Survey Tips

Open a new email account
Trust me on this. It helps keep your "work" and your personal life separate, and if you accidentally get some survey invitations sent to your junk mail folder it's much easier to fix the problem. It's easy, it's free, and it makes things a lot easier on you. Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail are the most popular free web-based email services. Gmail has the most storage (over 2.5 gigs!), but requires an invitation from a current user. If you want one, send me an email.

Be patient
You won't start making a regular paycheck until you've been doing surveys for a month or two. The reason is that it sometimes takes a few weeks for you to recieve credit for a survey, and then a few more for the checks to arrive. Some places automatically send you payment via check or Paypal after you finish the survey, but others allow you to accrue your earnings and cash them out at once.

It also bears noting that some sites only send survey invitations once or twice per month (or less), so if you don't get tons of invitations right away, don't get discouraged. If you sign up on or near the weekend you probably won't get many to begin with either, since weekends are typically slow. You will get 2-3 times more invitations on a weekday than you will on a Saturday or Sunday.

Be honest
These companies pay you for your honest opinions, and that's what they expect to get. It can be tempting to fudge a little on a screener to qualify for a survey (especially if it pays well), but don't. Not only are you hurting the credibility of these studies, but it's highly probable that you will get caught. These sites take the integrity of the surveys they administer very seriously, and take numerous steps to make sure the information you are providing is accurate. They check information submitted in each survey against your profile, against other surveys you have submitted, and against different questions within the survey. If you list yourself as a 18-year-old in your profile but put your age as 22 to qualify for an alcohol survey, they are going to know. If they catch you cheating they will kick you off the panel, invalidate all of your current earnings, and might even seek repayment for any earnings you may have already recieved. It's not worth it.

Don't fall into the trap of just telling them what they want to hear, either. They already pay people to do that. Just present your honest opinions, even if it means telling them their product sucks. They'd rather know that now before they spend hundreds of millions of dollars manufacturing and advertising it.

Be prompt
When a survey becomes available, you will want to do as soon as you can. Surveys typically have a quota that they have to meet and once that quota is filled the survey is closed. The better the payout, the faster it goes. This doesn't mean that you have to check you email several times each day so you can do your surveys as soon as you get them, but you should probably check it at least once per day (or once total over the weekend) so you can stay on top of things. This also helps you keep from getting overwhelmed with several days worth of invitations at one time.

Turn on autocomplete
A lot of time can be saved in filling out registration forms and questionnaires if you keep autocomplete turned on. Just double-click the text box and select the appropriate answer. .

As an alternative, try RoboForm. Rather than simply saving your form information, it fills it out for you! Considering that surveys are essentially large forms, it can handle all the repetitive stuff while you focus on the meat of the survey. It can also save you tons of time filling out registration info when joining all the sites listed here, so be sure to download a copy before you get started. It's adware and spyware free and costs you absolutely nothing unless you decide to upgrade to Pro later on. My favorite part is that you can put it on a USB drive (aka flash drive or key drive) and you can use it on any computer you have access to without having to install it on any hard drives. If you switch between work/home, laptop/desktop, home/library, or home/friend computers even occasionally, this can be a huge benefit. It also allows you to use RoboForm on computers that don't allow you to install software, such as in libraries or computer labs.

Turn on cookies
Any site that requires you to log into a member's section is going to require you to have cookies enabled, whether it is a survey site or a free email site or anything else. Cookies are enabled by default on most browsers, so this probably isn't an issue.

Beware of scams
If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. For every legitimate survey site out there, there's bound to be a couple of sites that use deceptive practices to lure you into something other than what you are expecting. One site I joined when I was starting offered great payouts, plenty of survey opportunities, a high referral bonus, and a great sign-on bonus. The only downside was a high minimum payout ($100), which should have been a big red flag. Once I signed up I saw that the "surveys" were just fronts for paid offers, where you have to sign up for product trials or certain websites in order to get money. No matter how you answered the surveys you always got redirected to the partner site so you could sign up for their product/program/information.

