Paid surveys have gotten a bit of a bad rap, stories of companies disappearing before you pay, charging exorbitant fees to access surveys, and sending out endless amounts of spam do nothing for an industry’s reputation. But are paid surveys just a scam or can you legitimately make money from them?

To answer the question, I have developed a list of pros and cons. Follow the pros and avoid the don’ts and you should be fine.

Let’s start with a list of things not to do. First of all, always keep in mind that you are taking surveys to earn money, not to spend it. That being said, it makes sense to avoid any survey provider that wants to charge you for access.

There is simply no need to pay for access to receive paid surveys. All the major providers are free to join and make money by having you complete surveys, the more surveys you complete the more money they make. Therefore, they are not interested in charging you a fee for access.

Second, be honest. It’s no secret that certain customer demographics receive more surveys than others. So if you’re a 57-year-old retired woman, don’t try to say you’re a 36-year-old working mom, or worse, don’t sign up with a survey provider using several different identities to complete the same survey. times.

All survey providers are aware of these techniques and will soon find out. Once they call you, they will close your accounts and you will have to lose any unclaimed money.

So if that’s what you don’t do, what should you do? Well, first of all, it’s a good idea to treat paid surveys like a business. And that means being professional about it.

Start by creating an email address especially for your survey activity. A free Gmail account will work just fine. Then use this address to register with survey providers. You need to do this as survey providers will be sending you a lot of emails and you need to be able to sort through them quickly. It also helps keep your personal inbox clear.

Once you have your email address, you need to sign up with as many legitimate survey providers as you can. Just make sure it’s your identity and you only sign up with each provider once. You must do this to gain access to as many surveys as possible. Then you can simply search through all the surveys offered to you by the ones with the highest payouts and zero in on those.

Basically that’s it. Just stay safe by only joining legitimate survey providers and you’ll be fine. Always remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Never pay to join a network despite promises of mega payouts and access to secret surveys that no one else gets.