Survey Donut Survey Guide!

Tasty Tidbits to Taking Surveys For Money

Online survey companies claiming that you can “get rich” is probably misleading you, messing with your head, and giving you a bad advice. Is there a possibility that you could win a large cash prize from one of the survey sponsors that offer sweepstakes – Yes? But, keep in mind that only a handful of people will ever have this kind of luck. However, don’t get discouraged; even if you aren’t “getting rich quick”, you can still make decent supplemental income by taking paid surveys. While you won’t want to quit your day job if you have participated in paid online surveys and focus groups you can earn extra pocket cash that can be used to stretch your budget or treat yourself to a few of life’s little luxuries.

Common compensation for taking a short online survey ranges from $1 – $5 dollars. Keep in mind that most of these free online surveys can be completed in about 15 to 30 minutes. Hypothetically, if you sign up with a dozen or more companies and take one survey per week through each, you could be earning a couple of hundred dollars a month! That could pay off part of your student loans, put some groceries in the fridge, pay for a night out on the town or fund your daily Starbucks coffee habit. When you look at the compounded earnings earned through paid surveys, it no longer looks like chump change! Signing up for focus groups that are conducted in person can pay off even more substantially.

1. Separate Email Accounts for Online Surveys
2. Getting Paid Usually means using Paypal
3. Receiving Survey Invitations
4. Best Practices in Answering Online Surveys
5. How to Avoid Survey Scams
6. Focus Groups are Part of the Survey World
7. What is a Survey Screener

8. It’s ok to share your Personal Information
9. Should You Ever Pay to Join a Survey Site?
10. Setting Survey Goals
11. Earning Points
12. What Not To Do When Taking Surveys For Money
13. Time To Get Started Taking Surveys For Money

Separate Email Account for Online Surveys

Taking paid surveys is a great way to earn extra money in your spare time; you get to tell companies around the world what you think of their products and services and in return, you get rewarded with cash or the chance to earn or win some equally cool prizes. Really, the only drawback of taking paid online surveys is the occasional survey site that requires you to “opt-in” to receive their electronic newsletters or share your information with third-party partners (this is why we recommend reading the privacy policies of each survey site that your sign up with). There is nothing at all wrong with receiving these emails, they actually are quite beneficial to keep you in the loop about upcoming market research and cash survey opportunities. However, it can be very helpful to set up a separate email address specifically used for staying organized and managing your online survey “business”.

By maintaining a separate email address for your online surveys, you will keep your personal email free from clutter and will have a stand-alone account specifically for conducting business. We recommend you register a new email address using a free email service such as Gmail, Outlook or AOL. You can then use your new email address to sign up for online survey sites that interest you. Using your new email address as your primary point of contact with the survey sites helps stay organized while keeping your personal emails separate from survey invitations emailed to you in your new email account. If you are feeling really organized, you can create a classification system for your paid surveys by creating new folders for each account; drag and drop the correspondence from the appropriate survey provider into the corresponding folder. Log on to your new email account daily to check for paid online survey invitations, special announcements, payment notifications and more!

Below is a list of free email service providers you can choose from. Keep in mind you only need one new email account for your paid surveys.

Gmail: Gmail is Google’s answer to free mail and instant messaging. With tons of free online storage space, you can collect all your messages as well as organize them nicely with labeling, flagging and other productivity features. When you use Gmail, you will see advertising embedded in your message that is based on the context of words found in your email. Actually, this could be of interest to you, if you want to see what ads come up for online surveys.

AOL Mail: AOL features unlimited online storage space, decent spam protection and a user-friendly interface. Lacking a bit in productivity features such as labeling, smart folders and threading, you’ll still find this free option for the email to be a very viable choice for your online survey communications.

Yahoo! Mail: This well-known free email service treats account holders to unlimited storage, RSS news feeds, SMS texting, instant messaging and more. Pretty much everything you need and more for keeping in touch with administrators of paid surveys. Productivity and searching features are pretty good but still could use some refining as could the spam filter.

Getting Paid Usually means using Paypal

Usually, the only requirements for participating in online surveys is a willingness to share your opinions, a computer that you can use at home or the office, access to the Internet and an email account. However, in this new day and age, some providers of paid surveys like to provide cash compensation in the form of an electronic fund transfer rather than sending an “old-fashioned” check. Receiving your payments from cash surveys into an online account is a convenient way for you to rack up money without even having to drive to the bank. Most providers of paid online surveys don’t send checks through the postal mail which can be expensive (think envelopes, printers, stamps, staff) and time-consuming (think snail mail). But funding electronically is typically free for the sender and allows the receiver to instantly have money in their account in mere minutes – no more anticipation on what day your check arrives in the mailbox!

