Are you taking surveys for extra cash? A lot of people are. It’s a great way to earn a part time income. Students, stay at home parents, retirees and people who want a second job without punching a timeclock have all turned to surveys as a money making solution.

One of the biggest challenges survey takers today face is questioning if the survey site they are about to sign up with is legitimate. You do have to be on alert: there are “phishing” sites that are simply looking for your information. So before you press that “Enter” button on the survey site, surf around it to see if it seems like a high-quality, legitimate website.

Here are a few things you should look for:

About Us page. Most companies in business have pride about who they are and why they do it. Reading this page will tell you a bit about the company’s history and what’s important to them. Now if they do have an About Us page, but it is very vague and doesn’t provide specific information about the company then you may want to pass them by. Don’t exclude a new company simply because they are the new survey site, but do check out their website and see if it makes you feel comfortable.

Privacy Policy. Remember that online survey sites collect a lot of information from the people who take their surveys. It is critical that they have a Privacy Policy listed – and we highly recommend that you read it too.

Terms of Use. This is a bit different from a Privacy Policy and simply has to do with how users use and interact with the site. A lot of the time this is a long document written in legal-ese that is a bit hard for most of us to read. You may want to try to read this as well, to understand what the site expects of its user community.

Does the site look professional? This is a bit subjective but there are a few things you can look for. Remember that when a company sets out to do business on the Internet, they want to put their best foot forward. A serious company is not going to do a sloppy job of putting up their website. Take a look and see if they have:

Spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

Social media links on their site – is their social media up to date? When did they last post?

Do they mention how they pay survey takers? The top quality sites say up front if they pay by PayPal, gift card or other methods.

Finally, you also want to be on alert if a site tells you that you can earn a high income from taking surveys. The survey takers who are successful are doing well but still will admit they are not earning extreme amounts – such as $5K a month. If a survey site talks about “sit at home in your pajamas and earn” then most likely it is not a legit site.