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When we say "paid market research", just what exactly does that mean?

Well, here's the way it actually works. Thousands of large companies have no direct contact with their ultimate end users, those who buy and use their products. Companies comparable to Dow Chemical, Union Carbide, Dupont and 3M produce 1000s of products which are sold through wholesale suppliers and independent chain stores, like supermarkets. To plan new products, improve the products they have already and assess the effectiveness of their advertising they need to have opinions from consumers.

So they hire experts to do market research for them, to measure public opinions about their products. The market researchers send out survey questionnaires to get answers to the questions their large company clients are asking. This is a sizeable business on the web with 1000s of surveys being made every week. The world wide web is definitely the fastest, cheapest strategy to access many thousands of consumers and obtain answers in short order.

So how do they get people to take the time to fill in the questionnaires and answer the questions? Easy. This really is paid market research, they are making legitimate paid surveys and they have a budget to carry it out. So they really allocate funds to cover survey participants for their participation. Which is why those that participate get paid to do surveys!

It doesn't pay all that much per survey. A smaller survey (5-10 minutes to fill out) might pay $10. A lengthier survey (15-20 minutes) would typically pay $25. Not much, but it adds up. Take a $10 survey and also a $25 survey daily and you would make over $1,000 in a month!

Just one single survey maker, Greenfield Online, paid out over $4 million to survey participants last year! The secret to making money with paid market research surveys will be to get your name and demographic info on the lists of quite a few good survey makers like Greenfield Online. One can find over 700 survey makers in the U.S., over 3,000 globally. No more than 20% offer legitimate paid surveys that actually pay out and pay promptly. 40% are really sales companies that you'd like to avoid.

The simplest way to acquire a good list of good survey makers it to join a paid survey membership site that maintains such lists for its members. For further details and current lists of the best membership sites, just click here for more information on the subject of paid market research.