Online paid surveys are a large and growing economic activity on the Internet. Thousands of new surveys are conducted every week. It’s easy to get paid for online surveys, and millions of dollars are paid out to thousands of survey participants each month. There’s a lot of money changing hands…

Some people seem to have no problem getting paid for online surveys and getting nice checks in the mail and/or deposits into their PayPal accounts each month. But others struggle and fail to make real money in this simple internet business.

What are those who fail doing wrong? If you want to get paid for online surveys and make money, what mistakes should you avoid?

Here is a list of the most common mistakes new survey participants make:

1. Take the first “free list” you can find, sign up with the pollsters on that list, and hope to get somewhere with them.

The distribution of these “free lists” is paid for by the recruitment fees of the low-paying or no-paying pollsters who make up 80% of the total. They must pay recruiting fees to get new volunteers for their surveys because the ones they had got tired of working for next to nothing and quit.

When you sign up with one of these survey creators, you take the place of someone who didn’t get paid for online surveys and failed. Take their place and one failure leads to another…

All surveys are not the same. The ones you want are the legitimate paid online surveys that pay reasonable amounts, on time, in cash or equivalent. This type of survey is carried out by approximately 20% of pollsters. These pollsters have low turnover, pay no recruiting fees, and rarely appear on “free lists.”

2. Saving a few dollars up front only to waste a lot of time and money later.

The key to success with paid online surveys, the way to actually get paid for online surveys, is to start with a good list of legitimate paid survey panels. These lists are not free. They cost money or a lot of time and effort.

There are over 700 pollsters in the US and over 3,000 worldwide. You could just sign up with all of them, then see which ones were good and which ones were just wasting your time, trying to sell you stuff and selling your contact information to ethically questionable sales companies.

The process would take you a couple of months to find and sign up with most pollsters, then another 6 months or so to rank them. You might finally end up with a reasonably good list. However, for a small fee, you can join a good paid survey membership site and get a copy of their list now.

The “something for nothing” dream appeals to many, but it rarely works out and leads to many failures. If you want to get paid for online surveys, then spend some money to get a good list. The list will then make money for you.

3. Sign up with too few pollsters.

Many survey participants sign up with 10-20 survey takers and then complain that they aren’t making any money! To be successful, you will need to register with at least 200 or more. You will not qualify for all surveys. Some are gender specific, others location or age group specific.

Maybe you only qualify for a couple of surveys every 6 months from a given survey creator. Still, a $10 and $25 survey twice a year will cost $70. If you have 200 likes, you will earn $14,000 a year. Not bad. You do the calculations. Try the same thing with only 20 pollsters…

For more information on how to get paid for online surveys and earn money, follow the links below…