A lot of retirees searching means of bringing in additional money are wondering about all the ads they see promising that you can make thousands from filling out surveys online.

Online surveys are simply the Internet version of the market research forums that companies have conducted for decades. As a consumer, you pull up the survey form which asks you to share your opinions of a series of questions about a proposed product or service.

Companies use the results they get in a number of ways. They use it to determine if they should put out a product at all. If the participants surveyed overwhelmingly give the product or service a thumbs down, the company may entire scrap the project and go on to something new. If the survey takers mostly like the product but wish it had more features, the producer can add those features to the product and then resurvey. And if everyone loves the product, the company can move full speed ahead towards marketing it.

In addition, the result of the Internet survey can help to determine product price points. A company may be considering offering a product/service for $99. But survey participants indicate that they would be willing to pay up to $177 for the product. The company thereby avoids a devastating pricing mistake costing them possibly millions of dollars.

Some, but not all, companies are willing to pay the survey participant for their time in filling out the survey forms. Determining which companies are willing to pay is what let's a number of people earn a decent amount of income from filling out survey forms.

Can you make three or four thousand dollars a month or more filling out surveys? Unlikely, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, product manufacturers don't want just anyone's opinion. They want the opinion of people who are potential users of their product. If you don't fall into their demographics, you are not of much use to them. Secondly, after a while, it can become pretty tedious and boring to sit at your computer all day, locate forms that pay cash, and fill them out. Thirdly, although their are a number of companies that pay cash for filling out forms, in most cases we're not talking about amounts of $75 or $100. And lastly, many companies have a limit on how many times one person can fill out a survey for their company within a specified time limit. In other words, you might fill out a survey for company X but are not allowed to fill in another survey for company X until 3 months have expired. So it's unlikely that you are going to end up making a three figure income or buying a Lexus with your earned money.

Having said that, however, it is possible to work at it part time and bring in some good spending money for not a lot of effort. On the low side, you might bring in enough money to treat yourself and your partner to dinner a few times a month. Or, if you are very efficient in finding companies that pay, you could make a few hundred a month of extra income. There are stories of people making thousands of month, but until verified, it's best to take those stories with a grain of salt.

But for seniors or retired persons that have a little free time on their hand and don't mind sitting at their computers, this might be something that they want to take a look at.