There is a lot of negativity around the principle of paid surveys and how they are scams.  These individuals and companies have no reason or evidence that this is a true statement.  I, however, have been there and done that and want to share with you some very personal and detailed information about legitimate free paid surveys and how they are a great way for anyone to make money on the internet!

I believe that 99% of the websites and individuals who are promoting paid survey companies have no idea if they are for real or not.  I, however, have had the opportunity to work for one of the paid survey companies that I represent.  Not only did I work for this company, but I had many opportunities to work with the other survey companies in the industry and know of their validity.

Four years ago, I was fortunate enough to be hired by a local marketing research firm in Orem, UT.  The name of this firm is Western Wats.  When I was hired, I, along with another individuals (who I will not name) were responsible for the launch and growth of a new paid survey panel called Opinion Outpost.  Honestly, we pretty much started from scratch!!  When I was first hired, I had never heard of online paid surveys before.  In fact, I was probably as skeptical as you are now about their legitimacy and validity.  I thought, first “who in their right mind would want to take surveys for cash”, second “who in their right mind would pay someone cash for taking surveys on the internet”?  Of course, being a new employee at the firm, I just did what I was told and didn’t think much about it again.

About three months into my employment, the lady in the accounting office who was in charge of printing checks for the survey takers came to my desk and dropped a stack of checks that I needed to seperate, put in enevelopes, stamp, and deliver to the post office.  I thought, “WOW, this is for real!  People actually make money doing this!!!”.  That night I went home and signed up with every survey company that I could so I could make as much money as possible.  The surveys started rolling in and so did the cold hard cash!

Shortly after I received my first check from one of the companies (if you think I can remember which company, you are insane, it was 4 years ago) I went to my boss to ask how we could afford to cut all those checks to those people.  I really didn’t know anything about marketing research, how it worked, and how people made money from it.  He taught me all about it that afternoon and I am going to share with you exactly what I learned.

Companies such as General Motors, Target, Sony, Apple, Blackberry, Fisher Price, and thousands of other companies need to learn how their current customers and others who are not their customers feel about their current products and possible future products that they might release.  This is called marketing research.  It is very obvious that we, as individuals, respect our own privacy and expect others to do so as well.  In the past, we have received so many telemarketing or survey research phone calls that we have become frusturated and flat out annoyed to the point where we just hang up or not even answer the phone at all.  From this was born the Do Not Call Registry which pretty much put every telemarketing company out of business.  Let me be clear, marketing researchers collecting data are not restricted from calling you for research purposes, however, the industry has suffered a huge blow because people think that any phone call from any company falls under the registry.

Because of this, marketing research companies needed to evolve and provide a way for their clients to still collect the data that they need, while making it worth while for the people taking the surveys.  They came up with a business plan of how they could provide value to both the client and the average person spending their time taking surveys.

So, they came up with a non-intrusive way of collecting market research data.  They have people sign up to make money by taking paid surveys.  These people volunteer their time for compensation.  The marketing research companies charge their clients extra money for this type of research so they can reasonably compensate their survey takers for their time and effort.  This is how you and I can make money by taking paid surveys!

Now that we have cleared up the legitimacy of Opinion Outpost, how about those other companies that Survey Inferno and hundreds of other survey sites represent?  Well, first off, we personally test every offer that we present to our users and make sure that they provide sufficient monetary value.  Also, toward the end of my employment with Opinion Outpost, we had many opportunities to work with other companies like Greenfield Online, Harris Poll, My Survey, Ipsos iSay and other marketing research companies.  If they could not collect enough data for their clients, they would have us fill the rest and provide compensation for our members.  This is a testimony to me and hopefully everyone reading this post that these paid surveys are legitimate and you can make money from them!

The last three months at Opinion Outpost was probably the most miserable months of my life!  I hardly got any work done because I was stuffing checks for our survey takers for 8 hours a day, about 3 or 4 days a week.  We literally sent out hundreds of thousands of checks a month to our survey panel members.  I have created a video that is currently on YouTube that talks about paid surveys and shows a couple of the checks that I have received.  This is legitimate, if you want to make money on the internet, this is an excellent way to do it!

I left this company about a year ago to pursue other opportunities including the launch of Survey Inferno.  I knew first hand that this was for real and wanted to share it with people like you, that is why I compiled our paid survey directory.  It has been very rewarding receiving countless emails from happy users of Survey Inferno.  It has also been very challenging trying to overcome all of the negativity and lies that are surfacing about this industry.

I want everyone to know that I appreciate you visiting our site and I highly encourage feedback and suggestions.  You can emails us with questions, feedback, or suggestions by clicking here.

You will probably also notice that our site has begun adding international paid surveys for individuals living outside the US.  We are also providing surveys for Hispanics and teens.  Over the next six months, you will also see a re-design of the website that will provide more information about each company, their contact information, and anything else that we think will make this a better experience for you.

I strongly encourage you to click here and sign up with the top ten paying survey companies on the internet today!  You will start getting surveys and start making money within a day’s time.