You can make money taking surveys... but not very much! It may have been true at one time that survey companies paid out nice amounts, but with the high volume of people signing up for these programs, most companies have switched to a points or sweepstakes reward format. In other words, when you complete a survey, you are awarded points that can be accumulated and used towards various prizes and/or you are entered in a weekly or monthly sweepstakes-type drawing. Keep in mind that it takes A LOT of points to get anything at all.
In general, I have found that it doesn't really pay off to participate in survey programs. Let me give you a typical scenario...
You keep seeing offers to make money with surveys online and decide to try it out. You do a search, come up with a list, and sign up with several companies. Hopefully, you learned from your internet search not to sign up with any company asking for payment to join. And if you were smart, you opened a new email account to use for this little venture.
It's fun at first, but you keep wondering when you'll get offers for cash reward surveys instead of just points and sweepstakes entries. Also, you spend a lot of time answering preliminary questions, just to find out that you don't actually qualify for the real survey! You're getting a little tired of wasting your time and your new email account has filled up so much that you can't tell which emails are from the actual companies you signed up with and which are spam (most are spam). You get fed up and say "Forget it!!" having wasted a lot of time only to earn less than $10 a month (and that's if you were lucky enough to get cash paying offers!).
This is the reality of what happens when you sign up with survey companies. A bit disappointing, isn't it? The above scenario is what happened to me, but I've heard the same story from others as well. If you're reading blogs about surveys, most likely you will end up doing them anyway, so let me pass on a few pointers I've learned along the way.
- Do NOT sign up with Greenfield! It is a complete waste of time. I've never met anyone online who actually qualified for any of their cash paying surveys. They send you emails pretty much every day but they all require those preliminary questions, which can take you 15 minutes or more to complete! And then you don't qualify...
- As mentioned above, do NOT sign up with any company that wants YOU to pay THEM. Legitimate marketing companies do not charge you to join them. Anyone wanting you to pay will most likely just be giving you a list of those legitimate companies- a list you could have found yourself with some help from any search engine. Plus, the accompanying "reviews" that come with these lists for good survey sites are usually just bait to lure you through their affiliate links and make them even more money.
- Open a new email account to deal with all the survey offers. You'll probably be getting a lot of spam with all those offers and you don't want them cluttering up your real email account
- Do NOT sign up if you don't have a lot of free time! Surveys usually take more than a few minutes to complete. At least the paying ones do.
- Do NOT expect to make a lot of money doing this! Because you won't. Don't expect more that $10 or so per month, total.
This being said, surveys can be fun sometimes. http://www.iceboxadvisors.com/ has surveys that ask for opinions on products that big name companies are considering putting out. My last survey was about new frozen food appetizers. Another one was about new varieties of a popular peanut butter & chocolate candy. You can earn a dollar here and there with Ice Box Advisors, but the surveys are infrequent. Just so you know, there is not an affiliate program, so I'm not motivated in a monetary way to recommend them. This is just one of the more interesting programs that I'm in.
Another one I like is http://www.your2cents.com/. Again, I am NOT an affiliate. I receive a few surveys each month from them and they pay between $1 and $5 each. It's not one of those waste of time companies like Greenfield, either. I actually qualify for the surveys they send me!
A fun program for your children is http://www.kidzeyes.com/. Sign your kids up and they will earn points that can be redeemed for cash. They are also entered in drawings for fun prizes like video game consoles and MP3 players. I have heard of other people being sent samples to try at home (Nesquick, waterproof disposable camcorder, dried apple chips) but so far we've only been offered surveys. My son is 8 years old and he enjoys doing them.
I'd like to say a few words here about Pinecone Research. When I was looking for good companies to sign up with, I found a lot of forum posts about Pinecone Research. This company was reputed to pay very well (at least $5 per survey, sometimes more) but was very hard to join. You could not just go to their website and enroll. You had to be on the lookout for one of their elusive banner ads to pop up on different sites and follow that link. Very mysterious, huh? There were actually sites giving updates about where the banners where spotted and how long they were up!
Unfortunately, Pinecone Research is no longer paying $5 a survey. It is now $2. And they will drop you like a hot potato if you don't log into their site on a regular basis OR if you fail to respond to one of their emails. I happened across a banner ad, signed up, made $2, then decided it wasn't worth the hassle...
To sum up, yes, you can make a few bucks from surveys, but not much. You need to decide if it's worth the effort. Be very selective deciding which companies to go with. Don't pay to sign up with ANY company. Don't join them all! Doing so will just leave you the frustrated owner of a spam stuffed emailbox. Do your research and don't bother with companies that only offer sweepstakes entries or points for prizes (not cash).
I hope this post has helped you learn a little more about making money doing paid surveys.
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