I'm sure you have seen the advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and all over the internet that claim you can make THOUSANDS a month taking surveys on the internet. Companies claim that by paying up to $40.00 to join their club you will make thousands a month.

This is simply untrue. After paying to join these clubs you will get a list of hundreds of sites that claim to offer "paid surveys". You will then have to join each company one by one. Companies like these are just taking advantage of the fact that the average person doesn't know they can find the same information for free that they are charging $40.00 for.

I have found several companies that will pay you to take surveys, test products, and participate in online focus groups. They are all absolutely free to join. And it is the exact same information you would get if you paid one of these "survey clubs".

The truth is, You probably will not make $2,000 a month from taking online surveys. But if you follow these few simple steps you can make some extra money.

Before I go into how to get started, let me tell you a little about how this works and why companies pay you to do this......

Big companies pay billions of dollars a year to promote and advertise their products. They pay market research companies to conduct studies and find out how the public reacts and relates to their products. These market research companies conduct studies of each product and give reports to the companies that hired them. The big companies want to know what the public is thinking. So the market research companies give everyday people from all walks of life the opportunity to join their panels and voice our opinions. In return they give a small payout for your time, usually $5 - $20.

Market research studies are conducted in several ways. Online surveys, product testing, telephone conferences, and mystery shopping are some of the more popular methods. And anybody can participate in these studies.

When you first sign up with one of these companies you will be asked to fill out a profile. This profile will ask you questions about your age, income, ethnicity, marital status, education, employment status, children, and may ask about things like your health, what type of car you drive, if you own your home and other questions like that. This is so that when a company asks them to do a study of a certain group of people they have a list of qualified participants. An example of this would be:

A dog food maker wants to know how women between 18 and 24 that own a dog feel about their product. If your profile matched that they would send you an invitation to participate in that survey, or test that product. There would be no point in sending that to people who don't own dogs.

O.k. Now that I have told you why these studies are done, I will now tell you how to get started and how to avoid scams.

The first step to getting started is obviously finding companies to join. This can be hard. There are millions of companies that pose as paid survey companies so they can get your information and sell it to advertisers. You will then start receiving lots of offers to buy the types of products you said you were interested in when you took your profile survey.

A good place to start is wahmservice.com Wahmservice lists several paid survey companies and is totally free. They also have a forum where you can find other people and information on all types of work at home topics. And a blog where they rate every "paid survey" company and expose the fakes. Whenever you are considering joining a "paid survey" company you should always check wahmservice to see what they have to say about it first.

Now that you have found a legitimate source. It's time to GET PAID. The second thing you need to do is sign up for a few companies. Some companies may send you 4 or 5 paid surveys a week. And some may send you 1 paid survey a month, or none at all. It all depends on who and what they are looking for at the time. The best thing to do is sign up for as many ofthese companies as you can. I would recommend starting with 10 or so. That way you will probably get paid surveys daily.

There are about 500 companies you can join. Here are a few links to some of the best. These are major companies. You will find the alot of other market research companies will use these companies for their studies because of their large number of panelists. Therefore these companies send more surveys than alot of others.

NFO My Survey
GoZing Surveys
ECN Research
Global Test Market
E-Poll
NPD Online Research
Ipsos I-say
American Consumer Opinion
Greenfield Online
Survey Savvy
Survey Spot
Test Spin
Harris Poll
Pinecone Research
Net Ratings
Homescan Consumer Panel
Cunningham Research/Datatelligence
Poll Cast

You should sign up with all of those. It may take an hour or so. But it's well worth it. Then once you get used to it you can go back to wahmservice forums and find other companies to join. The ultimate goal would be to be registered with a hundred or more companies. That almost guarantees you will receive several surveys a day. And will have the chance to earn lots of extra money.

After being with some of these companies for awhile you may receive invitations to participate in focus groups. Sometimes these will be at an office in your area or they may be an online chat or conference call. You can be paid up to $250 for your participation in a focus group. But these are not everyday. Maybe once a month.