Work at Home Online Surveys - Is it for You?

Making money taking online surveys - Is it viable? Will it work for you? You've all probably seen the offers on the web and wondered about them.

The answer to the above two questions is yes. With a little judicious screening and common sense, you can make extra income or even a full time career out of online surveys.

1. What are online surveys? Online surveys are simply companies using you to get feedback on the products they sell - they pay you for your opinions.

2. What do I need to participate? You need a computer. Some companies send you out as a "stealth shopper" to test the food and service at restaurants, or the products and service at clothing stores, shoe stores etc. (The choices are as various as the types of retail stores.) In these cases of course, it would help to have access to transportation also. Some companies pay you to watch their movie trailers. Some pay you to take telephone surveys. A T.V., VCR, and telephone are necessary in these cases. Some online survey companies offer data entry too. All these offers are lumped together under the "online survey" categories by many of these companies. Most companies require you to be at least eighteen years old, also.

3. How much money can I make? Companies can pay 5 to 75 dollars per survey. Online focus groups can pay 50 to 150 dollars an hour. (You can be paid to try new products - and then keep the products afterwards.) You can be paid 4 to 25 dollars an hour to watch movie trailers, 10 to 40 per hour to shop and eat. For driving a new car you can make 3,200 dollars a month, and for taking a telephone survey, 120 dollars an hour can be earned. You can be paid to travel and paid to set appointments also. Each company varies a bit in its pay scale.

4. How many companies are scams? As with any industry, there is fraud in online survey work. As I stated in previous articles, do a little homework and use a little common sense. The Clickbank.com scores are helpful research tools. Pay particular attention to the $/sale (Dollars earned per sale) statistic. It tells you what an affiliate should earn per sale from the online survey product being offered. But it will also tell a savvy potential customer how many of the units of the program were returned by customers. To figure this, determine the cost of the program, next determine the affiliate commission rate by looking at the %/sale (commission) stat. If the online survey program sold for 100 dollars, (None are ever that expensive, though.) and the commission rate is 75%, but the $/Sale stat is 30 dollars, too many programs are being returned by unsatisfied customers. Also the Grav (Gravity) stat shows how popular an item the product is on Clickbank. Look for things like money-back guarantees, that all reputable companies should offer. Expect exaggeration and hyperbole in some of the ad copy. No, you won't make a million dollars a minute in online home survey work, but a good living can be made if you approach the work systematically, and with determination. You will get out of it what you put into it.

5. What's the downside? Working at home for oneself is not for everybody. You have to be a self-starter. You have to know how to focus on the task without prompting, and you can't allow yourself to be easily distracted by at-home concerns.

6. What are the benefits? Aside from the money, work at home online surveys allow you to set your own hours, decide how little or how much you want to earn, and be in complete control of your work environment. You don't need special training or expertise, and the company gives you any rules or guidelines you'll need for the work.

Online work at home surveys are becoming a billion dollar industry with hundreds of thousands of students, moms, retirees, and just plain rat-race drop outs earning good income from these survey companies. Is it for everyone? Probably not. But if you are in the above category, it may well be worth a look.

Did you know it takes the average American nine months to find a job? Can you wait that long? Author John Buckley has cut that time down to minutes for you with his online jobs review, which includes Survey company reviews.
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