Today, I was browsing a popular internet marketing forum and came across a tread, where the topic of paid surveys came up.  As someone who started out doing them when I first tried to start making money online, I’m going to tell you about the ins and outs of why getting paid to do surveys is not a good strategy for making money online (had to learn the hard way) as well as provide you with long-term options for generating consistent money online.

Survey sites work by allowing you to sign up for various offers and allowing you to earn credit for doing so.  Once you earn a certain amount of credits, you’re able to turn the credits into money that you can get paid via Paypal or prizes.  The purpose for advertizers doing this is to build their customer base.  Sometimes, you will have to sign up for a trial of a product, and other times, you will actually have to purchase said product in order to earn said credits and thus money.

Here’s what they don’t tell you and why getting paid to take surveys is not such a good idea.  First, some of the companies are scammy and never pay you the credits you are supposed to have earned.  Once they have your credit card info, they will not hasitate to take your money, especially if you forget to cancel a trial or don’t return the product back in the original condition before the trial or refund period has elasped.  You’ll have a heck of a time trying to get your money back.

Furthermore, while they often claim how much money you can earn on a regular basis, they fail to mention that the offers presented to you rarely (if ever) change.  This can go on for months and months or even years.  Since you’re not allowed to re-do an offer once you’ve done it, you have no way of making any more money.  Finally, only one person per household is allowed to complete any one offer, which makes sense if what they want you to do is to buy the product.

What I Recommend Doing Instead

Instead of wasting your time and money on a sort-lived, money-making method that won’t deliver the results you’re hoping for, I suggest that you instead focus on learning business models (ways of making money that can be duplicated over the long term like learning how to become a ghostwriter, where you learn to do research and write content for other marketers and are able to get paid via Paypal or like learning how to create a blog and using it to generate residual income and build multiple income streams from the same blog and more.

Yours in online success…