A friend of mine is in a financial crunch and is sick at home, she asked me about online job opportunities because it would be an ideal situation under the circumstances. I promised her that I would make some checks; and to my dismay most of them seemed to be scams. I maybe wrong but after countless queries and application it all came down to the same thing. They all wanted payment before you could receive any work. I would like to know if they are any legitimate market research or paid survey jobs online. And if so I would appreciate the name or names of such companies. Thank you!

Pinecone research is real. My daughter does their surveys. They look for certain demographics at various times and are not always taking new people. They pay $3 per survey and
she gets about 2 to 4 per month. They will pay by paypal and check and gift cards etc. I do not have the link. Do a search and it should come up.

Like Reja said there probably are a few 'real' sites out there offering actual online paid survey work, probably for market research or something, similar to the phone-marketers that ask you to sit for twenty minutes or so to answer a phone survey about various things.

I don't know of any 'real' sites doing any recruiting drives online for paid surveys. You could search for the legit marketing research companies that either out-source this type of work, or to see if they're offering positions for the survey stuff. Jobs are kind of thin on the ground everywhere lately.

Just be wary of the sites that you do find. They can have conditions on the usage of their sites and completion of the surveys. It can be difficult to tell which is legit and not these days. Scammers are everywhere, but yeah, you're doing the right thing to be wary of the 'money up front' websites demanding payment for this and that without really doing anything for you.

Don't trust those sites. No one should be asking you for cash on the spot without giving you a legitimate reason for the neccessity. You should, as a consumer/potential worker, have enough leg-room without being under pressure to decide for yourself if they're worth your time.

~ Pyre

P.S: Just be careful out there.

Thanks guys for the help and advice. As you say Pyreite scammers are everywhere, and in these harsh economic times we really need to be careful with the little most of us have. Rebajean thanks for the info, I will pass it along to my friend.

There are several real, legit sites that do this. In fact, I belong to several. In the last month i cashed out to probably close to 75 bucks with only four of the ones I used (just did 30 bucks worth of cash outs today alone in the form of not only cash but gift cards for Amazon). Pinecone Research, as mentioned, is one of the best and most legitimate of all of them. That's a flat 3 bucks per survey. However, getting on Pinecone is hard as they are one that only takes a select few.

Keep in mind that when doing this, you screen out more than you ever get a survey, which can be frustrating. And it can be time consuming.

If someone is truly interested, PM me through the site and we'll work from there to get you the links as some have to go through email and that involves my IRL name (not posting that here, folks!).

I just recently joined Pinecone Research and I hope it goes well.