If you go to any list on way to make money online or working at home then online surveys will come up.  There are lots of people out there who say that they make a decent living from doing surveys.  Now I don’t make a living out of it but I do get to treat myself to something every once in a while from what I do make.  With surveys it will depend on where you are and what demographic you fall into.

How this works

Working with online surveys is actually one of the easier ways to make money online.  All you have to do is sign up to a survey site, fill in the profile and they will send you links to surveys you fit into.  The sites will generally send you the links via email.  Clicking on the link will open up the survey and all you have to do is fill it out.

How do you get paid

Different survey companies will have different ways of paying their survey takers.  Some sites will pay you with points that you can then redeem for cash or gift cards while other will simply have a monetary value.  You will earn points or money whenever you fully complete a survey.  There are some websites out there that do give you something if you do not qualify but they really are few and far between.

Any issues with this

Whenever you look at a way to make money online you need to think about some of the possible problems you may come across. There are a few issues I have found with online surveys:

Partial completion – When you get sent a survey it’s because the website you signed up to thinks you match the survey’s criteria.  The problem is that sometimes you go through a whole bunch of questions only to be told that you don’t meet the criteria.  This is not only frustrating, because you spend time answering questions, but also really annoying because you spend time on this.

Demographics – Okay so surveys need information from certain people in certain places.  This means that if you live in certain areas, mainly certain countries, then you will get more survey opportunities than others. So this is only really a problem for anyone who lives outside these areas but I thought it best to mention it.

Country allowance – As the world of online surveys is so demographically driven survey sites often limit who can join.  If you live in countries other than the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (based on personal experience) then you may find yourself limited on the number of survey sites you can join. 

Online surveys are a good way to make some extra cash online.  I’m sure that some people can make a lot out of this particularly if you can get into the right websites.