The truth behind paid surveys.

You've seen the ad's, "Make $75 an hr taking surveys from home!". You have thought to yourself, "I can do that!".
The truth is, you can make $75 an hr taking surveys, but you won't have the chance to take surveys 8 hrs a day 5 days a week! Now doesn't that make more sense?
First you have to sign up with all the research companies themselves. Second you have to wait for an invitation to a survey and then you have to qualify for the study based on your demographics.
Surveys can be a LOT of fun and you can get a lot of cool free stuff when you qualify for a product trial. I am currently in four different product trials this month. You get really great stuff and you usually get to keep what they send you. I heard of one trial recently that gave their participants a product worth $1200.00! That is a rarity but I wish I had gotten in!
A lot of the companies will first send you a survey to see if you qualify for the study, quite often this first survey will offer you a chance to win in a drawing. The great thing here is that most of the people taking surveys will delete these chances. Take these surveys! These are generally the ones that will ask in the end if you would like to participate in a product test and sometimes these product tests also include payment!
Don't pay for a list of survey sites. These lists can be found for free all over the place. I have a list at www.katieshugs.com/paidsurvey.html and I have made sure that all the companies are legit. They won't ask you to purchase anything, they won't ask you to sign up for free offers, etc. In fact if you are using a different list and run into places that ask if you are interested in insurance etc, back out and don't finish signing up. You will just get a bunch of junk mail. Now there is one that does not require you to complete an offer but they always give you the opportunity at the end of their surveys and this particular one is the same one that had the $1200.00 product test. I now take all their surveys, but when I get to the end I just close out once the offer page comes up. When you are signing up for this site though they do NOT ask you tons of irrelevant questions like the others do.
A lot of the companies will also only offer you points for taking surveys. I personally don't mind most of these. Some will let you cash in for money, and others for gifts. If they only let you cash in your points for gifts I always take a look at the gift list to make sure there is something I actually would want before I spend a lot of time on surveys.
You can make more money by getting into focus groups. These generally pay $100-$250 for a couple hours of your time. You will want to sign up with as many research companies as possible to get into these. Same goes for the surveys, the more companies you are signed up with the better your chances of getting invitations.
If you want to take surveys and stay up to date with what is going on in the survey world take some time to join our message board at www.katieshugs.com. Everyone is very honest and helpful!