If you Google for Online Surveys – you’ll get over ten million results and most of them will promise great payments ($25 to $150 per hour), free product to try and a lot of other interesting things. In reality most of those sites will just provide a referral links to other referral sites etc…

There are actual legitimate research sites that will pay for taking online surveys, but most of them pay from $1 to $20 (nowhere close to $150…) in cash per completed survey and other part will offer cash equivalent you can redeem in selected products or keep trial samples.

From my own experience with survey panels most of surveys pay $3 to $10 and take about 15 minutes to complete. Much more opportunities are available to US residents than rest of the world and also may defer from state to state, age, marriage status, kids, ethnic group…

One of the best places to start when looking for online survey companies is Survey Police.

They provide large list of legitimate research companies with numerous feedbacks from actual panel members. In some instances Survey Police even help panelists to resolve problems with survey companies.

After you have chosen and joined some survey panels here are a few tips to keep in mind:

1. Use contact email that you check most often and try to complete surveys as soon as you receive invitations. Many surveys are limited to certain number of users and as soon as this amount responses is received – opportunity is closed.
2. Fill out all profile fields – this may help you to qualify for more opportunities.
3. Be very careful when you are answering pre-screening questions. For example if survey is about movies – don’t say you haven’t been in the theater for over a year…
4. Don’t rush, read every question in full or you may get disqualified half a way into completing survey.
5. Many survey panels may NOT work in browsers other than Internet Explorer so to avoid loosing opportunities always open surveys in IE.

I’ve heard from many webmasters participating in online surveys that average earnings per month could be around $150 -$200 if you are lucky. Some month you get more offers, some – nothing at all. So… The conclusion is – you can make some extra pocket money from online surveys but I would not count on it as a steady full time income.