Make Good Money With Paid

Online Surveys

Why did she decide to pick those two instead of some other? The manufacturers are dying to know the answer to that question! But they are 1,000 miles away, in the Midwest somewhere. Big companies that produce goods and services for sale must know a great deal about customer preferences, what do they want, and what motivates them to buy one product instead of another. To find out, they employ experts in market research to research the marketplace and give them answers.

In summary:

Why are there surveys? To provide information on consumer preferences and opinions for big companies that sell products and services to these consumers. Who pays for them? They are part of the market research and advertising budgets of the companies who want the data from the surveys.

Summary message:

1. Online paid surveys are a serious business, providing much-needed consumer feedback to big companies that sell goods and services.

2. There are over 700 survey makers in the U.S. alone, over 3,000 worldwide.

3. Almost all survey makers offer some kind of incentive to participants to get them to volunteer and to fill out survey questionnaires.

4. The incentives to pay for your time and opinion as a survey participant come from the companies that are paying the survey maker to make the survey.

Taking paid surveys is by invitation only. In order to get invited to take a paid survey you must arrange to get your name, contact information and demographic data “on file” with survey makers beforehand. You do this by making application to the survey makers online, asking to be put on their list of active potential survey participants. In these applications you will be asked for:

1. How can you be contacted. This includes your e-mail address, your mailing address and your physical address (to send sample products to, for testing purposes so that you could give an informed opinion, if this is part of a survey procedure).

2. They will probably also ask for your telephone number, for two reasons. a. First, many survey makers want to be able to verify that you are really there, where you said you were, and that your voice is consistent with your other data. (If you said you were an 18 year old female college student, do you sound like an 18 year-old female?)

b. They confirm location by comparing your area code with your zip code to check for consistency, and by calling you and asking you to call them back or respond to an automated message that works as a callback checker.

c. Second, there are some surveys that, like political polls, are taken by telephone, generally because there is some interaction between the person calling and the person taking the survey.

3. Your demographic data. Surveys are aimed at specific “populations” of the target market which is the subject of the survey. For example, if the purpose of the survey is to determine brand recognition for a product sold only on the West Coast of the U.S., they only want to invite participants who live in that geographical area. If the subject has to do with golf, they may only want participants who play golf as a regular activity. Typical demographic data requested might be:

a. Gender

b. Age

c. Occupation

d. Income level or “bracket”

e. Highest level of education achieved

f. Hobbies

g. Sports and recreational activities in which you participate

h. Zip code

i. Other data to help them decide if you qualify for a specific survey or not.

Each survey maker is an independent company or organization. They frequently compete with each other. They keep their databases private and proprietary; they don’t share. Their info requirements, while similar in some ways, are individual and different in other ways. So you must file a separate application with each and every survey maker that may invite you to participate in a survey in the future. A common mistake made by many who start out to make money with paid surveys is to apply to 20 – 30 or so survey makers and then stop and wait to see what comes in.

This is a formula for failure.

You need to apply to as many good survey makers as you possibly can. That means all of them on your list of recommended survey makers. Maybe a specific survey maker will only have two or three surveys a year that match your demographics. Leaving them out means you won’t be able to take those surveys and will miss out on the $30 to $75 in cash revenue you could have otherwise had!

Leaving out 100 similar survey makers could mean missing the opportunity to make $3,000 to $7,500! This would mean missing out on $250 to $625  per month in income!

Each survey maker is different, has different clients with different needs. Somewhere, scattered among the entire list of good survey makers that you have, are a handful with clients that commission surveys that fit your exact demographics! These will potentially send you a survey a month! That means that a single such survey maker could bring you $120 to $300 a year, all by themselves!

It’s impossible to tell, up front, which ones these are. It depends on their future client base and the kinds of questions their clients will want answered in the coming year. The only way for you to be sure you get on the list of these high potential (for you!) survey makers is to make sure you are in the database of each and every one of them.

Summary message:

1. Apply to each and every one of the survey makers on your list, individually.

2. Don’t try to pick just the biggest or “best” survey makers; a small one could have clients that could mean significant income to you.

3. It’s a numbers game. With your data in the databases of a large number of good survey makers, even a few surveys a year from each will make you good money!

4. You make money with paid surveys by first getting your name and data into the files of the maximum number of good survey makers you can find!

Here we come to the key point, the secret, of actually making money with paid online surveys. It really all depends on identifying which are the good survey makers and then making application to be a potential future survey participant for THEM. We are focused on making money here, and for that goal, all survey makers are definitely NOT created equal!

