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Are Online Surveys Worth The Effort?

I used to do online surveys for advertisers seeking reactions from consumers regarding new products, packaging/labeling, cost, existing products, etc. My favorite surveys were of new commercials for television. Those are fun! Some of the best commercials that I reviewed were the early Maxwell House coffee TV ads featuring homebuilder/contractor aficionado Mike Holmes. Those were brilliant! Better than ‘upcoming previews’ at the movies, this was like a ‘special screening’ of a much anticipated new movie! And I got to have a say on whether is good, great or uninteresting. It is your opinion that they seek, for if the commercial is not good they improve it based upon consensus opinions! How neat is that!

Some Trustworthy Online Survey Sites

There are hundreds of online survey sites out there eager for you sign up and use them. Some of the best are listed below. These are just a few of the many that I have used and feel that I trust:

• LightSpeed
• SurveySavvy
• SurveyLion
• MindfieldOnline
• SurveySpot
• FreePayingSurveys

My favorites online survey sites are SurveyLion and SurveySpot. Their surveys are easy to complete, well-written, and the reward payment worthwhile. I have earned some mad cash with LightSpeed too (link above) but this is achieved via an earned points system, redeemable for cash or gifts. I usually won’t do business with any survey site that doesn’t handle payments either by PayPal or personal checks via postal, or only offer ‘coupons’, ‘retailer credit’ or ‘gift certificates.’ LightSpeed is one of my exceptions in regards to ‘earned points’ rewards. They DO pay cash for accumulated points if that is what you wish, so I do continue to take their surveys.

Above is just a partial list of the many survey sites that I have been or currently am still a member of. Some survey sites I had signed up with proved to be a dismal disappointment. I had signed up with “OpinionOutpost” and only received one or two surveys, one at about every six months or so. And in both cases, I either failed to meet some nebulous minimum requirement or, even though I had taken the survey within minutes or an hour of receiving the e-mail notification, I was told at the end of the survey that;

“…this survey has reached it’s targeted number of participants for your demographic and has been closed.”

I’ll write about that next.

Too Many Requirements

And while the following link did provide some useful site data and led me to additional contacts, thesurveypro.com has a requirement that you must ‘register at 20 of the Top 25 Survey Sites’ that they provide and this is a little too shady for my taste. I seem to recall that 19 of these recommended sites were legitimate, trustworthy sites that could be found elsewhere on the web by their own merits. But the rest of this ‘list’ to pick and choose from to attain your “pick 20” were some kind of ‘webinar’ or ‘web-commercial’ that you would have to sit through and ‘sign up’ or ‘purchase’ something at the end to qualify or continue. Those endless ‘how many of THESE intrusive pop-up spammy-ads do you want to sign up for?’ seemed inexhaustible. We used to call those kinds of sign-up forms ‘popcorn.’ -A rather extensive and mind-numbing list of offers that you ‘tick’ the checkbox next to it. Then, you submit your sign-up page to move on to the next survey page. You cannot proceed without ticking at least ONE spammy offer. You will be presented with about a quarter-dozen more of these pages before you reach paydirt at the end, -if you ever do at all. Well, you will learn by the end of the first week or two how to create wildcard filters for your e-mail client to catch & kill junkmail as you WILL be getting many innovative and insistent spam-mails by the dozens I can guarantee that! Just be careful about creating ‘blind filters’ for specific text in the SUBJECT line. For instance; an ‘e-mail filter’ that blindly blocks any unsolicited ad containing the word “Cialis” (the male ‘performance-enhancement’ drug,) will have far-reaching effects. The ‘wildcard block’ might look like “*Cialis*” in your e-mail filter and it will stop e-mails containing this word used anywhere in the SUBJECT line, but this will also block e-mails containing the word “Specialist” as well! This could be a problem if you are an engineer, draftsman or perform any service that is considered ’specialized’ and you receive work-related or job-offer e-mails in this same e-mail account.

This filter would also block any e-mail with the word “Socialist” so there is a good side to this too I suppose. Best yet, create a dedicated e-mail account and use that one account exclusively for your ‘online surveys.’ No personal contacts, no forum use. Just surveys. This dedicated e-mail is also useful to identify which sites re storing ‘tracking cookies’ on your computer, too. But that is for another article.

This dedicated e-mail account is deletable if the situation become too tenuous and impossible to continue, and your security and privacy are left intact. For your Online Surveys if you need to change e-mail accounts, just create a NEW account and switch over to it from your survey host’s option board.

Too Much Stick And Almost No Carrot

All those endless Sign-Up for a $1000.00 Shopping Card from Wal-Mart offers only fill your e-mail box with DOZENS of similar offers. –You just have to meet their impossible and esoteric requirements to get the promised shopping card. Generally, you are required to buy several hundred dollars of ‘qualifying merchandise’ that you otherwise would not even want. Next, you get a half-dozen or more of your best friends in your ‘downlevel’ to do the same thing after you have referred them via their personal e-mail addresses and only after THEY TOO have also signed-on and purchased several hundred dollars of stuff, do YOU get the promised $1000.00 shopping card. It has a definite ‘pyramid’-like structure to it, huh?

