Are Paid Survey Sites a Good Way to Work at Home?

I've read one article after another regarding paid online surveys. I'm sorry, but I don't believe a single word any of the people have said. I'm finding the words are a regurgitation of articles found elsewhere. It's a good topic to write on because the writer is playing to people who want to make money at home. It's wrong. It's nasty. It perpetuates the myth of "stuff envelopes at home" because you make money off it yourself.

All I hear from anyone who touts this as a form of working at home is a litany of buzzwords. People who want to do it figure they'll make money once they understand the words. They won't. They learn that they start using the same words to draw others in, and all of sudden they're working at home. Not. Well, in a tiny way. They're making money through referrals.

Yes, I've tested it. I've gone on the real, real, real sites, and they, too, refer you to the extra 20 places that you don't recognize. You think you are filling out info for that first site, when, in fact, you've been diverted elsewhere right after the first screen. And you can't exit. You will never finish one of the preliminary questionnaires. You'll just be sent to a new site with other surveys you may want to try in the future.

Part of my job as a reporter has been in testing out theories before I put them in public on paper. And I did. In short, it's a lie. For those who write the how-to's on this, I want to see your bank statements from places that DON'T require that you rope your friends and families into this crap in order to make money.

I've signed up for at least 25 that then turned into 50 like rabbits. Only one site sends me legitimate surveys. I haven't earned a penny, although they pay token amounts, because I never seem to be in the right market. Still, as I used to work at the Univ. of Maryland's Survey Research Center, I get that that's the way it goes. I stop for the mall survey now and then. That is how better products are made.

I've been on the private and public end of the field (many years ago), but they don't pay more than a token dollar unless it's a focus group. It TAINTS the survey. People figure out what sort of things come up again and again (age, sex, income levels), and they say "YES" to get the money. So the results aren't worth much. So, what these people are paying for is your address and for you to sign up for the incentives over and over for the hope of maybe, maybe getting on that list that will give you the work at home job that requires no brains. Even if you get something, or entered into that contest, the company is making more doing it this way than by buying mailing lists. In other words, WHY BUY THE COW! You, my friend, are the cow.

Most of this crap has nothing to do with a survey. I just got one in the mail from one of those 25 places that spawned the next 25. This was to get FREE paper towels. The SURVEY had to do with 6 pages of "sign up for these things, too." And that has to do with PAPER TOWELS, how? IN fact, after the survey name, the paper towels weren't mentioned again for pages. They only came up again at the bottom of the page at a point that, I'm guessing, they figure most people quit. You get that nudge...only a little bit more before you qualify for your FREE paper towls. Of course, the first 2 pages were all your choice, sign up or not, then page 3 hit you with the little item that you HAD to SIGN up for one of these programs in order to get the FREE PAPER TOWELS. So the two pages worth of names and address info I gave out were for naught if I stopped there, right? It had to end soon, right? No. I got to 6, and I was pretty sure it would never end. No one asked me what kind of paper towels I used, what price I'd be willing to pay, etc. They seemed preoccupied with whether or not I wanted to get a Master's Degree. I don't get the connection between paper towels and a Master's Degree. Hmmm. Maybe I Do need the Master's Degree. Hey, and I"ll get some free paper towels while I'm at it, right?

One night I started doing one of the ones that give out $25 cards for Home Depot or the like. Now, if these people got me to page 6 for FREE paper towels for my SURVEY, an you imagine what they wanted from me to get a gift card? I put 2 hours into it. I signed up for my trial magazines, trial Netflix, trial Blockbuster, yada, yada. Then, TWO HOURS later, I had to make a choice to ACCEPT two of the four FINAL offers. Now I had seen the word final many times in this survey, so I closed up shop when the final choices were something like putting a new roof on my house and home extermination.

It sounds like a good Tonight Show joke, but it's the truth so it's not so funny:

Can you make money taking surveys? Ummm...I don't know. I've never gotten to the end of one yet.