In terms of paid online surveys, Paypal.com is the primary choice for sending and receiving money through the Internet. After you take surveys that cash out through Paypal.com, you will receive an email notifying you of a payment- “you have money”! You can keep your money earned from paid surveys in your Paypal.com account and accrue a nominal amount of interest. Or, you can transfer your money to another bank account or have a check sent to your home when desired. Also, you can use your Paypal funds to send money to other people or make purchases at select merchants. By signing up for a free Paypal.com account, you open up the number of paid survey sites that you are eligible to join. So, make online surveys pay off in a “quick” way by signing up for Paypal.

Receiving Survey Invitations

There is a big difference between good quality legitimate survey companies and spammy so-called survey companies. Here is a list of steps to keep in mind before signing up for a survey company.

The first step you’ll need to take is the join as many legitimate companies as you can that actually pay you for taking online surveys. A safe way to seek out these opportunities is to run a Google search of online reviews of survey sites that you are planning on signing up for.

The second thing to remember for a successful paid survey “career” is to be patient. Sometimes good things come slowly. Although you may have busily signed up with every survey company you could find, it takes a while for your profile to be matched to the surveys that best fit you. Also, be aware that while some paid survey companies offer several new surveys a week, other companies only have a new project every month or every year. But if you have registered and are checking your emails frequently, you’ll never miss a chance to take surveys for money.

This leads us to the third step to taking paid surveys with good results – keep it up! Don’t get lazy or bored and stop responding to invitations to take surveys. Often, if you refuse a survey invitation frequently enough, that company will remove you from their panel. Not responding to a survey invitation or screener is like saying you really want the job, but then not showing up on the first day. Occasional lapses are overlooked because survey companies know that not everyone can always meet the deadlines for a paid survey. But, if ignoring or bailing out on a paid survey is a common occurrence, you will notice a direct correlation between how many you skip and how many futures invites you get. You will also notice that the more surveys you take the more you will receive.

Survey companies give you a score based on how many surveys you take based on the number you receive. The higher your score the more paid surveys they will send you.

Best Practices in Answering Online Surveys

Below is a list of best practices for taking online surveys. This list will help you stay organized while maximizing your earning potential for taking online surveys.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket: That’s right! With so many survey sites around, you should branch out and register with as many legitimate sites as possible. This increases your odds of receiving invitations and passing screeners. The more actual surveys you get to take the more rewards you’ll earn.

Honesty is the Best Policy: As I’ve mentioned before, keeping your answers on paid surveys completely truthful helps everyone in the end. Client companies get the valid consumer data they are paying for and you earn a reputation as a dependable good guy who deserves many more survey invitations.

The Early Bird Catches the Worm: Sounds so cliché, but it is true. Many opportunities to take paid surveys need to be acted on quickly. This requires checking your email several times a day and responding to invitations in a timely manner. Most paid survey “tickets” fill up fast and then the proverbial train pulls out of the station full steam ahead. So when a survey is sent to you take it as soon as possible before the survey expires or is closed due to receiving the set number of responses the company was looking for.

Persistence Pays Off: Don’t get discouraged if you do not qualify for certain surveys or have lulls in the number of invitations in your inbox. Just keep completing screeners, checking websites, and reading forums for the latest opportunities to take paid surveys. Over time, after you have built up a reputation with a number of survey providers, you will have a steady stream of projects to work on and some great pocket money to spend as you please!

How to Avoid Survey Scams

Sometimes registering for paid surveys through a new site can leave even the seasoned survey-taker a bit wary about turning over his personal information and leaving comments. Even though the overwhelming majority of survey sites are completely legitimate and on the up-and-up, there are still a handful of rotten apples that can spoil your overall experience taking surveys if you are not cautious. Often, traversing the mostly safe terrain of online surveys makes both new and returning respondents occasionally hesitate and miss a good opportunity for fear of clicking on a proverbial landmine. So, how can you determine if the survey you want to take is legitimate and not some sort of scam? There are several ways to improve your odds of working with the best providers of online surveys:

Be a Snoop: If you have the time, one of the best things you can do to be vigilant about the survey sites you join is to check them out yourself. Visit the website and check for important details about their health and honesty that may be found in the “about us” section or through other respondents’ testimonials. Even better than reading a possibly biased survey site, visit discussion forums unaffiliated with the site where people are free to voice their opinions exactly as they like, good or bad! You can even check with the various online “better business” type organizations for their stamp of approval.