You will have no friends left at the end of this but you can get your $1000.00 shopping card. Maybe

Avoid those offers. They are scams. It took me a few months to get off of some insistent mailing spammer lists for the early signing-up I undertook before backing out of the offer. They had already at that point nailed my e-mail address and I started receiving offers for pharma products like Viagra and Cialis and information on ‘how to ‘increase the size and girth of my you-know-what’ that very first night!

–That promised “$10.00 in 30-minutes” at “thesurveypro” is probably real but you have to jump through some ugly hoops to get there. They keep changing the Suggested Survey Sign-Up Sites too. You sign up for twenty sites on their list and turn in your ‘proof’, -they have CHANGED the list again! I failed to complete this requirement and for the pithy requirements stated above. I suspect that many others have stopped short also.

I had only completed 19 of the required 20 ‘sign-ups’ through them without having to purchase something, turn over my computer’s Address Book or practically sell door-to-door for them. Friends don’t sign-up friends for these offers, no! I could not do just one more of the remaining requirements (I only had to do ONE more to qualify!) Ten dollars was not worth it. Your results may vary but I seriously doubt it.

And never, ever PAY anyone or any company to ‘refer online surveys’ to you! STOP! These are 100% guaranteed RIP-OFFS. Advertisers WANT you to take their survey and they pay YOU for doing so. Not the other way around.

A New Trend in Online Surveys?

I have been declining more and more online surveys since about the First of the New Year. I have grown weary of a recent trend towards not rewarding with immediate payouts, but the ‘reward’ is cumulative. One completes a 15 or 20-minutes survey and instead of a cash reward at the end, you ‘earn points’ that accrue for months until you have enough to redeem for merchandise at ‘select retailers’ of their choosing. While these retailers might include such notable places such as chapters.indigo.ca or amazon.com, -which are excellent places to shop, I just find it very limiting. I prefer to make my own choice where to redeem or shop. Pay me cash. It really is just that simple.

Read my lips: CASH IS KING! Don’t pay me with ‘store credit’ or a ‘gift coupon.’ Pay me in CASH or step aside.

Doing It On the Cheap

Another trend in online surveys which bugs me terribly is this “…if you qualify for our survey, a $3.00 honorarium will be paid’. These can be legit but way too often in my extensive experience you still get shafted. The diminutive reward is part of the rip-off. If they offered, say, $25.00 and did what I am about to explain, they would get buried alive with complaints!

You will undertake a 10 to 15-minute survey and when almost finished, the very last screen shown to you is a dismissive;

“…we are sorry. -You do not meet the minimum requirements that our advertiser is seeking”

and the survey is effectively ended. You are ‘opted out’ and will receive nothing. They HAVE your data now. You completed the survey. But they changed the rules and terminated the survey. You were just voted off of the Island. Without pay.

Another ‘easy out’ for them is that you take the survey and some 20-minutes into it, the almost last-screen reads something like;

“…we are sorry, but this survey has reached its quota for the select group of which you were competing”

and again, they now HAVE your data and the survey has closed. Ended, without you getting paid. At only $3.00 per denied survey, it would take a Class Action Lawsuit (and a lawyer willing to work on-the-cheap) to actually fight against this. Even at that, it would take over a year probably to align enough people together to sign-on, review the complaint and determine the damages. Most people just ‘give up’ over a three-dollar promise-broken. I know that I have.

I will bend over soiled candy wrappers and brown dental floss on the ground to pick up a dirty penny but I will not take a $3.00 online survey. Why? -The penny lying on the sidewalk is a sure thing. The $3.00 survey is not.

And The Survey Says…

Having said all of this, I will continue to say that most Online Surveys are legitimate and worthwhile. Over the course of maybe 6 or 7 months of doing this actively and nearly two years of doing it selectively, I probably have taken maybe one hundred+ surveys. I failed to qualify for probably that many more. Of all those, I probably made several hundred dollars.

My most profitable survey was this one-hour survey that I could take in two parts. The payout on that was $65.00-USD and it was VERY enjoyable. I got to take it to completion and was thanked profusely at the end of the survey. I also received the payment promptly. These things made me feel important and valuable. Those are the shining examples of what Online Surveys should be like.

I am probably not the best target market for 70% or more of the available surveys out there, but you may be. Your personal or familial demographic may be some retailers dream and there are always online surveys waiting for you regarding food, drink, consumer products, HBA (Health & Beauty Aids,) lifestyle, clothing and more. Best of luck to you if decide to try Online Surveys. It can be very rewarding and satisfying.

It can also be very frustrating and mind numbingly tiresome.