For our purposes of making money with paid surveys, survey makers can be roughly divided into three categories: Those that pay in cash or equivalent, Those that maybe sometimes pay cash and Those that pay with “Thank you’s” and discount offers.

First: Those that pay in cash or equivalent. The word “equivalent” here means equivalent to cash. It can include points redeemable in cash, or valuable merchandise or any other manner of payment, acceptable to you, that gives you a cash-value payout. For example, some offer payment in Amazon.com gift certificates. For participants who regularly buy items at Amazon.com these gift certificates would be equivalent to cash. For others, they would have a value less than cash, maybe no value at all.

Maybe 30% or so of all survey makers fall into this category. These are not easy to find. They do not advertise much because they do not have to. They do not have to because there is very little turnover among their participants, who are pleased at being paid regularly and in cash for completing survey questionnaires. Also, they generally do not pay recruiters to find new participants; new participants come to them. However, many do offer modest rewards to existing participants who bring in other new participants, in a type of word-of-mouth promotion.

Second: Those that maybe sometimes pay in cash. These low-paying survey makers offer to pay with small direct payments, monthly drawings and other payment schemes that, while valuable in many cases, do not have a direct redeemable cash value. Some of these may be worthwhile to deal with. It depends on the specific  survey maker and the offer they make. After you have applied to ALL of the paying survey makers you might want to consider trying some of these. I do know at least one lady who actually won one of those drawings for $1,000! She had a good month that month.

At any rate, consider these as possible add-ons or extras, and not as your mainstay of income.

Third: Those that pay with promises instead of cash. This category includes those that are really sales companies and just want to sell you things. These time-wasters are to be avoided. Especially, never give out specific info about your personal buying intentions. The legitimate ones won’t ask – they deal with statistical data, not personal. The rest don’t need to know for any reason other than to try to sell you something. And, it goes without saying, never give out your credit card number!

So our task then, is to find the survey makers in the first category. Survey makers in the second and third categories are easy to find. Just go to any “free” paid survey site and they will give you lists of them, complete with a URL (affiliate link) that you can click on (so that they can collect their fee for recruiting you!) But survey makers in the first category are not so easy to find, especially alone and not mixed in with a lot of less desirable ones. While it is possible to find these on your own, it is a time-consuming and energy intensive job to do so. You have to sign up with all you can find and then sort them out by results. On the average that means signing up with 10 to find 3 good ones. With several hundred to sort through, it is a daunting task, although it can be done. The best way to find the first class survey makers is to hire a paid survey guide company to point them out to you. We will delve more deeply into the subject of paid survey guide companies in the next chapter.

Summary message:

1. The key to making money with paid surveys is to find and sign up with the survey makers who pay in cash or equivalent.

2. Almost all the rest are just time-wasters and to be avoided.

3. Almost all of the survey makers that you can find for free on the Internet are in the low-pay or no-pay categories. Avoid them.

Paid survey guide companies or paid survey sites maintain lists of preferred survey makers. This is a dynamic process as they change frequently. They get acquired, change management, change policies, etc. Yesterday’s darling can become today’s ‘dog’ and vice versa. So the lists must be current and up to date. For a small membership fee, usually $35 to $50, a paid survey site will share a copy of their list of preferred survey makers with you. You should easily make back the membership fee with the first 2-3 paid surveys you take. There are over 200 of these paid survey sites out there on the Net. Some are very good, some are O.K. but need improvement. Others are not O.K. and are best avoided. The challenge is to find a good one, the best for your needs. There are hundreds of paid survey sites out there, all claiming that they are the best. So how can you know which is the best for you? What are the metrics? What should you measure them by? How do you compare them to know which is better and which is worse? Good questions, all. What you need is a list of the items to compare and measure. Here is your checklist:

1. Size, stability, durability. While there are, no doubt, good new paid survey sites out there, there also a bunch of wannabes without experience and about to get some. The way to bet is with the proven performers who have grown and withstood the tests of time.

2. Recent growth. Recent growth indicates that they are doing things right, attracting more clients, not just coasting along on last year's successes and past reputation

3. Strong guarantee. A strong money-back guarantee indicates that the outfit stands behind its services and that they will do their best to perform well, to their clients' satisfaction. A good guarantee should be for 60-90 days and be backed up by a bank or financial company such as PayPal or ClickBank.