Use a survey database: Find a survey database that organizes and categorizes various providers of online surveys in one convenient, searchable format. Not only will you countless hours researching companies on your own, but you’ll also be hooked up with some of the best-paying surveys of the day. These database sites stay afloat, in large part, by redirecting you to legit survey sites that pay them referral fees for the business. It just makes logical sense that they wouldn’t steer you in the wrong direction.

Focus Groups are Part of the Survey World

You may have run across the term “focus group” when signing up for various paid surveys and research projects. The term “focus group” is one of those industry-specific phrases that, quite simply, means a group of consumers who are brought together to chat about various products and services. When you sign up to participate in a focus group, the meeting could be conducted in person at a market research facility or online through Zoom.

There are certain things you can expect from focus groups that are a bit different than online surveys. You can expect to be grouped with 6 to 12 other participants (or more or less depending on the project) and moderated by a professional hired to keep the event on task. The moderator will ask specific questions and the conversation will organically develop on its own; your answers will spur on comments from other participants and so on – lots of conversation is the goal of the day, so don’t be shy!

Often, at the conclusion of the focus group, you may be asked to take surveys about the product, service or event in general; this is part of the overall focus group experience. Because focus groups require more time and effort (and revolve around the client’s schedule, not yours), they generally pay quite well. Depending on the project and client company, you can expect to make anywhere from $25 to $200+ for participating in a focus group.

What is a Survey Screener

When taking your first couple of surveys you may be confused when after starting a survey they tell you “we’re sorry, you do not match our criteria” – or something like that! Typically, marketing companies, corporations and even academic institutions that solicit people for answers to paid surveys are not looking for responses from the general population. Instead, they want to gather information on a specific set or “demographic” of individuals. Demographics are quantitative data that is easily measurable and “hard” such as age, educational level, residence, number of children and more.

More often than not, companies conducting online surveys will send out “screeners” to their members as a quick way to find out who meets the minimum required criteria of their study. For example, an energy drink company may be looking for men ages 18 – 34 while a wrinkle cream company may be recruiting women ages 35 plus. What a newbie to online surveys sometimes doesn’t realize is that taking the “screener” is the prelude to the actual full-blown paid survey, not the paid survey itself. The screener is like a little mini-survey; if you pass, you’ll be invited to participate in the longer paid market research project. As a token of appreciation, many survey administrators will enter people who don’t qualify (and thus won’t typically get paid) into periodic sweepstakes for cash and other prizes.

While taking “screeners” may seem like a waste of your time, it definitely isn’t. Even if you do not qualify for a particular paid survey, it does put the survey site on notice that you are an active, interested member ready to receive more online survey invitations. The biggest beef with screeners is when companies have extraordinarily lengthy screeners and then tell you “no thanks” at the end – almost like they’ve tricked you out of the information needed and now don’t have to payout. Most well-intentioned screeners should be comprised of just a handful of questions, taking only a minute or two, and then promptly notify you of your status to take the online survey.

It’s ok to share your Personal Information

Taking paid online surveys can feel like a leap of faith for many people. Having to enter personal information and opinions over the Internet and hitting the “submit” button can make both newbies and seasoned survey takers apprehensive about the whole process. How do you know if something “good” or “bad” is going to happen once you click? One way to feel safe online is to only sign up with only top-tier, proven survey sites

Another way to help alleviate concerns about a survey provider and what they plan to do with your information is to read their privacy policy. For example, do they identify you individually in market research projects or as part of the collective? Do they keep all your information confidential, only to be shared with the stated client, or do they sell email lists and data to third parties? If you have any questions about how a survey site protects your privacy, contact them by phone or email. If you don’t receive a speedy response that satisfies your query, drop them like a hot potato.

Understanding how the information you submit is used helps explain why you need to furnish it in the first place. Your contact information, such as name and email address, is needed to send you invitations to take surveys via email. Often, a home address is required so that any money earned, product samples, and other rewards can be mailed to directly you. Demographic information about your age, gender and other markers are required to target specific surveys that fit your profile. Depending on the client and their products and services, online surveys can be targeted to certain age groups, parts of the country, educational levels, gender and more. Another often requested piece of personal information is your household makeup –number of children, annual income, own or rent home, level of involvement in purchase decision-making, etc.

