subject: Scamming the scammers: making money with paid surveys [print this page] Scamming the scammers: making money with paid surveys
Many times in a single day we hear of offers enticing us to sign up for a guaranteed money making opportunity. Few details are ever given up front, and a small fee is charged for delivering us the welcome packet. As it always turns out, the program requires a tremendous output of effort, a small fortune to invest or the ability to sell useless merchandise to your friends and family. But one money making opportunity is different, in that it allows you to cheat the system. That opportunity is paid surveys, and I will share the secret of outsmarting the advertisers and collecting cash with minimum effort.
The way most survey opportunities work is you are asked to sign up for products and services, under the guise of testing them out, and collecting cash for your efforts. The companies that offer you to do this are paid by major national brands to bring them customers. If you agree, they share with you the bounty they collect from that national brand. The pit that most unsuspecting "survey takers" fall into is never cancelling the product or service they joined after receiving their money. The trick then, is to always join only those services that offer you a free trial, and cancel that trial right after you get your money. Keep a calendar, set alerts on your phone, use sticky notes or just memorize the dates, but never forget to cancel! You can make $40 a pop, with absolutely no long term affects.
Another great scheme these companies offer is reading email messages with ads in them. All you have to do is click on the ad, and your account is credited a few cents, sometimes even a quarter. These add up quick, but stay away from actually reading the ads or signing up for any service they offer. All you do is click and move on. Speed and focus results in big bucks in your account.
The main thing to grasp about these opportunities is that the company is not interested in your "opinion" on these products, just that you buy them. Read the fine print below each offer and you will beat them in their own game. Now, there are real research companies out there looking for participants in legitimate market research, but they are few and far in between. If you stumble on them, consider yourself lucky and join right away. How will you know? No surveys are offered up front. They will ask for a detailed questionnaire and match you with studies that fit your profile. You will only receive one or two invites per month, but these pay $40-$100 per hour, and you can join more than one company.
If you are interested in giving all of this a go, I personally recommend http://www.esurveyspace.com. You pay $24.95 to obtain a huge list of these companies, but the added bonus is that at least a quarter of them are the legit market research ones. Don't expect to get rich either, but a few hundred a month is very doable. Just remember to keep that calendar.