Click below to see ClickBank’s refund policy:

Such guarantees are not offered by fly-by-night or scam operations because they can't get a financial company to vouch for them! A bank or financial company that backs up a refund policy will be able to see the refund requests and hear or read the client complaints. If they do that and still stay in place, it is a very strong indication that all is on the up-and-up! Also the strong money-back guarantee means that there is accountability and you have a degree of control. The setup is such that the paid survey site must perform well to keep the membership fee you put up as "earnest money"! ;-) They have to at least deliver more value than the amount you paid in, and that within the first 60 days! Of course, your income will build over the first 3-6 months as the survey makers gain confidence in you and you should soon be taking in several times the initial fee each and every month!

4. Low refund rate. Probably the most important single factor in evaluating paid survey sites is their refund rate. The refund rate is the percentage of their clients who demand their money back. It is an excellent measure of client satisfaction. While the refund rate will never go to zero, a low refund rate indicates happy, satisfied clients. The ideal refund rate would be in the 3.0-6.0 % range (means that between 1 in 33 to 1 in 17 clients asked for their money back). Any paid survey site with a refund rate of 9.0% or more (1 in 11-or-less) should be avoided. Cross those off your list; there are too many unhappy clients voting against that paid survey site, and you don’t want to be one of them! See the current refund rates for the top 20 paid survey sites and read the discussion of refund rates there to understand this more clearly. Click on the link below to view:

Note that there are three different numbers used on the Survey Sentinel website to evaluate refund rates:

1) The latest 2-week rate – this is the most recent data available

2) The 3 month moving average – average historic rate for the last three months

3) The Composite Index, which is made up 60% of the 2-week rate plus 40% of the 3 month moving average. This gets a single number which is used to compare one paid survey site with another and to rate all of them.

5) You now have a money-back guarantee, an incentive for your guide company to really get you started making money and, by the low refund rate, you have a strong indication that they did exactly that for their clients who came just before you! This is the best shot at it and the most assurance of success you can find anywhere.

6) Once you have narrowed down your list of candidates, go to visit the websites of the 3 to 6 finalists to see what each is offering and make comparisons.

Now, at this point, with all this information in hand, you will be in a position to make an informed choice and pick the best paid online survey guide company site for you.

Summary message:

1. There are good paid online survey guide companies, not so good ones and terrible ones. Take the time to carefully select a good one.

2. The first key point is to select one with a strong 60-day money-back guarantee. Strong means backed up by a bank or financial company.

3. The second (and most important) key point is to look for a low refund rate under that guarantee. Look for a Survey Sentinel Composite Index of 6.0 or less.

4. Check out a few that qualify by going to their websites and reviewing their offers, then choose the one you like best.

Do your part. A paid survey guide company can only point you in the right direction. You have to go there by yourself, no one else can do if for you. Once you have selected your paid survey site guide company you will need to:

A. Apply to all of the recommended survey makers on the list you receive from your guide company. This is critical. If the survey makers do not have your application on file, with your contact and demographic info, then they cannot send you surveys to fill out. You will need to apply to each one individually. The forms are all different but have many of the same questions. Several survey takers have reported that RoboForm was a big help in filling out these application forms. To download a free copy of RoboForm, click on the link below:

B. Set up a new e-mail address especially for your paid survey business. Use that address in all your applications.

C. Check your inbox daily, answer all correspondence. When you receive invitations for surveys, accept them promptly, fill out the questionnaires fully and answer all questions to the best of your ability. Being prompt and complete will help bring in more offers.

D. Be patient. The survey makers will test you to see if you are real, measure how well you respond. When they have more experience with you they will send you more and bigger surveys, focus groups, product testing, etc. so you won't get so much survey work at first, but it will continue to build momentum for the first 3-6 months.

Your payments will be mostly by checks through the mail; sometimes via PayPal. The actual amount you earn will depend on your diligence and demographics. Most paid survey takers report incomes of $200 - $600 a month. Some, who have good demographics and who work at it, achieve incomes of over $1,000 a month.

So how do you get started? Well, you might try clicking the link below!

Summary message:

1. Be serious about your paid survey activity and run it like a business.

2. Apply to all of the preferred survey makers on your guide company’s list. Use RoboForm to help you to fill out repetitive parts of application forms.

3. Set up a separate e-mail address for your paid survey business. Use this address on all of your applications to survey makers.

