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Do you have opinions? On candy bars? On beer? On action movies, TV ads and the president? Do you like making money without leaving home? Since it’s a good bet the answer to these questions is yes, you may want to look into taking surveys online. They won’t burst your bank account, and you can’t live off them, but they can help take care of some of your bills.

Surveys can be time-intensive, and it may not seem worth what you earn at first. But once you get into a groove and figure out how to make money from many survey companies at the same time, the cash will come more easily.

Picking reputable sites and skipping con jobs is the first order of business. Don’t sign up with pay-for-play sites. There are simply too many good free survey opportunities on the Web for these sites to have any business demanding your money.

Then pick how you want to get paid. You can go with sites that offer gift cards, sweepstakes entries or retail rewards points, if that’s what you want. But if you’re looking for money to help with household expenses, it’s not what you want; sites that pay cash are. And there are a lot of those too.

Examples of reputable cash-paying sites include Toluna, Opinion Outpost and SurveySpot. All three use dollars-per-points schemes. At SurveySpot, you typically get $1 or $2 for the 10- or 20-point surveys that count toward cash; the rest offer rewards. At Toluna, the value of surveys varies, with every 60,000 equaling $20. And at opinion Outpost you get $1 for each 10 points.

After you’ve researched all the sites you can find, make a long list of the good ones and start signing up. Everywhere. You’ll have to take a pre-survey before you’ll qualify to take most of the surveys, and for many of them you simply won’t qualify. This means you need the largest collection of survey sites you can get, after weeding out the scammers and sites that don’t pay what you’re looking for.

Last but hardly least, take the surveys, which will come to your inbox, and give your opinion on everything from pop stars to new cars. You may have to give up just a few minutes, or as much as an hour, with length usually affecting pay. Don’t speed but don’t stall, since you may have other surveys waiting for you.

It takes a lot: hard work, talent, ambition, long hours, and a great idea. Plus some home-review.com”>startup money. And even then, the odds aren’t great. But if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re willing to do what it takes, you may be able to use a home-based online business to gain financial independence.

The key, of course, is the idea, and you’ll need something that people will pay for. Do some market research. Is there a need? Is there a desire? What does the competition look like? Will you be able to stomach the hard times? Are you realistic about the fact that there will be a lot of them, especially at first?

Don’t worry if your idea isn’t totally new, however. Plenty of people operate home businesses in which they buy items in the brick-and-mortar world and resell them on eBay, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea for the next person who does it. Make sure you have a business plan before you try to put your concept into reality.

Find out if you need to obtain any state or local permits or licenses, or meet any zoning regulations that apply to home businesses. Compliance may cost you some seed money.

There may be more expenses at the outset: a home office setup, computer equipment, software, supplies, and any needed professional services (a lawyer or accountant, for instance). Be cautious in your budgeting and spending; you may not be able to recoup these costs out of early business returns.

At this point you’ve just gotten started. The serious lifting of running the business comes later. But if the concept behind your business is right for the market and you can put in the drive, talent, time and effort it takes, you could turn your online business into a source of income that lets you work from home.