Paid Surveys

pondie1

another ok one is called its my view,you get paid at £50,the surveys are usually a minimum of £2,i hav around £43 in less than a year

William_H

It's invitation only unfortunately. I retract my thanks.

Just kidding. (and anyway, I can't).

aqueoushumour01

pondie1 wrote: »

another ok one is called its my view,you get paid at £50,the surveys are usually a minimum of £2,i hav around £43 in less than a year

i think itsyourview might be a scam. I'm up to 46 points but I should be over the 50 mark now but my points for my last 3-4 surveys haven't been credited and i've suddenly stopped getting any surveys. They obviuously don't want to pay out!

William_H

Update on the survey front:

10 weeks in, and approx. £100 earned. That's not all cash. Some vouchers, some points that haven't reached a pay out threshold yet. But no spam, and I'm quite confident that all the sites I've signed up to are genuine. It's my 6th wedding anniversary tomorrow, and my wife and I are going out for a nice meal, so it'll pay for my beer and her taxi home.

I don't think I'll make seven. Just as well, I've heard it gets itchy.

Blog (homepage) will be updated with a review of my most favourite surveys, together with the pros and cons shortly. Until then, you can go to

https://www.surveycritic.com for a list of the best.

The best for lil' me so far are:

Lightspeed (paying at the speed of light)

I've got 11 quid from them so far from about 11 surveys I've qualified for. Interesting surveys, lots of invites, pay via PayPal.

YouGov

Always qualify for surveys, pays in cash, but high pay out threshhold of 50 notes. Good referral system.

Valued Opinions

Pays cash. 10 surveys invites so far. Qualified for three. Moderately interesting.

Ciao

and many, many more, but I've had a few glasses of wine and really couldn't list them all without falling asleep. I get about 7-10 surveys a day and qualify for about half. My top ten tips for survey beginners are somewhere on the website. Here in fact:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=4688787:

So my experiment continues. It appears not to be complete baloney.

WH.

treasureirealnds

anyone got a link to pinecone research pls. found it on google but can't seem to register on there. do u have to be referred?

lucy1000_2

Pinecone research is terribly hard to get into, and the company don't like being discussed on forums such as this.

moj1966

people have mentioned roboform how do I go about getting it ? also what does it do?

William_H

http://www.roboform.com/

It's just an automatic form filler for web applications so you don't have to keep entering all of your data every time. Completely legit - no spyware, free to download. There's a review here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C1759%2C1632856%2C00.asp

William H.

William_H

This is the deal with paid online surveys:

Everyone, bar no-one (not even my Gran), wants to make money for nothing. It's human nature. So the idea of being paid for your opinion is very appealing, because one can simply sit on their arris, give their unappreciated, inner ego an outing without anyone judging, and get real money for very little effort. I'm 4 months in to my survey experiment and yes, you do get real cash. Not a lot, and that's the point. Just enough to keep you interested. That's called supply and demand. There are enough consumers out there doing these things that the market research companies don't need to pay fiddy bucks an hour. It's more like 5-10 bucks an hour for 1-2 hours per day. So unless you're living in a tent and eat grass, or you're really bad at math, that's not enough for you to live on. Like my dear Mum always said, there are three types of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can't. I say there are 10: those who know binary, and those who don't, but I'm getting off topic.

For those of you who have not succeeded with the survey thing, you have either

a) signed up to the wrong sites (as well as the right ones), which bombard you with junk mail and garbage and are simply trying to sell their clients wares, or

b) the demographic in which you are in is not appealing to the vendors of the goods. It's rare that a vendor won't want to sell something to someone, so I can't imagine what demographic that would be. Maybe one that has everything. If that's the case, send me some of what you've got, and I'll stop doing surveys too.

Back to the point. It really is money for nothing. But not, as Dire Straits lead singer Mark Knopfler would concur, your "chicks for free". You would make more money installing microwave ovens and custom kitchens. However, however, however. People do make better money than others from these things if they create websites which promote the survey sites such as HappyGal, or PhotoMomm, or the SurveyCritic. These are all webmasters. They work hard to maintain their sites and so are deserving of a little extra cash and our gratitude for sifting through all the crap that's out there for us. I signed up through several of these sites and they were all the real deal. They have referral links which make them a little extra in the pocket, but not much. I also have a blog which is following some of this crazy adventure (trust me, I don't get out much, it's crazy to me), but it's mostly applicable to the UK, and mostly because I like to write and not because I want to make money. I try to keep it a little light hearted. It was an honest experiment into the validity of online surveys.

So you have to work hard to make money eh? Now you're scared. Well, if you're not too scared, then you should try researching affiliate marketing. That's where the real hard work/high returns come in. That's the real key to giving up your day job. Just like Katies Hugs, an affiliate website is a business. They have useful, informative content which interests the surfer. They are not scams. They presell a product (that could be anything, from a survey site to a charter boat in the Caribbean) and then direct the reader to the affiliate site where a purchase is made. Then a percentage of the purchase (5-40%) is paid to the referring website, i.e. you. If it's done well and you market your website effectively through forum advertising and correct use of critical keywords (i.e. search terms that people use to find stuff), that can be a good amount. Find what they call a "niche", which is a popular topic that is not covered in too many places on the web, and you're laughing all the way to the bank. Create multiple websites on different niches, and you might just be writing that resignation letter. Just don't be rude, you don't know when you'll have to come crawling back to your former boss.

The topic of the website has to be interesting to you though, otherwise your interest will wane, and the project will die. And don't choose making money on the web - it has literally been done to death. There is a lot of great info here:

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/188/1/Affiliate-Program-Tutorial

Like I said, I've never done it, but I'd love to give it a go. But it sure seems like hard work.

William_H

And for those who are going to take surveys after all of that, there is also www.surveypolice.com, telling you which sites are scams, and which sites users rate the highest. The number one site, PineCone Research are what I think a survey site should be all about, but they are darn hard to get into (normally only through an invitation). They are an example of a site where if you actually work hard to give your opinion, i.e. construct well written descriptions and form objective view points, they will reward well with cash and product tests. They are what I had hoped every site would be like, but alas, dear reader, alas. To paraphrase John Cleese (and no doubt a hundred others): "It's not the despair. I can handle the despair. It's the hope I can't stand."