4. Check your inbox frequently, answer all correspondence promptly.

5. Be patient. Your income from each individual survey maker will reach its maximum level about 3 to 6 months after they receive your completed application.

So get started as soon as possible - and the best of luck!!

Get Paid For Surveys - Six Secrets to Making Good Money With Paid Surveys

You can get paid for surveys online and make good money at it. Here are 6 secrets of how to do exactly that. Follow them and you will have an excellent chance to make real money. Ignore them and you may get taken advantage of, use a free list of time-wasting survey makers, and come away with a bad experience...

Paid online surveys are big business on the Internet. Every month millions of dollars are paid out to survey participants. Some get paid for surveys and do well, make good money. Others barely survive and never seem to make any real money. The difference is in A. Understanding the business and B. Going about it in the right way.

All surveys are NOT equal. Only about 19-25% of the surveys offered on the Net are legitimate paid online surveys that pay well, on time and pay in cash or equivalent. Perhaps another 40% or so are marginal but still worthwhile. You will still get paid for surveys and make money; you just won't get paid as much.

When you do it correctly you will make about half your money from the first group and the other half from the second.

The remaining 40% or so of surveys are low-pay/no-pay types that will just waste your time. There is no way that you will really get paid for surveys with this type. You will want to avoid these completely.

So the 1st secret of making money with paid surveys is to get a good list of survey makers to sign up with. A good list will have mostly the first two categories and very little of the time-wasters group.

Where do you get a good list? Start by understanding that there is no such thing as a "free list". Every list is paid for, some by the survey participants and the rest by the survey makers. Those you don't pay for are being paid for by lower quality survey makers to recruit you for their non-paying surveys.

The distributors of "free lists" live off of commissions they get for recruiting people for survey makers with high participant turnover. Their turnover is high because the surveys either don't pay or don't pay enough to be worthwhile.  Or the "survey maker" is really a sales company that only wants to sell stuff to you.

The 2nd secret is that you are not likely to get paid for surveys or make any money from a list of survey makers that you did not pay for. Your best chance to get a good list is from a paid survey membership site that maintains such lists for its paying clients. Pay your membership fee, get your copy of their list, get your membership fee money back with the first 2-3 surveys.

The 3rd secret is that these paid survey sites range from good to not-so-good to bad to terrible. You will want to pick a good one.

The 4th secret is how to do go about doing that. In a nutshell, ONLY deal with sites that offer STRONG money-back guarantees. There are 70+ that will qualify. Then from inside this group with strong guarantees, you carefully examine their refund rates and choose one with a low refund rate. Refund rates tell you what their membership thinks of them. Low refund rates mean high client satisfaction, clients who get paid for surveys and make good money. High refund rates mean low client satisfaction: many clients in line demanding their money back.

The 5th secret is that once you pick your paid survey membership site and get your copy of their list, sign up with ALL of the survey makers on that list. You won't qualify for all of the surveys they make. To get a lot of surveys to take you need to have your info on file with a lot of survey makers.

The 6th secret is to prepare to sort out the bad survey makers on your list (all lists have some). Open a free e-mail account only for your paid survey business. Use that address in all your sign-ups. Sort the survey makers with a heavy hand. Delete, unsubscribe and blacklist those that bombard you with sales offers.

Do all of the above in the right way and you will have positioned yourself very well to get paid for surveys and succeed. You will be among the happy clients of a good paid survey site, with your setup for sorting "time-waster" survey makers in place and working and with your applications on file with all the good survey makers available. And you can't lose money; you have a strong guarantee. The only way you will not make money is to not check your in-box twice a day, not take the surveys offered to you or don't respond promptly.

Background on free online surveys for money:

Traditional consumer preference surveys have been around for years. Recently, they have been rapidly evolving and changing. More and more surveys are being made over the Internet, to take advantage of its fast response time and low cost. In recognition of the cost savings, and to assure an adequate pool of survey volunteers, more and more surveys are reward-based.  Sometimes participants are given free sample products to test. Sometimes they are awarded points that can be accumulated and exchanged for cash.

Often free online surveys for money are done on a pure cash basis.  Afterwards participants receive a check in the mail. The surveys are free; there is no cost to participate.  The monetary compensation is real and spendable.

Who can participate? Any consumer 18 or over who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.  If you can switch on your computer and send an e-mail message, you already have all the necessary technical skills

How do you get started? You just need to get your name on the market researchers' prospective survey participants lists.  That is simple in concept but it can be a bit challenging in the actual doing.

