SM Friends

This article is a simple and clear guide for paid survey beginners to get a quick and good start. If you are new to the paid survey world, please follow my step by step instructions:

1. Remember do NOT pay anyone to do paid online surveys whatsoever. It is always FREE to do paid surveys and get paid. Legitimate paid survey and market research companies do NOT charge you – they pay YOU for YOUR opinion.

2. Set up a dedicated email account. You will get lot of emails and you need a separated email address for survey invitation emails. Note: you’ll need to turn OFF your spam filter or set the spam filter option to “do not delete emails in spam folder immediately” — otherwise you might miss survey emails.

3. You might want to open a free Paypal account. Many of survey sites offer their payment via Paypal. It’s free to send money, and free to accept payment if you have a basic account (a low transaction fee apply for Premier and Business Accounts to receive money), and it is usually faster than check payment.

4. Sign up with as many legitimate paid survey companies as possible. Remember legitimate paid survey companies are FREE to join and have strict privacy policies (You will not get spammed).

Please note: It’s important you take time to sign up with ALL the legitimate survey sites you can find. The reason is very simple – the more survey sites you sign up with, the more surveys you get.

5. Tips on avoiding scams:

* If you come cross a survey site, be sure to check their privacy policy. If you are not happy with the privacy policy or they don’t have a privacy policy, stay away from them;

* Be aware the difference between paid surveys sites and get paid sign up offer sites. The later sometimes say they are survey sites, in fact their “main business” is paid offers. They are the sites you get paid for signing up offers, and sometimes you need to pay or provide credit card information while sign up non free offers.

* Stay away from the websites (paid or free) promoting known scam or spam – usually those sites claim they have a list of 300+, 400+ or even 500+ paid survey sites, (the reality is there are NOT 300 survey sites that pay!) They are just promoting anything they can find for commissions, no matter its scam or spam and can’t be trusted.

6. Tips on doing surveys:

* Be honest with your personal profile information when sign up with survey companies;

* Response survey invitations quickly. Most surveys have quota and some fill fast, especially high paying/easy to qualify surveys.

7. Tips on getting paid:

* Make sure keep the invitation emails for the surveys that you qualify and completed, especially those online interactive surveys/focus group. You want to have prove for your participation when there is a problem.

8. Finally you have to be patient. This is very important for survey beginners. It takes a while to get paid since most survey sites have minimum payout requirement and it takes time for them to process payment. Also it takes a while to receive more surveys. For me, I didn’t received any cash or other reward during the first month, I had some points or others but not enough to cash out, and the money didn’t start coming in until the end of second month. It is also after two months, I started to receive and qualify for more surveys, including those “high-end” surveys such as interactive online surveys and focus groups.

Doing paid surveys is not going to make you rich, but certainly it’s an easy and fun way to make extra cash. For more information about paid surveys, please feel free to visit my site, you will find the best FREE lists of legitimate paid survey companies, more paid survey tips, as well as honest paid survey reviews.

Copyright 2008 Mei Lynn.