There are also sites that make you pay a fee for access to their database of websites, whether it be for surveys, focus groups, or mystery shopper programs. You should never have to pay for this information. You can get much of it here and other places online for free. I don't know if they can really deliver the outrageous payouts they claim, but it seems too good to be true and, well, you know.

Always read the Terms and Privacy Policy
You should always read the Terms of Service (aka "Terms and Conditions" or "Terms of Use") and the Privacy Policy of any site you sign up for, even the ones listed here. Don't take mine or anyone else's word for it just because you don't want to read through all that legal junk. You need to know ahead of time what is expected from you as a member and what they promise you for your services. If they kick you out for doing things that are against the ToS that you didn't know are wrong (such as sending referrals to your roommates), pleading ignorance isn't going to get you back in.

Reading the legal crap is also the best way to avoid scams and sites that only pretend to send out surveys. The FAQ is typically the best place to start, because it's easier to find what you are looking for and it is much simpler speech. If the FAQ checks out, head to the Privacy Policy and look for what they do with your personal information. If that is acceptable, read the Terms so you know what is expected of you and what their part of the deal is. If that checks out, you're good to go. If you notice anything suspicious, be it an astronomical minimum payout or the need for a credit card, leave immediately. It probably isn't worth your time. If you still aren't sure about a site or want to know which sites to avoid, send me an email and I'll help you out.

Get broadband if you don't have it
It doesn't matter if it's DSL or cable, just get it. Not only will you be able to participate in more surveys, but you'll get through them faster and the rest of your time online will be significantly more enjoyable. If money is a problem, you can get DSL most places for about $15, but cable is much better in my opinion. It's not like you won't be able to afford it anyway. ;)

Tell your friends
Most survey sites have a referral program that rewards you for telling your friends about their site. Typically this involves going to their website, putting in the email addresses of the people you want to refer, and sending them invitations to join. Your friends' email addresses are never used for anything other than sending that one referral email. If they sign up through that email you get money or points, depending on the site. The actual amount per referral is typically around a dollar each, give or take.

It's very important that you only send referral emails to people you are familiar with and that are genuinely interested in earning extra money through online surveys. You don't want to piss off friends by sending them unsolicited emails and people you don't know may report you. If a survey site finds out you are spamming referrals at people they will discontinue your membership, causing you to lose all your unclaimed earnings.

Don't ignore the non-paying survey opportunities
A common mistake is to ignore surveys that only enter you in a drawing as a reward for completion. Sure, this saves you time and let's you move on to the surveys that actually put cash in your pocket, but this can actually hurt your bottom line. Aside from the whole sweepstakes thing (which in itself can be really nice if you win), it's these surveys that tend to be qualifiers for focus group and free sample opportunities. That isn't to say that every non-paying survey will offer you a freebie or get you signed up for a focus group, but they are more likely to do so than the paying ones. Keep an eye out for the ones that are estimated to take 5-10 minutes, as in my experience these tend to be focus group qualifiers. It's pretty difficult to know in advance if a survey will offer you a freebie, but it's not that hard to figure out which ones definately won't. If it's about cars, financial services, employment, or anything like that, it's pretty much a given that they won't be sending you anything in the mail.

Even if it doesn't give you anything other than a drawing entry just remember, that one survey may be the one that wins you the the big prize. ;) If it takes 100 surveys to win $1000 that's still $10 per survey.

Don't knock gift cards
I used to regard sites that reward you with gift cards as the underachieving and rather homely step-siblings of the cash incentive sites. Why would you want to get a reward that's only good at one place when you can get cash, which is good everywhere? Because most of the time, gift cards are just as good as cash and often easier to get. You get them faster than checks and they often require fewer points (or whatever the particular site uses) than cash, so if you're planning on buying something online at Wal-Mart or Amazon or whatever anyway, you come out ahead. In the event that gift cards are the only reward option, that's pretty much a free pass to use your earnings for something fun for yourself, rather than bills or credit card payments.