Welcome! If you are looking at making extra money online to pay for your car insurance or part of your mortgage then online surveys might be the right solution for you.

Before we set off I will say that it is difficult to make a living from online surveys. Not denouncing the fact that there are people out there who are making a living from online surveys. Personally, I think its only a few who have been doing it for a while and know their way around this field. So if you were planning on leaving your full time job to take surveys online then I would say its not a bright idea to start with. Do it for a couple of months in the evenings after work or at the weekends and see how it goes and then make up your mind. Personally, I do know of people making over $2000 per month with online surveys.

What are Online Surveys?

This is when major companies and organisations across the world need your view or opinion on their products and services. They do this to see how their products or services may perform when released for sale to consumers or we may say the market. You act as an experiment before the product is released. If they get positive feedback from their test then they go on to make the decision whether to release their new product or service to the general public. Sometimes they do these surveys to gather information on existing products and services so they can improve their service to their customers. This is part and parcel of the big companies and organisations marketing campaigns. With stiff competition in the world of business these major companies and organisations need to stay ahead of the competition so they are constantly reviewing their products and services to try and better them.

What part do I play?

I hope you are not confused so far. What part do I play in this equation? Not meaning it in a bad way, but in this equation you are more of a guinea pig for these large organisations like, Coca-Cola or any major organisation you may think off. Are you waiting for the best part of this guinea pig equation? The fact is that you get paid to give your opinion. Yes, you get paid to give your view and thats all you have to do. It only takes you 5-10 minutes to finish a normal survey.

Where do I get the surveys?

What you need to do is find the survey companies online and you first need to register with them. The registration forms only take about 2 minutes to fill out and you are done. What happens after registration? When you have registered with the survey companies, these are companies who handle or manage surveys for the big guys. Its similar to Real Estate Agents managing property for their clients and they get paid for doing so. Hope you understand. When they get the surveys they go on and distribute them to people on their register. The more surveys you complete the more popular you become with these companies so they send you more surveys regularly. So to begin with it would be best to complete every survey you get in your email inbox for a while and then when you get a hang of things you can start screening which ones you want to pay more attention to.

You get these surveys sent to your email address from the survey companies when they get them. Word of advice. When you get your first email invitation from these companies add their email address to your address book for each company incase the next email invitations they send you get directed to your bulk section of your mail and get mixed up with mail you do not want. So when you register with these companies you need to give them an active email address which you check regularly, preferably on a daily basis.When you get these surveys in your email inbox there is always a link that takes you to the companies website where you go and complete the survey and submit it when you have completed it. There are thousands of survey companies out there so its obvious that their systems defer from one company to another.

I'll try and summarize what we have been talking about to this point. This is what you do. Find and register with the survey companies, wait for them to send you email invitations to take a survey, complete the survey and submit it. Remember the more surveys you get the more money you earn. Its that simple. Again remember if you are trying to get rich this may not be for you. This is a way to try and balance your finances. In a way its just trying to earn extra money on top of your wages. On average you may earn $5-$50 for every survey completed or even more. Also keep in mind that its not everyday that you come across surveys that pay you about $50 for each survey completed. The good part though is that you can take these surveys from any country in the world and from the comfort of your home. Some people see this as a hobby and they really enjoy doing it so they do it at night after work or during the weekends.

How do I get paid?

Okay I know you have been waiting for this part to come. Hopefully I didn't delay for too long. This is how it goes. You get paid either by cheque, direct bank deposit or by points which you can then use to buy anything you want online from certain online stores like Amazon. Again the method of payment defers from one company to another. You will find out how you will get paid when you fill in the registration form. Your earnings will be despatched to you when your account reaches a certain limit for instance $100. You will have your account area with every company you register with where you can manage your surveys. There is no point in sending you payment for every survey taken after you take a survey. This is obviously time wasting and financially expensive for the companies. But again bare in mind that the payment system defers.

Top tips.

Do not pay money to any company that asks you to pay them a registration fee. Its free to register with the majority of these companies. What some of these agents do. They ask you to pay a registration fee to get you submitted to hundreds of survey companies. Fair enough. There are legit companies obviously doing this and at the same time there are the bogus ones. Do your research on a company before paying them any money. Here is one good one you can register with: www.surveyscout.com

You also need to be registered with more than 300 survey companies for you to get enough surveys. You can either go to www.google.com and type in online surveys and you will get a list of survey companies you can register with. Word of advice. You spend a lot of time trying to find these companies and registering with them one by one. But if you don't want to spend any money you can opt to do it this way. Its not impossible. Its only time consuming.

In conclusion

Whether you decide to take online surveys as a part time, full time job or hobby thats up to you but I hope what I have given you about online surveys will help you in your endavour.

Keep in mind that this is just a generalisation of online surveys and you can do more research on which companies you want to join and work with. Do more research if you feel its relevant.

The main thing to watch out for are companies which ask you to pay for registration. Find the legit ones.

Secondly, work with companies you know are well established and you know that they are going to pay you. All in all this is all the advice I can give you and if I learn of anything new that might affect you I will update this article as soon as I can.

All the best and enjoy taking online surveys. Remember you've got nothing to loose but something to gain.