There is good money to be made with paid online surveys. The actual work involved is relatively easy and fast. Nevertheless, some people try and fail to really get going and making money in this easy home-based business. The reasons for failure are many and varied, but most of those who fail do so for one or more of a limited group of reasons.

Here are the principal reasons for failure with paid online surveys, along with ways to succeed rather than fail in each case:

Failure reason number 1. Poor choice of paid online survey guide program. To succeed and make money with paid online surveys, it is important to have a good guide company. Not all of the offers out there are good ones. Bad guide companies will give you copies of someone else's list of survey makers, with questionable contacts, dead links and second and third rate survey makers. They will then leave you alone without support or advice, to sink or swim on your own. After a while, otherwise qualified would-be survey takers find the going is too rough, get discouraged and quit.

Solution: Avoid this by picking a good guide company. A good guide company is one that is sizeable and growing, has a good guarantee, backed up by by a third party financial company, and enjoys a low refund rate. Check out at least a half-dozen qualified companies before choosing the best one for you. With a good guide company your chances of success go up exponentially.

Failure reason number 2. Failure to sign up with a large enough number of survey makers. Not every survey maker is active with new surveys every week. It's a numbers game. If you don't sign up with all the available survey makers out there, you will miss surveys you could have taken and lose income that you otherwise could have made. The consequent lack of income is discouraging and causes some to quit trying.

Solution: Sign up with all the survey makers that you can. Get a copy of Robo-Form or use the forms assistant feature of your FireFox browser to help you fill out the repetitive parts of applications fast. Plan to sign up for 150 to 300 survey makers. Yes, it's work, but it will pay off when/if you do it. Remember that survey makers cannot send you surveys to fill out if they don't know you are there, ready willing and able, to fill them out. Get the word out, get on as many lists as you can and you will be rewarded handsomely for your efforts!

Failure reason number 3. Failure to check your paid online surveys e-mail inbox regularly and follow up. Some people get distracted, let paid online survey correspondence pile up and languish in their in-boxes. The survey makers note the slow response and start downgrading the account, eventually even crossing that name off their list entirely. Fewer surveys come in, income drops, the survey taker gets discouraged and quits.

Solution: Check your inbox at least once a day. Answer all correspondence promptly. Stay on top of your communications.

Failure reason number 4. Expectation of immediate results without doing any work. Some people start out with paid online surveys with unrealistic expectations. They expect to get rich quick, without having to do any work. So they sit and wait, and when no money comes in they quit.

Solution: Plan your work, work you plan, and expect that results will follow. Sure, you can make money. But it's not automatic; things won't move unless and until you do. You have to do the signup work, answer promptly, take the surveys and do a good job of answering all the questions in order to make the money come in. Do these things and you will succeed.

Failure reason number 5. Lack of patience with the process. Some fail for lack of patience. You hear people say, "I tried it for two weeks and didn't make any money, so I quit."

Solution: Be patient! Two weeks is not even enough time to get started properly! If you do everything right, get signed up for the maximum number of paid online surveys in the first 2-3 weeks, you might make some income in the first month. But you will not hit your peak income for 3-6 months. Survey makers are cautious with new signups. They will send out only a few surveys at first, to check you out, see how well and how quickly you respond. Don't expect to be invited to participate in a $250 focus group right away. They will start you with something smaller, then if that goes O.K. you will be considered for bigger things. Be patient. Don't expect everything to happen overnight. It will come. Just give it time.

If you can avoid failure, you will succeed. If for no other reason, because by avoiding failure, success is the only alternative left!


Jorge Chavez is an experienced business analyst, accountant and internet entrepreneur. To learn more about paid online surveys follow this link: Paid Online Surveys To learn more about ranking and comparing paid survey companies to pick the best one, follow this link: Paid Survey Review