Affiliate Marketing Forum

charles · Joined: 13 Oct 2003 Posts: 243

My daughter calls me up and wants me to look at a site she found. So I take a look. Only 1 page about making up to $150 an hour doing opinion surveys for companies. They paint a beautiful picture of people injoying life at it's best and only having to spend an hour or so filling out a company survey.

Now I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box but I can tell you nothing in this life is easy or FREE! Now this can be nothing but a scam. They have no information about who they are or anything. Only a link to pay your membership. How do people get away with sites like this and how do you go about getting exposing them?

ty,cf

Debs · Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 4296 Location: NY

I know, like the emails you get to earn $10,000 a month with no work! There are sites on the net that will list sites like that, some even investigate and write reports about them. I just wish my mind worked right now to provide links. Again, too early, not enough caffiene Smile

Perhaps others can add links?

Debs
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charles · Joined: 13 Oct 2003 Posts: 243

The small print at the bottom of the page say's "We have compiled a survey list which "As of bein placed on the list, Offered compensation for survey participation". Yea right! "As" "Offered"

Charlie · Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 3305 Location: UK

SuperShopper · Guest

You should never have to pay a company to get market research leads.

Online surveys usually do not pay much and the opportunities are few and far between. You will have much better luck with in-person market research and mystery shopping.

I have been doing mystery shopping for about 4 years. Here is a list of links of companies I personally have worked for and would recommend:

www.baiservices.com
www.mysteryshops.com
www.secretshopnet.com

You'll also find more info at
www.volition.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tracys_mystery_shopping_news/

Sandra
Dallas, TX

a.k.a SuperShopper

Guest · Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 7:20 am Post subject:

Hi, awhile back I paid $30 to join one of those sites which said you could make up to $150 an hour just to take online surveys. What I got was a list of around maybe 150 survey sites. I joined almost a 100 of them before I decided that I was most likely wasting my time. I still recieve a couple surveys every few day in my inbox. Out of all of the surveys I have recieved only one offered $15 the rest were for draw entries. O wow I have been reading this forum for a few hours now, I still have to register lol. This is a great forum and extremely helpful. My user name will be Trippy

jessyj · Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 1

You don't have to pay to join survey programs there are plenty of free sites out there that offer the list for free. The best site I've found is http://www.survey-networks.com/ they list over 400 survey sites and everything is free to join.

flyer · Joined: 29 Sep 2004 Posts: 75

"Paid" surveys seem to come in 2 types:

1. Companies that merely sell lists of other companies which MIGHT pay someone for taking surveys.
2. Companies you sign up with directly, which promise you pay for surveys, but only send you a bunch of "screening" surveys, and once in a while, a paid survey that pays so little it's not worth it. ($5 for something that takes 30 min or longer is not worth it to me.) Buzzback is notorious for this- you fill out the screening survey for free, then it says you didn't qualify for the paid one. Hey, why can't there be ONE screening survey upfront, then just send me the paid ones I do qualify for?

The funny thing is that I will spend a few minutes doing free surveys for legit pollers like Zogby or Harris, because they are honest enough to NOT try misleading me to think I may get paid for a future survey.

Your time would be better spent looking under the furniture for spare change.

Imagine if jobs worked this way. You get hired as a waiter/waitress. Your boss calls you to come in to the restaurant, you show up, spend 20 min serving someone. Boss says thanks, but he's decided not to pay you for that work (he keeps the tips). But he expects more customers tomorrow. A couple days later he calls, says a movie star known for being a big spender is coming in to eat, & he wants you to come in. So you do, and spend 45 min waiting on the person, who turns out to be a lookalike with a bad credit card. So again you go home with no money.
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tmendham · Joined: 30 Aug 2003 Posts: 31 Location: Edinburgh

Another "gotcha" with paid surveys is the payout level. Yes, you might "earn" $5 for a ten minute survey. But they don't pay you until your account reaches $100 and only send you one survey every two months...

I've nothing against survey companies so long as they're honest, however I'd never pay money to join such a scheme or be introduced to them.

- Trevor
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josheph98 · Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 1

StarHugger · Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 363 Location: Toronto, Canada

racedo · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 2 Location: AZ

It's been my experience that most are not scams, just exaggerations. I've tried more than a few paid for surveys and paid for shopping jobs and I've made some money but not as much as some would claim is possible.

I think most people just give up to quickly or just aren't willing to work hard enough to make money.

In order to help others not have to learn the hard way, I put together a website with information on how to make money as a secret shopper. You won't get rich overnight but you can make money.
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johnsonsa · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 7 Location: Oregon

Ah yes...online surveys. I remember getting burned on this one. Basically you sign up with multiple survey companies via e-mail and they start sending you surveys. The easy or 10 minute surveys pay around a buck, and the 3-5 dollar surveys are huge 20-30 minute beasts. Even worse, most pay in points or enter you into drawings. One thing that happened to me frequently was there would be a 5-10 dollar survey and 2 minutes into it they would disqualify me because I didn't meet the demographic requirements. It did nothing for me except fill my inbox to the brim day after day.
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ramon3309 · Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 11

Yeah,....online surveys. I have never received a penny from any I've done. Got a few points, but you have to gather quite a few points to make it worth your while. Still some enter you into a drawing for a prize. Again, never "won" a prize. A lot of time wasted.
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lilokster · Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 10

There are lots of companies that actually do pay you to take surveys. They are hired by large companies to conduct market research studies. I have done hundreds of surveys and been paid. The problem is, so many of these sites charge you $40 and tell you that you're going to make thousands of dollars a month. Which is simply not true. And if you are not qualifying for the paid surveys then you simply do not fit the profile for the type of person the company is collecting information on. Why would they want the opinion of someone who is not of the demographics they are doing the research on?

There are ways to make yourself qualify more. Using common sense you can usually tell what they are looking for by the type of questions that are asked. Then you can answer accordingly.

And as far as survey sites with high payouts... I have joined hundred and I have never found one that had an unreachable payout level like $100. Most are $10 or $20 and are easily reachable with 3 or 4 surveys. Points, in my opinion are better than cash. Why would you want to take a $5 survey and get a check for it? More than likely you would never even cash it. With points you can cash out whenever you want. And points are just like cash. like an online account.

For those of you that think paid surveys are a scam, or those of you who are interested in taking paid surveys, try these ones.

NFO My Survey
Test Spin
BzzAgent (product testing)
Global Test Market
Survey Savvy
American Consumer Opinion
Lightspeed Research
Pinecone Research (can only join by invitation)
GoZing Surveys
JD Power Panel
Advisory Panel
Opinion Outpost

Those sites all pay by check, points that can be cashed out for a check, or pay pal.
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