Maximize Your Earnings with Online Surveys
Making the Most of Internet Survey Sites while Avoiding Scams
Feb 19, 2009
Paid surveys on the Internet are a great way to make money, but cash doesn’t come rolling in with no effort on your part. To maximize your earnings with online surveys, you’ve got to follow a few simple rules of thumb.
Keep Records
Making sure you’re being paid for your time is your responsibility. An easy way to organize your records is creating an “Unpaid Surveys” folder in your email account. For every survey you complete, send an email to that folder. It should note the date, survey ID, who it came from, amount of promised reward, and when to expect the reward to be credited to your account or arrive in the mail. Include any confirmation numbers or emails about the survey. Go through the folder regularly, contact companies about delinquent payments, and delete the email once payment has been received.
Check Emails Regularly
It’s true that online surveys can be completed at any time, but if you wait too long then you will miss survey opportunities. Most surveys expire after a certain number of days or when a certain number of participants have taken the survey. So check your emails regularly a few times throughout the day to be sure that you aren’t missing out on opportunities.
Read Carefully
Sometimes it’s easy to breeze through surveys without thoroughly reading the questions and instructions, but resist the urge. Many surveys include verification questions to catch those who are answering questions without reading them first. Falsifying answers will automatically close the survey and could possibly get you removed from the panel altogether. Also, if you ignore instructions to press ‘Next’ or enter your email at the end of a survey, you may not be paid even though you finished all the survey questions.
Be Honest
Being honest may disqualify you from some surveys, but falsifying information in order to get paid is wrong. It skews the data and defrauds the survey sites that are paying you for your honest opinions. Plus, dishonesty is grounds for removal from the panel. Your account could be closed and you could lose all your earnings to that point.
Avoiding Internet Survey Scams
Unfortunately lots of scam artists hide out on the Internet promising survey opportunities, too. Here are a few ways to avoid them:
- Don’t pay to join any survey panels
- Don’t pay for access to a database of survey sites
- Don’t give your social security number or bank account number to any survey company
- Only join sites that have been recommended by trusted friends or multiple third-party sources on the internet who have actually been paid by the site before
- Monitor your survey accounts regularly to make sure your participation is being credited
Remember that real marketing research companies will pay for your opinion; you should never have to pay them. And while there are legitimate databases of paid survey sites, you can just as easily find similar lists for free. It’s not hard to find personal blogs and Internet articles like “Top 10 Internet Survey Sites for Making Money” that recommend good survey sites to join.
With a little bit of diligence and effort, it’s possible to maximize your profits with online surveys.
