Is Earning Money From Online Surveys Legitimate or Just a Well Planned Scam?

Type in ‘online surveys’ in the Google search bar and you get back a whopping 15,600,000 search results in 0.16 seconds!

Online surveys are perhaps one of the oldest ways to make money online. These surveys are either paid or incentivized that the participant receives on successfully completing a survey online. (Note the word ‘successful’ – we will come back to this at a later part in the discussion).

In marketing terms, these paid online surveys are a method through which multinationals and organizations collect consumer opinion.

The companies can reach certain demographics and the opinions and feedbacks collected directly influence the development of products and services by partnering companies.

The usual process goes like this – you find a legitimate online survey company, register with them for free, get a hold of the surveys, complete them and you are paid for your opinion.

Sounds easy enough? It is, if only you can really manage to sign up with legitimate companies. But the irrefutable fact is, finding a legit online survey agency is like finding a needle in 15,600,00 haystacks. Are you getting a feel of the difficulty here?

We know for a fact, and perhaps you are one of them, that the Internet does open up a lot of channels for earning money online – the online surveys is just one example. If you are hoping to earn some quick money to pay your smaller monthly bills through online surveys, you need to rethink because –

Out of 1000 online survey companies out there, only 5 are legitimate and rest are spam!

Let’s see how:

Fraudulent online survey companies will never allow you to complete surveys –

Even though signing up is free, that is, there is no investment, you have to put in a lot of hard work just to complete a survey because these fraudulent enterprises never let you finish a survey.

When you are signing up, you have to fill out an elaborate form detailing your hobbies, career, interests, health details, household earnings, shopping patterns and others. You receive surveys on the basis of the details you fill in here. Easy?

Now comes the tricky part – when you begin a survey, they will first check your eligibility… (again!!!) You spend 5 minutes verifying your age group, occupation, and household income, future purchase plan regarding the product or service you are about to survey and then they display this –

“Sorry, we are unable to go ahead with the survey because you don’t fit the eligibility criteria!”

Just imagine, if you get 10 surveys daily and 8 surveys display this message, what is the probability of your earning even $100 per month? Very low indeed!

Fraudulent online survey companies will not allow you to take a survey twice –

You can say that even legitimate companies will not allow a person to take the same survey twice but what we mean here is that – suppose, while you are doing a survey, you lose your Internet connection and the survey discontinues in between.

If there is no possibility of resuming the survey from where you left it, not only do you lose 15 – 20 minutes of time you spent on it but also the money you would have received from completing it.

This is what we meant in the beginning saying that scamming online survey companies will rarely allow you to successfully complete a survey.

Fraudulent online survey companies will never pay –

“There is a technical problem with the system and we are unable to process your payment at this time” – that’s the common message every scamming online survey website will display.

And most of them follow a trick – you have to reach a certain amount before you can withdraw and that, my fellow online money- making opportunity seekers, is the toughest thing to reach.

Sometimes payments won’t show up in your account because of “undisclosed” reasons or payments won’t reach your online account because of “technical” glitches, and when you question them, you only receive a polite and dignified silence!

Fraudulent online survey companies will ask for money for ‘maintenance’ or… to get you high paying surveys –

Why do you need to pay them to get ‘high paying’ surveys? Isn’t it their job to get you surveys? Think about that…

Not only this, some of these online survey companies have the audacity to ask for dollars from you so that they can ‘train’ you with the ‘right way’ to attempt an online survey! Getting you to sign up for a membership account is just a gimmick; you have to get a paid membership in order to earn money.

Let me add something here. You should follow this cardinal rule if you want to work with legitimate companies online – NEVER PAY FOR RECEIVING WORK!

Not only is this applicable for online survey work but also for those countless other making money online methods that promise to get you ‘guaranteed work’ if only you are ready to invest with them first.

Why should you pay to get work? If you have to, then what about your skill, talent and experience – don’t they matter?

Therefore, stay away from online survey companies that require you to pay them first, no matter what the reason.

Final Thoughts –

Earning money from online surveys is a possibility if you manage to find legitimate companies. Follow the above four guidelines and make an informed and calculated decision before you sign up with any online survey company.

Don’t fall into their empty promises of helping you make hundreds of dollars every week – it’s just a well thought out web of spam determined to take advantage of financially needy people.

If you are not looking for financial gain only, you can try out those survey companies that offer rewards in return. These rewards could be entry into sweepstakes, shopping vouchers, discount coupons, reward points and others.

These are decided upon seeing the amount of surveys you did in a month and the ‘value’ of those surveys, which is then returned in the form of vouchers and discounts.

If the company allows a point – based system, you can redeem those points against purchasing anything online, of course, through their sponsored networks.

Have you been scammed? Let us know by leaving a comment…