In your efforts to find a legitimate work from home opportunity, you've stumbled upon the hugely-popular option of paid survey programs.  Naturally, you’re skeptical.  After all -- it seems that for every real make-money-at-home program, there are dozens of would-be scams that present themselves.  Plus, is it really plausible that a company will pay you for your opinions?

With these things in mind -- are paid survey programs legitimate work from home opportunities, or are they outright scams?    That’s what we’re going to answer for you today.

The very simple answer to this question is this -- paid surveys, as a business model, are not scams.  The definition of the word scam is, "a fraudulent business scheme".  Generally speaking, paid surveys are exceptionally legitimate. Companies need certain information from their target market in order to help them improve their products and services, to better reach their target market through advertising, and potentially even for the initial market research for a new product or service.  Some companies wouldn't even exist today if it weren't for the various flavors of the paid survey model.

However, just because paid surveys are a legitimate work-from-home opportunity, this does not inherently mean that every paid survey program is legitimate.  As an example, in recent years, individuals have received phone calls, letters, or even e-mails about renewing their vehicle’s expired warranty.  Now, many of these people either had an active warranty for their vehicle, had a vehicle that they would never put a warranty on, or they didn’t even have a vehicle to begin with.  The thing is, these unsolicited calls and letters are likely scams, and many are reported to be as such.  However, this does not mean that all vehicle warranty programs are scams or fraudulent -- it just means that there are good warranties and bad warranties -- it’s exactly the same with paid survey programs.

Just because a website purports to show you how to make money with paid surveys does not mean that it is a scam.  Taking this further -- just because a paid survey website requires a one-time fee for access to the database of paid survey opportunities, this does not mean that this website is a scam. In fact, the majority of the time -- these programs offer legitimate opportunities.  Now, some of these websites may have better information and more up-to-date databases than others, but true-to-form scam websites do not have a long shelf-life; they pop up, take people’s money, and disappear. 

People make hundreds, and sometimes, even thousands of dollars per month filling out online surveys.  While the sales copy may stretch the numbers a bit in terms of the actual hours-to-earnings ratio for some programs -- getting paid for your opinion is a legitimate work-from-home opportunity, and in terms of actual scam websites -- they are few and far between.