There are over 750 survey makers in the U.S. and over 3,000 worldwide. Most of them don't actually pay their participants, many just want to sell them things. Others will sell your contact and demographic info to sales companies. The good ones are quiet; prospective participants come to them.  The bad ones make the most noise and have the most ads on the Internet.  Most of those offering "free lists" of survey makers are being paid by those selfsame survey makers to send you to companies you would rather not have to deal with.

There are considerably less than half of the survey makers out there that you should consider dealing with.  You just want the ones that offer free online surveys for money.  That really pay (not just promise) and respect your privacy.

So how do you know which are the good ones?  There are two ways:

1. You can sort them out by trial and error on your own, or

2. you can hire a guide.

There are over 200 paid survey "guide companies" that maintain lists of who is good and who is not, keeping their lists up to date and live. You can sign up with one of these guide companies, pay a small fee, and they will give you a copy of their list of preferred survey makers.  Saves you a lot of time and trouble, and is generally well worth it.  After 2 or 3 paid surveys you recoup your sign up costs.

And having a good list means you can concentrate on signing up with the 100 to 300 good survey makers. That takes some time. You must apply to each separately; they are all independent companies that compete with each other.

It is very important to pick a good paid survey guide company.  You want one that is

1. Larger,

2. Has been around for a while,

3. Has had good results for its clients and

4. Is willing and able to stand behind its service with a strong money-back guarantee.

How do you know which paid survey companies have had good results for their clients?  You know by checking their refund rates.  Low refund rates means that their clients are happy and satisfied. High refund rates indicate bad results for clients and unhappy clients. Look for a refund rate in the 3-5% (ideal) range. Avoid any with over 10% refund rate. (At this writing, 6 out of the top 20 biggest paid survey companies have refund rates over 10%! Bigger is not always better!). Click HERE to see how we classify our Survey Companies

How do you know that it's a strong guarantee?  Strong money-back guarantees are for 60-90 days and are backed up by a bank or financial institution such as PayPal or ClickBank. Weak guarantees lack one or more of these elements.

How much money can I make?  That depends mostly on your diligence in finding and taking surveys and your demographics.  Most serious survey participants who take free online paid surveys for money report incomes of $200 - $600 a month. Some report $1,000 or more a month.

Paid Internet Surveys - 5 Steps for Making Easy Money
More and more marketing research companies are taking advantage of the low cost and fast turnaround of the Internet for their consumer opinion surveys. Part of their savings is being passed on to those who volunteer for and fill out the surveys. So more and more people are receiving checks in the mail for taking paid internet surveys. Here's how to get in on the action!

Introduction:

More paid internet surveys are being made every month!  Because of this, more and more people are getting checks in the mail or deposits into their PayPal accounts.  As more people are receiving income from this activity, there is growing interest in how to participate.  This article explores the phenomenon of paid internet surveys in general and then gives you a 5-step formula for participating and receiving checks in your own USPS mail for your efforts.

The scenario:

The emergence of Paid Internet Surveys is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Its recent growth has sparked a great deal of interest.  It is possible to make good income from taking paid interney surveys.  If you want to know more about how to participate, you have come to the right place!  Read on...

So what is really going on here?  Why would anyone actually PAY someone to take a survey?

Why are there online internet surveys and who pays the survey takers?

At base is the fact that the economies of the U.S.A. and other industrialized "first world" countries are market- driven.  That is, the consumer is king.  The consumers vote in the economic popularity contest and select the products and services they want.  In doing so they reward the producers of those products and services.

So the producers of products and services are dying to know just what the consumers are going to want next.  You see, there is a time lag here. The producers produce, THEN the consumers buy.  If the producers misjudge what the consumers are going to want, they are in big trouble, with inventories they can't sell.  If they judge correctly, they get rich.

So they hire market research people to tell them what people want. Of course they must get specific and ask questions pertinent to their products and aimed at the segment of the population that buys their stuff.  And the market researchers get paid to make surveys to find out the answers their big company clients want.

And to get people to sign up, give their demographic info and actually take the surveys, the market researchers, or the survey makers they hire, offer rewards including cash and points that can be redeemed in cash.

So the money comes from the producers of goods and services, channelled through the market researchers and their contracted survey makers to the people that actually fill out the questionnaires.

What are the qualifications to participate?

To qualify for taking paid Internet surveys, you only need to be a consumer and 18 years of age or older. If you buy groceries, clothing, gasoline, practically anything, you qualify as a consumer.

