-Payment or Rent Money. Surveys are good for supplemental income. You register with survey makers, get invited to take surveys, take them and get sent a check or deposit in your PayPal account. It's great extra money.

But it comes in at a rate that is erratic and unpredictable. You get invited when they need you. They initiate the action, not you. This can be frustrating when you need money and no survey offers come in that week.

So get paid for online surveys, take surveys for money and enjoy the cash, but don't budget it to pay your rent, mortgage or car payments!

2. 40% of Survey Makers Should be Avoided Like Poison Ivy. There are 700+ survey makers in the U.S., 3,000+ worldwide. Only the top 20% of these are first tier, offer legitimate paid online surveys, pay well and on time and respect your privacy. These are the ones you want to sign up with. These don't advertise, are hard to find.

The bottom 40% are bad news. Low-pay/no-pay surveys (no matter what they say) and sales companies trying to pass themselves off as survey makers, get your demographic info so they can sell to you. You take their surveys for money, don't get paid, just waste your time. There's no way to get paid for online surveys with them.

Unfortunately, 70-85% of the paid survey info you get out of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc. is some form of recruitment effort by these time wasters. Makes them hard to avoid. Best you can do is trash them as soon as they show their true colors.

3. You Need to Invest some Time, Effort (and a little money) in Getting Set Up Initially. The ads and promotions stress how nice it will be, making money at home in your pajamas, once you are set up and started. While it is nice to be there, it does require some effort and cost to get set up properly.

First you will need to get a list of real, legitimate survey makers. Free lists are worth about what you pay for them, maybe a lot less. Less because they are not really free, just paid for by the lower 40% of survey makers, the ones you want to avoid.

They pay fees to those who distribute lists, for recruiting people like you!. So what is worth less than free? Things that end up costing you time and wasted opportunities