It is more efficient for the Market Researchers to farm out the nitty-gritty work of getting the surveys into the hands of the survey takers than it is to try to do that themselves.

There are several hundred of these, somewhere between 700 and 1,100 in the U.S. alone, more than 3,000 worldwide. Wide variations in the nature and makup of survey makers make their exact number difficult to determine.  Some do other things as well, some do survey maker business only occasionally, some are survey makers in name only and are, in reality, sales organizations, etc.

This is a rapidly changing and somewhat turbulent segment of the business, with new companies coming and old companies going frequently. There are many new outfits, some pretenders and wanabes.  Still others are really sales organizations using the "We take surveys" line to lure unsuspecting survey takers to give them their demographic data which is later used to try to sell things to them! 

Survey Takers.  These are the tens of thousands of people who get asked (and rewaded for) their opinions with each and every survey. They come from a wide range of demographics.  They are almost all making their principal income somewhere else, but the payments they get from taking surveys are a welcome addition to their total incomes. 

Survey work can be fun and interesting. Many survey takers who are not really serious about making money, do it part time for fun and semi-charity work reasons. 

Others get very serious about making money and tend to specialize in the serious surveys with the highest payout ratios. 

Paid Survey Sites (Guide companies).  Primarily because of the turbulence and uncertainty in the Survey Maker segment, paid survey guide companies have been formed and have opened paid survey sites to help new survey takers get started off without getting "scammed, spammed and slammed".

Based on their knowledge of the current survey maker market situation, they develop lists of good, reliable Survey Makers.  Then they offer their services to new would-be survey takers, charge them a small one-time membership fee, give them a copy of their current list and guide them through the start-up phase of becoming paid survey takers.

These companies too, run the gamut from good to not-so-good to bad to horrible. There are paid survey review sites that provide information on how to rank and select the current contenders.  (See also: Paid Survey Reviews - Are They Any Help? )

The above write-up can serve as a brief summary of how the Internet side of the paid survey business is set up and how it operates as of the middle of 2007. 
 

An earlier version of this information, in an article named, "Paid Surveys and Paid Survey Sites - A Players' Guide for Survey Takers" is a published article written by Jorge Chavez. To open a new page to view the original article at ezinearticles.com, Click Here.