Paid Market Research Advice

As people are now turning to the Internet for ways of earning money, an increasing amount are turning to online paid surveys. But with claims of making lots of money, and the upsurge of new survey companies each week, is this something worth looking into?

The basic idea behind this concept is this; a company needs to know if they're doing the right thing when it comes to either promoting a product, or how people feel about their goods. Survey companies are hired to source people, usually from a certain demographic (the persons background in terms of: income, single or married, age etc), and get the applicants to complete surveys and then reward people for their views.

But unfortunately, there are now an increase in rogue survey companies that exploit people in different ways. One is by paying less than the average rate, secondly, they sell your information to other companies. But all isn't all gloomy, there are ways to protect yourself.

The things I've done to protect myself are both simple and effective. The main advice I'd give to somebody is to find a good online forum that deals with surveys. The one I've had good experience is: Survey Police.com (can Google them). There are members on the forum who've had years of experience and are happy to give advice to new members.

Other advice is:

Don't ever pay a fee to join a survey company. You can get good information from survey forums (such as surveypolice.com).

When applying, use a throw-away email address. This is just in case a company decides to sell your email address and you end up with lots of SPAM. You can get free emails from: Googlemail, Yahoo!, MSN etc.

Always expect to fill out a short screening survey/application. This is to make sure that you are eligible for a particular survey (when one is available).

Google (or any other search engine) is your friend. If you have any concerns over a certain survey group, just put in the company name with any of the following words: scam, fraud, con, rip-off (you get the idea).

Although I've painted a bleak world when it comes to online surveys, there are benefits once you start completing surveys for legitimate groups. The more you complete (in a timely manner), the more invites you'll receive, not to mention more payments!

???????