The Difference Between Legitimate and Illegitimate Paid Surveys Sites

The legitimacy of getting paid for your opinions or how to get paid to take online surveys is quite controversial when you begin to explore information on this subject via the Internet. Hundreds of Internet forums, message boards, blogs, newsletters and work at home resource websites spew out daily opinions and information questioning their legitimacy or boasting endless riches by the use of these mysterious paid survey sites and other online money making opportunities. So which one is right?

Paid Surveys are what we refer to as a get paid to or (GPT) sites. GPT sites pay people to complete different tasks online in exchange for cash, merchandise, or some other type of reward. With more and more people looking online for additional income more GPT websites pop up everyday. Most people are skeptical about GPT opportunities based on the fact that all illegitimate GPT opportunities disguise their websites to look like legitimate money making opportunities when in fact they are just scams. These websites take honest consumers money and give legitimate paid survey sites a black eye. There are plenty of legitimate GPT opportunities on the Internet your problem is knowing how to sort the good apples from the bad.

The problem with get paid to take surveys and other GPT sites on the Internet is not so much a lack of legitimate opportunities because they're really are a lot of legitimate market research companies looking to pay participants for completing tasks online. The problem is more websites blowing out of proportion the payment amounts received for participating in paid surveys online and other GPT tasks. As I see it, and I being an frequent participant in online paid research studies and a frequent paid survey taker, is that for one reason or another payment amounts promised by GPT websites range in the area of reasonable to ridiculous.

There are GPT websites out there trying to claim that you can get rich from taking paid surveys online, testing products, stuffing envelopes etc. Nothing could be further from the truth in fact its not even close to possible. I participate in about 25 surveys a week and receive a little over $75 for completing these surveys. I have done the math a hundred different ways and it always pencils out to roughly $15.00 to $16.00 an hour. Payments can be weekly but are usually staggered throughout the month based on when and how many surveys you complete each week. I have been paid up to $ 125.00 for participating in focus groups but it took several weeks to complete the focus group and these invitations are rare.

The reason many people view paid surveys as a scam is because legitimate paid survey sites put up by market research companies almost always get exploited by seedy websites preying upon people's curiosity or urgent need for money. Just go online and click on a get paid to take surveys advertisement promising big money and you will quickly understand why people associate every paid survey opportunity as a scam.

When websites try to entice users to sign up for a GPT paid survey program you can bet it's a scam. If you're greedy or desperate often time's common sense goes out the window so these scams can be easy to fall for GPT scams sites know this and take advantage of it.

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