Legitimate Research Companies Will:

Have contact information on their website, and a representative available to answer questions/concerns about their surveys.

Limit the number of surveys you can take.

Ask participants to answer screening questions to see if they meet demographic requirements needed for their research sample.

Value the time you take to complete surveys by offering modest incentives and “thank yous” such as sweepstakes entries, coupons or a nominal monetary reward.

Generally affiliate themselves with a trade group. (Most associations require members to meet certain ethical standards).

Have accessible terms and conditions and a privacy policy.

Honor your request to discontinue sending e-mail invitations for online surveys or to remove you from their online research panel.

Legitimate Paid Survey Companies Won’t:

Request credit card or bank account information or your Social Security number.

Try to sell or promote a product.

Request payment for anything.

Try to recruit you with a one-question survey (e.g., “What’s your favorite color?”) in a pop-up ad or unsolicited e-mail.

Contact or seek personal information from any child under the age of 13 without a parent’s prior, verifiable consent.

Always, always, always, no exceptions - before you sign up with paid survey company, carefully read their "Terms of Use" or "Rewards" sections.

This page should explain how you're earning the free product or monetary award. You may think that you'll receive a prize or award by simply completing a survey, while in fact that may merely register you in a drawing to win the item. What is expected of you in order to earn the incentive – How long is the survey you are required to complete? Is it in several parts over an extended period of time? Do you need to refer friends?

Just because the introduction screen says "cash surveys," doesn't mean that's the only form of compensation available. If they broker paid online surveys from many different companies, the rewards will vary with the type of study. They may include cash or prize drawings or sweepstakes entries.

Find out exactly what "cash" means. Sometimes it's a check in your name, a pre-paid debit card, a PayPal transaction, or pre-paid gift cards, etc. Depends on what your definition of "is" is.

Before you sign up for surveys, carefully read their "Privacy Policy."

Most of the qualitative research firms will tell you they don't share your information per industry best-management practices. If they belong to CASRO or ESOMAR or AMA or any of the other professional organizations, then they have to abide by typical codes of conduct.

Some of quantitative research companies work together and help out their colleagues, which means they'll sometimes share information with each other. They'll have to state that fact in their privacy policy. Most of the time it's no big deal, and you'll get e-mails from places you never signed up with. Which doesn't necessarily constitute a spam-attack, a scam, or anything else nefarious, subversive or malicious. Necessarily.

If foreign dignitaries are suddenly requesting your help with finances and bank accounts, that's a different story.

Take paid online surveys review sites and the reviews with a grain of salt. While actual user reviews can provide some valuable insight, be cautious of what you swallow hook, line and sinker, that's all.

It only takes one malcontent with an axe to grind to register as a few different users and post a bad reviews to give a survey firm a "bad grade." Conversely, a few positive reviews could be the work of a single proponent of that particular firm.

You'll hear about people that have had lots of paid surveys sent to them, and people that say they haven't gotten that many. Again, this points back to the fact that consumer research is driven by the demand for different demographics at different times for different projects.

And, as with most things in life, your experience with anything will probably be completely different than anyone else's.

Take "rankings" with another grain of salt.

Just what does everybody mean by "top surveys?" If the list would disclose what they're actually ranking, it would be fine. Sometimes it's a list of the online surveys that have been "reviewed" the most times. Or a number that represents the dollar figure they've paid out to date, that year, or to that website.  And there are a host of other things that won't necessarily represent which companies will actually pay YOU the most from taking their surveys.

Why are all the rankings different? If one site says that their "top 20 online survey companies" are the best, why do ten other sites say that their 20 different free paid surveys companies are the best? If someone can answer that, we'll remove this "caution."

Take paid online surveys "blacklists" with, yes, better fill up your salt shaker for this one. Again, a little poking around, and you can usually weed out the truth. Some companies deserve to be blacklisted, others do not.

Depending on the motivation behind the posting, the time it was last updated, or other reasons, they may not be valid anymore.

Someone sees a few complaints on a blog, and thinks they're doing everyone a favor by making a "black-list" without performing their own due diligence.

Someone else sees the name on a list of paid online survey companies, visits the website, and because there was no "sign-up" page, carelessly puts them on a blacklist without investigating that particular company's actual role in the research industry.

No one can predict which survey firms will be hired for future consumer studies, which demographic will be in demand at any particular time, or what those studies will necessarily pay YOU. As far as we know, a "fortune telling crystal ball" has never been registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.