Paid Online Survey Information and Tips
General Paid Survey Information
Tips and Advice for Getting Started
What To Do Once You've Started
Navigating Free Paid Surveys
General Paid Survey Information
OverviewPaid online surveys can be a fun and interesting way to make some
extra cash. There are literally hundreds of sites that are interested in your opinion
and are willing to compensate you for taking online surveys. Below you'll find some honest
answers to some of the most popular paid survey questions, some tips to help you get
started and some additional advice for when you get things rolling.
How do paid online surveys work?
By using one of the Survey
Directories on this site, you can sign up for any survey sites that you are interested
in. When you sign up for them, they will gather some demographic information. Once that
site has a survey that fits your profile, they will usually send you an email invitation.
The invitation will normally contain a link to the survey, the approximate amount of time
it will take to complete and what the compensation for the project is. You are in no way
obligated to take the survey if you don't want to. Once you have completed a survey, the
way in which you are rewarded will vary by site. The vast majority of sites will simply
send you a check. Some (relatively few) compensate by PayPal, some with gift certificates,
some with drawing entries and some with prizes. Some of the more active sites create a user
account in which you will accumulate cash or points, which can be exchanged for cash, gift
certificates or prizes. For these, once you reach a certain amount, you can cash out and
collect your reward. A sampling of the various types of sites have been assembled in the
Starter Directory to help you get your feet wet.
How much can you make with paid surveys?
You may have seen other sites claiming that
you can make thousands per month by taking online surveys. Truth is, while it is possible
to make that much in a year, you will not be able to make thousands per month. You can
however, make enough to buy that extra something, take your family out for a night on the
town or tuck a little extra away in your savings. Consider this a fun and interesting way
to earn some "bonus cash", not as a get rich scheme or a replacement for a full-time
income.
How much you actually make depends on many factors; who you are, where you live and
other demographic factors, as well as, what kinds of surveys that companies are interested
in. Where a couple hundred dollars per month is attainable, it won't be steady, dependable
income and may not be possible for some. You'll have months where you make very little and
months where you may make considerably more. I have participated in online focus groups
that have paid several hundred dollars for one project. If you are patient, over time, I
think you'll find that paid surveys will be worth your time.
How many surveys can you expect to receive?
When you are first starting out
you may not receive very many survey invitations. Whereas some sites may send you several
survey invitations per month, a vast majority of sites may only send several per year.
Don't be discouraged if within the first few months you are not receiving a significant
amount of survey invites. Be patient, once you get the ball rolling, you'll have plenty of
surveys to choose from.
What's the difference between a paid online survey, a focus group and
product testing?
Paid surveys are usually short, although some may take up to 45 minutes, and are taken
online. You get sent an invitation, take the survey and get rewarded. Focus Groups
usually require a bit more effort, take more time and can take place either at a physical
location, on the phone, or online in the form of a discussion. Focus Groups usually pay
quite a bit more and generally pay in cash. For Product Testing, you will usually be sent
a product to test and then either take a survey on the product or write a review. The
reward here is usually the product itself, although some do offer additional compensation.
Do any of the survey sites listed on Free Paid Surveys charge for
participation?
Absolutely not. Free Paid Surveys will not add a site if it charges for participation.
In fact, any true market research company is prohibited by the Marketing Research
Association of charging for participation. You should NEVER pay for information
about online surveys. There are plenty sites out there that will be more than willing to
take your money for a list of survey sites. Fact is, you'll find the same information, and
probably more, right here.
Will you get a lot of junk mail from signing up with these sites?
Surprisingly,
No. Free Paid Surveys prides itself in not listing sites that it feels engages in spamming,
selling or distributing email addresses or unethical (or just annoying) practices. There
are several points programs, such as Memolink and My Points, listed which will send several
advertisement emails per day. However, you earn points by reading them, and they're not
overwhelming. Although we do not list sites that engage in these practices, there are sites
out there that pose as legitimate survey sites, solely for the purpose of gathering and
redistributing email addresses. If in doubt, read through the sites' privacy policy and/or
terms and conditions. You can also post a message in the Forum
to get some input on a particular site.
