Consumer surveys have been one of the best ways for companies to gauge the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, packaging and to make product changes that meet consumer demands.

These paid surveys have been around for decades even before the internet. So what is the truth about these companies promising you can make thousands of dollars a month doing paid surveys?

Survey directory sites are places you pay a one time fee to get access to their list of paid surveys you can do online. The real deal with these survey directory sites is that they are not providing any information that you could not find yourself by searching online.

Thousands of dollars a month would be relatively difficult to achieve doing paid surveys simply because the average survey pays very little to complete. The hours spent trying to make thousands of dollars could be better spent on ways to make money online that are much better and will result in much higher earnings.

Free Survey Sites or "Get Paid To" Sites

These sites are free to join and participate. The problem with these sites are 2 fold:

1. You are going to get paid less than a dollar for each real survey completed and the main goal of these types of sites is to get your email address and try to sell you things later. Because you completed the survey and submitted your email address you also gave them permission to spam you with anything they want to sell or even sell you personal information.
2. The main way to make money with these sites is to recruit more people to the site. They love paying you for this because they get more email addresses and more people to spam their wares to via email.

The Bottom Line

Paid survey sites can be a good way to make a little extra money online but they are not something you can use for a consistent and full time income. Survey directory sites do provide a great resource for a nominal fee considering the time you will spend getting this information on your own.

The time spent on any type of paid survey income can be used in way more productive ways to make money online and yield a much higher income.

I know of many of these types of sites but I do not recommend any of them because my personal belief is they are a waste of time.