There is both good news and bad news for anyone expecting surveys will be the real deal. The bad news is the fact that scams do exist and sadly there are quite a lot of them. For this reason you really must do a bit of research before using any company.
The problem with doing research is that it's really time consuming instead of joining a membership site and studying every individual business I'd recommend paying a small fee.Membership sites may still be a threat but those which are good will give a gigantic list of companies which will all happen to be checked to make certain they are legitimate. Many also offer tools and advice which will help in a single way or another.
So it is also less difficult to obtain the scam membership sites studying whether membership websites are legitimate or not is easier than researching a huge number of unique businesses.
There are a lot of review sites available that have done this research for you so you do not even have to spend ages studying this. All I 'd say about review sites is to ensure they don't have an ulterior motive. A good sign of a review site that is dubious is if they only review one or two businesses. The more businesses which are reviewed the better to be honest.
They can supply a very nice source of additional income although despite what you may have read elsewhere taking online surveys won't make you a fortune and they are something I 'd recommend doing particularly if you've a little bit of spare time in which to do them.