Why people think paid surveys are scams?

I think there are FOUR main reasons:

First, there ARE many scam sites claiming to be paid survey companies and pay people taking online surveys, but in fact they just want to have your personal information, not only they will turn around later sell it so you will get tons of spam.

Second. there are many websites promoting those “scam” survey companies just for commission no matter what, therefore it is difficult to tell what is real legitimate and what is not for survey beginners. Examples of those websites are those so called Survey Directory/Database sites who sometimes even charge a membership fee for accessing their list of survey sites – they almost always exaggerate how much money you can make by taking surveys in the hope that you will believe that their membership fee is worth paying for.

Third. Many paid offers sites advertise themselves (or claim on their own websites) as paid survey sites. The truth of the matter is, even some of them do have surveys (usually low paying ones), their main “business” is actually paid offers. Paid offers are those you get paid for trying the trial offers and often times you have to pay upfront. This could make people confused and often give false impression that paid surveys are NOT FREE, and unfortunately give paid surveys a bad name.

Finally. lot of survey beginners do not realize that it takes a while to get paid. Two or three weeks after signing up and taking some surveys, you don’t see the money coming in and you start questioning this paid surveys thing is just another online scam. Lot of people just give up this way because they don’t know if they signed up with legitimate survey companies and completed surveys, they will get paid, however, it takes time – lot of survey companies have minimum payout requirement to cash out reward, and it certainly takes time to reach that requirement. Also, it takes average 2-3 weeks for surveys companies to process payment.