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Paid Surveys UKAll of the paid survey sites listed below offer rewards in the form of cash, prize draw entries, vouchers and/or the opportunity to keep the products you, as a paid survey panel member, are asked to test and answer survey questions about.
Avoiding Paid Survey Scams There is a lot of hype surrounding paid market research opportunities and work at home jobs in general and learning how to see through all this to get at the truth behind paid market research is the quickest way to avoid the scams. The following is a list of things to look for before you join a paid online survey site and avoid the scam artists. 1) Does the site charge a membership fee to join? Fee based survey sites are generally best avoided. An honest, legitimate paid survey company needs the opinions of a wide variety of people and generally, the bigger the number of opt-in survey panel members they have access to, the better it is for them. By charging a fee to join that limits their database size and hence cripples their panel. NO real paid survey company wants this. Fee based online survey panels, who usually hype the rewards you can receive as well, are generally middle-men piggy backing on the idea of paid market research. By paying a membership fee they give you access to a list of companies who will pay you to take surveys online. Or in other words, charge you for the kind of information you can find FREE just by searching the internet using terms like "paid surveys", "paid market research" etc. 2) Does It Over-Hype The Rewards? Rewarded online market research has been around for a long time but in recent years a number of middle-men have jumped on the bandwagon claiming you can earn $70 an hour, $150 an hour or THOUSANDS every month if you pay them $30 or more for access to their database of paid survey sites. The fact is, an average survey rewards anywhere from $10-20 on the highest paying paid survey sites to a few dollars for your time on the others. Whilst you may very occassionally receive a multi-part survey or be invited to join a focus group discussion which pays much higher this is not the normal way of things. 3) Work At Home Taking Paid Surveys Full Time - Really? No not really. Whilst it is true, there are hundreds of market research companies offering rewards for taking online surveys and answering opinion questionnaires, most of them are typically not very active and may send you a survey every couple of months or maybe less than one a year. In addition, many do not offer cash rewards for every survey you take, but instead offer prize draw entries, sweepstakes, coupons and other rewards. Paid survey panels are a great way to earn a little extra cash here and there but are definitely NOT to be seen as an alternative to full time work regardless of what you may read elsewhere. 4) Privacy, Terms and Conditions Etc. Take a look at the privacy statement on the site you are thinking of joining. Legitimate market research companies comply with an industry standard not to share personally identifiable information with abyone including their survey partners. If the privacy statement is missing or looks incomplete or generally unprofessional, then you might like to think twice about joining that particular site. 5) Further Signals Of Quality American survey companies often list their membership of the Better Business Bureau which is a nice and easy signal of quality, for example American Consumer Opinion Panel, Global Test Market, Survey Savvy and ACOP all display the BBB Online Reliability Program logo on their homepages. Bottom line: paid survey opprtunities do exist, but genuine paid survey sites pay YOU and not the other way around, they do not over-hype what you can earn as a panel member and they subscribe to industry standards in terms of keeping your personal details safe. |
