ALT-1 How Survey Sites Make their Profits
You fill the survey, and then you get paid $15. You made a profit of $15, but what did the survey site make?
Many beginners who have filled their first survey ask questions like these because they want to know if they are making more than the sites. Usually the site gets a bonus on their surveys.
For example, you take a survey that pays you $15, then the bonus might be of 10% which is $1.5 for the survey site. Since the site sends out so many surveys each and every day, that $1.5 can add up to thousands of dollars of revenue per day.
Now thats not to say that they don't work hard at maintaining their sites. They have to promote their sites and get companies to hire them as their affiliates and then send the surveys to the "right" people.
There are other ways that a survey site makes money.
1.) Advertising: Using google adsense, selling advertising space to companies that the survey site sends the surveys for or even getting the money from the survey companies itself to run the site.
2.) Commission: A percentage bonus for every survey taken and filled in completely. Mentioned above
3.) Benefits: If the survey site sends more than 1000 surveys or so and get good results then they can receive additional benefits like free hosting, more commission per survey taken etc.
4.) If the survey site is owned by the company that the surveys are for, then the company makes money based on the results they get so they can stop producing the products that people do not buy or prefer.
In this case the site itself will make money through advertising mostly because there is no commission involved, unless the site owner is a worker for the company.
5.) Non-profit: These sites will not use the surveys for income, but to use the money for charities, etc. Surveys usually contain questions like "what would you donate for", or which charity works the hardest to reach the poor people? etc.
Sites like these will also be based on commission and will get percentage of the money to run the site.
Also in rare cases the government might decide to fund the surveys using taxes of the public.
Keep taking surveys, but don't expect to make millions!