What if you have other questions?
If you have other questions that are not
answered on this page, please search through the Forum. If
you are unable to find an answer there, you can simply post a message. New forum posts are
checked daily by Free Paid Surveys, and there are many other active forum members that may
be able to answer your questions as well. By posting to the forum, it allows us to build a
knowledge base that others with similar questions can benefit from. If you are unable to
find an answer to your question in the forum and do not wish to post a message, you can
send me an email at
webmaster@freepaidsurveys.net.
Where should you start?
I would highly recommend reading this page in its entirety, it contains a lot of good
information as far as what to expect and provides some great tips to help you along. You
then might want to consider signing up with the sites listed in the
Starter Directory. As mentioned earlier, these sites have been
specifically chosen to demonstrate the various types of paid survey sites and these sites
tend to send out more invitations than some of the others. You then may want to consider
the Featured Directory. Featured sites are those sites that
help keep Free Paid Surveys, Free. There will be some overlap with the starter directory,
so be sure not to sign up for the same site more than once. You'll then want to go to
whichever Directory is appropriate, being sure to follow the
tips below. Then just wait for invitations and take surveys. You may also want to explore
the rest of the site. You'll find additional information on the detail pages, in the
articles and news, and the forum.
Paid Survey Tips and Advice for Getting Started
Before you start signing up for paid surveys, download a program called Roboform.
You can download a free trial here
Roboform. This
program will store information such as your name, email, etc.. and will save you tons
of time when registering for paid survey sites or anything else. It will also save your
login names and passwords so you won't need to remember them all, but only so many on
the free trial. You may eventually want to upgrade to the full version, which will
remember ALL of your logins and passwords, but it is not necessary.
You may want a Paypal Account, if you don't already have one. You can sign up for
one here:
Paypal. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account, but a few sites use PayPal
as a form of payment.
Signup with as many paid online survey sites as you feel comfortable with and are
interested in. Be sure to check the special interest directories to see if you fit the
profiles. Look for focus groups in your area. A focus group located close to your home
could lead to some interesting, and well paying, projects.
When signing up for sites, be sure to bookmark any sites that have a login
section. You may want to create a "surveys" folder in your favorites. Many sites that
have a member login will have some type of account that you can check. Come back and
familiarize yourself with any sites you have bookmarked.
Be sure to fill out any "profiles" or "profile boosters" for any sites that have
them. Filling out profiles will increase your odds of being selected for a survey.
Check your email often for invitations. If you wait to long a survey may be
closed before you are able to participate.
Don't be discouraged if the compensation for a survey is a drawing. Most surveys
are limited in the number of participants and there are usually quite a few prizes. The
odds are usually pretty good and the rewards can be higher. Of course, you may not win
anything. Think of it as a free lotto ticket.
Be honest. As you start taking these surveys, you'll realize that these are real
companies looking for YOUR honest feedback. You have an opportunity to influence the
products you buy.
What To Do Once You've Started
Make Sure Login Sites are Bookmarked
You'll notice during sign up that some sites have a login for members. Hopefully you
were bookmarking these sites as you went along. If you didn't, I have a
Bookmark List
that should list the majority of the
sites that have a login. You can use the Bookmark List by itself and just click on the
links or you can actually save the page to your computer and import it into Internet
Explorer. To import into Explorer, open the
Bookmark List.
Go to "File" - "Save As", then change the "Save As Type" value to "Web Page,
HTML Only" and click "Save" to save it to your computer (remember where you saved it).
Then, still in Explorer, go to "File" - "Import and Export". This should open up a
wizard. Walk through the wizard choosing "Import Favorites", choose the file you just
saved, and choose your base favorites folder (most likely called Favorites). This will
create a folder in your favorites called "Survey Tracking".
