You have more than likely seen the claims made by many survey sites that you can make a living working from home just filling in surveys. With the promise of easy money, it's human nature to want to be a little skeptical and rightly so. The reality of online surveys is that many people aren't making a real living from it, its not to say that you can't. To put it into perspective, thousands of people a year register to start a business. Most of them by the end of the year have not broken even with their business venture and a high percentage will even fail before the close of the financial year. That's not to say starting a business doesn't work, it just doesn't work for some.

As with all industries there are good and bad. There are survey sites that really do enable their members to make real money. You just need to have a realistic expectation and certainly you wouldn't want to quit your day job.

So who would be the best candidates for wanting to earn an income from doing surveys.

The most obvious candidate are stay at home mums. They are already at home and any home business style model would be ideally suited to their schedule. They can complete surveys at their leisure without being committed to a fixed schedule like a part time job. That way if something unexpected comes up like their child getting sick they will have the freedom to tend to the childs needs.

Students are your next group that would be ideally suited to the convenience and flexibility. They are generally a group that are in need of extra finances and doing surveys is something that isn't intrusive to their study schedule.

People looking to make some extra money. With costs rising and budgets being stretched many people are looking for a way to make extra money without to much hassle. With online surveys you have a sense of control, you don't want to complete the survey opportunity that has been sent to you then you don't have to. You fill in the surveys that you want and you earn an extra income at the end of the month.

Working from home is something that would appeal to most people and the promises of instant riches to go with it can be too good to pass up. The fact is that while the promises are overblown you can still earn an income from just sitting in front of your computer.