Many people wonder if paid online surveys are really legitimate ways of making money from home. Yes, they are, but you have to know what you are doing and have realistic expectations.

One of the reasons those who are looking for a source of income online find paid surveys suspicious is because they wonder why companies or marketing researchers would need their opinion and why they would be willing to pay for it. Can it be real? Yes, it's real. These marketing research companies just can't find enough people to survey about their product, which might be a test-market product. So they turn to consumers.

They are willing to pay you for your answers because:

1. What they save in telephone and direct mail costs by comparison is a small fortune.
2. If they can accurately assess their product, the amount of profit they can earn is very great and quite easily covers the expense of paying all those who participate.
3. Since they want accurate answers, they know they need to give a good incentive so you'll take your time and be honest.

If these companies are real and willing to pay for your opinion, is it possible to turn survey taking into a huge home business? This is where you have to be realistic. Yes, you can make a nice home based income from paid surveys.

If you are single and have no children, it's possible, depending on your other circumstances, that you can take paid surveys full time and not need a j-o-b. If you're married and have kids, you can use this business as a very nice supplemental income, and if your spouse is the major bread-winner you could do the survey business full-time while still having a completely flexible schedule.

Let's be honest here; you are not going to get rich from paid surveys. How much you can earn depends on a few factors.

You first need to know what you're doing. For one thing, this means finding the legitimate, quality online survey sites out there.

Just a few of the best survey websites:

• Survey Scout
• Paid Surveys Etc.
• Home Survey Workers
• Paid Surveys Online
• Paid For Free

Next, you need to understand that you won't fit the demographics looked for by these marketing researchers for all of the surveys out there. You might not fit for a lot of them. This means you will need to sign up with a large number of companies. That can be a lot of work on its own. Just a tip: middle-class mothers are the most-preferred demographic.

Still, you can expect to make over $1,000 a month if you take paid surveys consistently, which, again depends on your demographic profile. Few surveys pay more than $10 and the vast majority pay less than that; but if you can find just a few of those to do every day you could potentially hit the $1,000 a month mark. If you did a few more, even of the ones that pay just a few bucks, you might even reach $1,500 a month.

To really maximize your income potential from surveys, also sign up for focus groups. These pay more money than surveys. An average for a focus group is $100. They can take as little as an hour of your time or up to a few days or weeks. You can also find telephone surveys that would pay you for similar amounts of time.

If you can find at least $30 worth of surveys a day plus three focus groups/telephone surveys per week, you can easily bring in even higher amounts.

So, yes there are legitimate online paid surveys out there. Are they always easy to find? No. Is it possible to make a nice living from them? Maybe, depending on how often you fit the profile companies are looking for. If you sign up to a lot of companies and continuously sign up for more and more as time goes on, you should do just fine.

posted by Chris Simpson