Doing surveys for money is great, but sometimes you can’t help but feel you’re being cheated out of your time – you get paid dimes for surveys that other people pull in solid bucks for, and you get really demoralized. What’s the trick? How do other people manage to find all the good, lucrative websites, and make real money from answering questions? Search engines are one thing to blame here.

Use forums, not search engines

For some reason, the good paying surveys websites have gotten delisted from most popular search engines lately. This is really strange, as those websites are really lucrative businesses which give people a huge opportunity to make money as well. Today, all you can find with a search engine are low-quality websites which will basically rob you of your time and pay you a laughable amount of money in return.

Forums, however, are a different story. You can actually see people’s opinions on any given website, and find the real deals. Just find a forum that’s related to online businesses and making money from the Internet – affiliate marketing forums are a good start. Then, just grab a cup of coffee and start reading. You should be able to notice a trend in what people on the forum like and dislike. Use this information to guide yourself through finding the appropriate websites.

Fraud filters are your friends

Most browsers nowadays can connect to a publicly available list of fraudulent websites and check one against it. This is perfect for those who want to avoid being cheated by a website – which makes it perfect for you. Always check a potential paying survey website in such a list before signing up for it. It doesn’t matter whether the registration is free or you need to pay for it – fraud has many faces, and you need to protect your personal information at all times.

Governments also provide such lists for businesses, and since a survey website is essentially a business, you can easily look it up in such a government website. If you don’t find the website in any such list, you can probably go ahead and register safely – though it’s always good to do one last check by searching for the website’s name in a popular search engine – look for forum posts and threads, if there’s anything wrong, it’s bound to come up.

Once you start getting a lot of offers, remember to filter them out! Don’t take those that don’t interest you or don’t pay a lot. Only spend your time on the good ones if you want to progress.