Taking paid Internet surveys does not require any specific skills; if you can send and receive e-mails you have all the technical qualifications you need.  So how do you get involved and start receiving your checks in the mail?

O.K. So how do you get in?

Here are the five steps you need to take to get started:

1. Pick a good paid internet survey guide company to help you get started.  There are well over 700 companies making surveys in the U.S. alone and over 3,000 world-wide. Some are good, some not, some are terrible.  Some are really just sales companies in disguise who just want your info so they can spam you half to death trying to sell things to you.

In this situation you need a good guide company, that studies the market, sorts out which survey makers are good and which are to be avoided.  The good ones maintain a list of good survey-makers that is being constantly updated.  You want to sign up with such a company to get access to their list.

But there are over 200 such guide companies out there. How do you sort them out and pick a good one?

The company you want will be sizeable, will have been around for a while and will be growing. Look for a strong 60-90 day money-back guarantee backed up by a bank or financial company such as PayPal or ClickBank. *

Most importantly, look for a low refund rate.  The refund rate is the percentage of their clients that leave and demand their money back. Low refund rates indicate happy clients.  High refund rates indicate many unhappy clients.  Look for a refund rate in the 3.0%-5.0% range (ideal).  Avoid any company with a refund rate of 10% or above.
2. Sign up with all preferred survey-makers on your guide-company's list.  When you sign up with your paid internet survey guide company they will send you a copy of their current list of preferred survey makers. It is very important that you make application to as many of these as possible.  If you cannot sign up with all, sign up with as many survey makers as you can.

This is where the money is.  These are the companies that send out survey invitations.  To be on their list of active survey takers, you must file an application with them, giving your contact and demographic info. Each company is separate and you must file an application with each one separately.

Get a copy of Robo Form or other form-filling assistant to help you with the repetitive forms.  Remember, if they do not have your application on file they cannot send you invitations to take paid internet surveys.

3. Open a separate e-mail account for your paid internet survey work.  Check your inbox at least once a day, preferably twice. Make it a point to answer all correspondence promptly.

4. When invitations for paid internet surveys come in, take all surveys offered at first.  Later, when more are coming in you can hi-grade and take only the high-paying ones if you choose.  But right at first it will be important to establish yourself as a "live account".

Do not worry about answering the questions.  Remember that there are no "right answers" or "wrong answers". Just fill out the questionnaires fully, answer the questions giving your honest opinion, because your opinion is exactly what they want and all they want.

5. Be patient.  The more survey makers you apply to, the more surveys invitations you will receive.  If you respond quickly and fully, you will get more and bigger (higher-paying) surveys to take. You will be invited to participate in small focus groups.
So how much can I make doing this paid internet survey thing?

Your exact income will depend on your diligence and your demographics.
 
Diligence is basically how hard you work at it and how much you stay on top of it.  If you apply to all survey makers you will make more than if you apply to just a few big ones.  If you check your mail twice a day you will make more than if you check it twice a week. (Many surveys are simultaneously offered to more takers than they need and then cut off as soon as their target count is reached.  If you come in too late, you miss out...)

Demographics is mainly where you live, your income bracket and the size of other groups you belong to/with. If you live in or close to major metropolitan centers like the megalopolis that extends from Boston to Washington by way of Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Trenton and Baltimore, or if you live in Los Angeles County, you will get more survey offers than if you live in the Dakotas or Alaska. If you are in a higher income bracket you will get more surveys than you will if you are in a lower income bracket, generally speaking.

It doesn't mean you won't get any, but look, surveys are about money, about predicting how prospective buyers will react. There are more buyers (with more money) in the Los Angeles area than there are in the Dakotas.  And, they are closer together. People making $50-60,000 a year spend more than people making $14-16,000 a year! Therefore, since the surveys follow the money, there are more surveys sent out in L.A. and other more densely populated and metropolitan, urban areas.  And people with more money to spend are targeted for more surveys than people with no money to spend

The bottom line?
 
Most experienced takers of paid internet surveys report incomes of $200 to $600 a month. Some with good demographics and who work at it report incomes of $1,000 a month and more. Some who include "Get Paid to Shop", "Get Paid to Drive Your Car" etc., reportedly go over $3,000 a month.

It costs you $35-50 to sign up with a guide company.  Takes a little effort to get started off.  If you work at it at all you should get your out-of-pocket cost out fairly quickly.  So it doesn't cost anything to put your foot in the water and find out...