Taking paid online surveys is a fun and easy way to make a little extra money from the comfort of your home office. The process is simple. All you have to do is go online, sign up for some paid online survey opportunities, and participate in any surveys that catch your eye. If you’re ready to start earning your rewards, here are some things you can do to make sure you start out on the right foot.

1. Separate email address: Because becoming a paid online survey taker usually means that you’ll be receiving lots of emails, it’s best to set up a separate address for this purpose. Once you really get into it, you may even receive hundreds of survey-related emails per day, and you don’t want any of your personal emails being lost in the flood of messages. Plus, because there are a few illegitimate survey sites out there, you’ll probably end up on some spam lists, which you definitely want to keep far away from your personal email.

2. Find an autofill software: There are several high-quality and free autofill software programs that can help make your job easier by filling in the answers to some of the questions for you. If you use Firefox, there are a few great add-ons that can do this for you, and there are a couple of good chrome extensions that can do this. If you use one of the other browsers, download a free autofill program.

3. Find your survey community: If all you do is read websites by the people who make and spread word about paid online surveys, then you’ll never get the complete picture. It’s important to get a feel for what other people like you have to say about surveys. Not only can they give you tips and advice for how to find the best opportunities, but they can also direct you to good ones and warn you about bad ones. So find an online survey community and follow along with the discussions on a daily basis.

4. Choose your survey sites carefully: Remember, not all survey sites are legitimate, and you’ll probably come across some that just want to steal your information or even your money. Before signing up for any survey site, make sure it has been vetted by the online survey-taking community. If you can’t find any unbiased reviews of the service, then approach with caution. Stick with the bigger ones that actually work.

5. Set up a PayPal account: Many survey sites pay in awards and gift cards, but there are some that do pay actually money. For this purpose, you’ll want to have a PayPal account. Because it can take a few days to link a PayPal account to your offline bank account, you’ll want to get the ball rolling on this right away.