You have probably discovered by now some sites that offer you the opportunity to earn money by doing paid surveys online. These sites claim you can make significant monthly income and can provide you with a list of market research sites you must join in order to receive surveys and get paid. The only catch is that you must pay some fee (usually 20$ to 30$) in order to lay your hands on their list of "proven" market research companies.

Creating a database of survey sites does take a lot of work, effort and time and it may sound reasonable to set up a price for it and many people agree with this. If you do appreciate this work and wish to buy this list, feel free to do so but at least read this article to know what you should seek on such sites and how to determine if you are on a legitimate site, or not. Use your own judgement. I, for myself, prefer free opportunities.

According to some online resources relating paid surveys, no respectful company would ever ask for any sign-up fee for granting you the opportunity to work for them. Such a company would have no need to conceal their address and telephone number on their website.

As you can see, legitimate membership survey sites should be free and should not conceal their street address and telephone number on their websites. Since most of these sites are not free, they should have a correct contact information and state on their websites or in their terms the requirements for participation and the real possibilities of making money. They should also have a refund policy in case you don't earn anything and honor it. You'd be surprised as how many refunds are not honored.

That is why you should do a research on your own about a site you wish to purchase a list from. Try to find everything you can about positive and negative experiences and then decide what will be the best thing to do. Especially check if they honor their refund policies. There are a lot of scams out there.

In my opinion I don't believe you should pay anything to access these lists and here is why. Although it is possible to earn a lot of money and cover your investment "fee", it is also possible never to earn any money. Why is that?

Paid surveys are not for anyone. They are conducted by a market research companies on behalf of some large company seeking to improve sales and willing to invest certain sum of money in the market research. Since they are spending quite large amounts of money, they can't afford to waste it, so they will target their research to population which brings them most profit. So if you do not live in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, or some other developed country, you'll probably never make any money from surveys. Even survey companies that claim to be available worldwide are very often restricted to some countries.

Besides your demographic location on most survey sites you have to fill in your profile based on your age, interests, education, income, etc. The number of surveys you will get will mostly depend on your profile. If your profile fits the required target population you'll get more surveys and more chances to earn money. It is also possible that your profile will not fit in and you'll rarely have an opportunity to complete paid surveys.

There are also other reasons why you shouldn't pay anything to access market research companies:

You will be paying for something you can easily have for FREE! These membership sites are only selling information anyone can get. Sites that conduct market research are not hidden. They need as many possible members as they can find, so they will not ask for any fee. You can join all of them and never pay a dime.

Many market research companies have affiliate programs to help them recruit new members. Therefore if someone introduces you to a survey site, he/she will get paid for it and there is no real justification in asking for any more money from you.

These sites usually don't have a refund policy, so if you don't earn anything with surveys, you won't be able to ask for a refund. It is more likely that they have a refund policy, but do not honor it. This is typical for scam sites and that is why it's very important to do some researching first.

There are a lot of free lists of survey sites you can join and earn money if you qualify. You can test them out and see if they work for you or not and you won't have to pay anything. Here is one of them: http://www.nettrafficsecrets.com/surveys/list_of_surveys.html

You probably won't earn enough to quit your daily job with paid surveys, but they can help you get some extra money. And remember - you don't have to pay anything to access these sites.