Check Your Accounts
Now that you've got your login sites bookmarked, you'll want to check your accounts
from time to time. I would recommend at least once a month. Some of these sites will
not pay you unless you login and "cash out". I would recommend that once you have
these sites bookmarked that you spend some time and familiarize yourself with each one.
See what kind of system they have, cash or points. See what points can be redeemed for
and see what the minimum "cash out" level is.
What You Should Do Every Day
There are several sites that have rewards that you can earn every day. They are usually
small, but do add up over time. These sites are also included in the
Bookmark List
in the "Daily Activities" folder. If
you have signed up for these sites, here is a list of daily activities you can do to
help build your balances.
Login to Six Questions. You get points for every day that you login.
The point values increase by 1 every day. For example, if today you login and
receive 50 points, tomorrow you will receive 51. Check to see if you have any Six
Questions mail, you'll get 600 points for reading mail from Six Questions. You may
also want to take a few
polls and check to see if there are any offers you are interested in. I would not
recommend accepting any offers, unless you are genuinely interested in them. You
can also play the Six Questions game or some of the other games. Either of which
can substantially increase your points, if you win, just be aware,
that you can actually lose points by doing this. It you want to play it safe, just
take the login points, take the polls and read any Six Questions email that you
might receive. They also give 1500 points for a referral; so if you know anyone who
might be interested, send him or her a referral email through the site.
Login to It Pays to Learn. When you login, it should tell you how many
v-mails you have. Read them. You won't make a lot by doing this but you can make a
couple of bucks by the end of the month. You can also see if there are any offers
that you are interested in, again I do not advocate accepting offers unless you are
interested in them. You'll also need to take enough quizzes to
rack up 500 QuizBucks by the end of each month in order to be eligible for cash.
The quizzes are actually quite interesting, like playing trivia, and it doesn't
take very long to get 500 QuizBucks. Make sure you have confirmed your PayPal
account. You only need to do this once. You'll actually be sending them 1 cent, and
they will send it back to you. You'll get 25 cents for confirming and you'll then
be able to accept PayPal payments from them. There's a lot you can do on this site,
I won't go to far into it. But one interesting aspect is that you can run banner
ads on their site using your QuizBucks (earned by simply taking quizzes). So, you
could, for example, run a banner ad for Six Questions to try and get some
referrals. I would recommend reading the v-mails on a daily basis. You can check
out the It Pays to Learn System if you'd like more
information.
Login to NFO My Survey. For every day that you login, you get an
entry into their $10,000 sweepstakes and their daily extravaganza giveaway. Plus
you'll be able to see if there are any surveys available for you.
Login to Lightspeed. See if there are any surveys available. If not
check to see if there are any quick matches or mini polls. You don't get paid
for quick matches or mini polls, but you get an entry into the $5,000 quarterly
drawing and into their 5,000 points a day giveaway.
Check your email for Memolink and My Points email. These will
be basically advertisements, but you will receive points for each one you read.
You will also want to make sure that you are signed up for Memolinks Lotto. When
sign up for the lotto you can have them send you a daily reminder. If you match
all of the numbers, it's a million bucks, not likely I know, but if you match some
of the numbers you will get varying amounts of points, depending on how many
numbers you matched. You may also want to login to Memolink as the have other ways
to earn points as well; surveys, visit websites and offers.
There may be other sites that you want to participate in daily as well. When
you are familiarizing yourself with the sites add any that you'd like to your
daily activities.
Navigating Free Paid Surveys
What are the benefits of registering?
Becoming a registered member of Free Paid Surveys has several advantages. First, when
returning to the site, introductory text ("Hello, welcome to...") will be not be
shown as long as you are logged in. This should make your return visits more enjoyable
since you will not have to scroll through text that you have already read. Second,
being a registered member will allow you to post messages in the forum and to submit
user reviews. Both the forum and reviews can be viewed by anyone, but only registered
users can actually submit posts. Rest assured that Free Paid Surveys will never abuse
your registration information, and in fact only requires a username, email and
password. All other information is completely optional. For more information you can
read through our Privacy Policy.
About the Free Paid Surveys Info Box
The Free Paid Surveys Info Box is the box you will see displayed in the directories,
unless you have checked the hide info checkbox. There will be one info box for each
site and it is designed to give you the most information possible about a paid survey
site. Below you will find a brief description for each field.
|
(1) Survey Site Name |
Added: (2) |
A brief description of the site (3)
Full details and reviews (4) |
FPS Rating:(5) 
User Rating:(6) |
| Region |
Type |
Reward |
Referral |
Notes |
| (7) |
(8) |
(9) |
(10) |
(11) |
Survey Site Name - This link will take you to the survey site where
you can sign up with them.
Added: - This is the date that the site was added to the Free Paid
Surveys database. This will allow you to easily see (and sort) which sites have
been recently added.
Description - This is a brief description of the site. It has been
shortened so that it does not take up too much room on the list. To see the
full description you can click on the "Full details and reviews" link (4).
Full Details and Reviews - This link will take you to the detail page
for the site. The detail page will contain a full description of the site, a
full review by Free Paid Surveys (if available) and any user reviews that have
been submitted. From here you can also submit a user review if you'd like and
a link to the site is included should you decide you'd like to sign up.
FPS Rating - This is the rating that Free Paid Surveys has given the
site. To see ratings for individual categories, as well as, the full review,
you can click on the "Full details and Reviews" link (4).
User Rating - This is the rating that other users have given the site
overall. To see the individual categories and the individual reviews by users,
you can click on the "Full details and Reviews" link (4).
Region - This is the region of the world where the site accepts sign
ups from. The regions include the United States (USA), Canada (CAN), Australia
(AUS), the United Kingdom (UK) and International (INT).
Type - Type of survey site. Possible types are; General Survey (GS),
Focus Group (FG), and Product Testing (PT).
Reward - This is the reward type for completing surveys at the site.
Possible reward types include:
C - Cash
M - Merchandise
GC - Gift Certificates
P - Points that can be exchanged for the first 3.
D - Drawing entries
Referral - Shows if the site has a referral program of some sort and
what type. Possible referral values are; Referral (Ref), Affiliate (Aff), and
OffersQuest (OQ). You can read more about referrals in the
Gaining Referrals section.
Notes - Special notes for the site. Will usually correspond to one of
the other fields marked with an *. In most cases this will be an
additional condition for joining the site. For example, you may see in the
"Region (7)" field, USA*. If you look in the "Notes" field you may see that
this site is only open to those living in Texas.
What does it mean if a site is "Not Rated"?
Simply that it has not been rated. This is not the same as a zero rating, which
would mean that the site is terrible, it just means that there has been no rating
information entered for that site. There are several reasons why there may not be
an "FPS Rating" for a particular site. First, I may have just not had time to enter
it yet. Second, in the case of a newly added site, I will need to be a member for
a while before I can fairly evaluate the site. And third, I may not qualify for a
site. Since I live in the USA, I will not qualify for a strictly Canadian survey
site.
How can you add a User Review of a survey site?
Go to any of the survey directories that lists the site you'd like to review. Find
the site and click on the "Full Details and Reviews" link for that site. On the
detail page, you will find a link to add a review for that site, in the User Reviews
section. You may only review each site one time, so make sure you have read the User
Review Posting Guidelines and Policies.
What if you want to change a review that you've already
submitted?To ensure that User Reviews remain valid, Free Paid Surveys does not
allow any user to post more than one review per survey site and does not provide an edit
function for user reviews. Please review your reviews carefully before submitting them.
However, if you do need to modify a review that you have written, please send an email,
from the same email address that you are registered with to
webmaster@freepaidsurveys.net.
Please be sure to include your username and the name of the survey site that you wish to
change the review for. After receiving your email, I will first send you a confirmation
email, which you must respond to before I will take any action. Once you have responded
to the confirmation email, I will delete your old review and send you a confirmation
that you will now be able to write a new review for that site.
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