Hobbies and interests are also sought-after information by corporations; this helps executives target what products to develop, what media to market in, and how to further align the company in a way that appeals to your lifestyle. The more information you reveal about yourself in the profile section of survey sites the more direct correlation of survey invitations you receive in your inbox.

Should You Ever Pay to Join a Survey Site?

In one word, NO! Online survey sites are a rampantly growing industry on the Internet. Of course, everyone in the online survey business is out to make money including the client company which wants to improve sales, the survey site which wants to get reimbursed for guiding people to paid surveys, and of course, the survey taker who is looking to make a few extra bucks in a short amount of time.

If any website you are signing up for is asking you to pay them to give you paying online surveys then it is more than likely a scam.

Don’t spend any money to start taking paid surveys in your spare time. Of course, participants will need to have a computer, laptop or even smartphone with internet access in order to complete these online surveys, very little of this type of market research is done through the mail anymore.

Setting Survey Goals

Having goals will assist you in living the life you’ve always wanted. From personal goals to professional goals, following proven techniques in goal setting makes the chances for your success much more tangible. Many people have found that taking paid surveys is a great way to help earn extra money to attain goals. Whether you are looking to help finance your education, pay the bills, purchase a luxury item or any other number of short and long-term goals, there are a few tips that can help you maximize your efforts.

However, to make your goals materialize, you can’t simply sit back and wait for things to happen – you have to be proactive. Goal setting to achieve your dreams takes time to plot them out and then follow through with lots of hard work. Following proven steps can help you form goals for taking online surveys that are easier to keep and accomplish.

Set Motivating Goals: Goals must light a fire under you, making you want to jump up and take action. If you don’t have a commitment to the hobby of taking paid online surveys, it is easy to give up or be distracted. But, if you are truly motivated to make something happen, it usually will!

Set Attainable Goals: If you are dreaming of an expensive mansion, taking a handful of $10 surveys a month is not even going to pay the electric bill. In fact, it is not realistic to think that a full-time income can be made by taking paid surveys. But, allotting a just few hours each month to make $100 or so a month is a great justification for not giving up your pricy coffee shop habit or some other attainable goal.

Put Words or Pictures to Goals: Experts suggest putting your goals into words to make them more tangible and real. In order to keep plugging away at taking paid surveys, even when it might seem to get boring or when you are harried for time, you can try writing down your goals or even creating a “goal” poster. Glue pictures of your end goal onto a blank sheet of paper; it’s amazing how a daily glance at this poster will remind you how much the new car, the college education, the dream vacation or any other goal actually means to you.

Earning Points

Some online surveys pay in cash money however, a larger percentage of online survey sites pay their members in reward “points” rather than doling out hard cash. Typically, the way it goes down is that you collect up enough points in your account and then redeem them for merchandise, cash or gift cards.

For example, many survey companies use an easy-to-understand point system where one point equals one penny. So right off the bat, you know what you are getting into earning-wise when you sign up to take the paid survey – no need to pull out a calculator. If your invitation says the paid survey is worth 300 points, then you know that is the cash equivalent of 3 dollars. Other survey sites have similar systems where the points are worth different values like 5 cents, 10 cents or 25 cents. Not quite as easy to calculate quickly, but still straightforward.

Some online survey sites have points that are actually just a fraction of a cent; it takes lots of points to just rack up 1 dollar. For example, one paid survey site that comes to mind (which won’t be mentioned because it is still technically an earning opportunity for you and I wouldn’t want to scare anyone away) only offers 1/30th of 1 cent. Yes, you read that correctly; you’d have to earn 3000 points just to earn a single buck.

Because there are so many types of point programs in place across hundreds of different survey sites, it is impossible to describe a standard system. The responsibility falls on you, the survey site member, to educate yourself about each company’s policy and how they award points. When you understand how you are being “paid” and the effort that goes along with each paid survey, you will quickly ferret out your favorite spots to take surveys online – come back and visit these gems often. Remember, not all survey site points are created equal!

What Not To Do When Taking Surveys For Money

If you are new to taking surveys for money or have been enjoying the many benefits of this “career” for a while, it doesn’t hurt to brush these three things NOT to do. When you focus on the positive and provide quality answers, your job in paid online surveys should continue to pay off for a long time.

Don’t give up. If you’ve been hearing crickets each time you check your inbox for paid survey invitations, don’t give up on the process. Commissioning paid surveys is a cyclical process for many businesses that corresponds to their product development and marketing milestones.

Don’t hurry. When you hurry through paid surveys, you unwittingly may provide inaccurate or incomplete information that the client company needs to base its marketing decisions on. Not only do you hurt the company, but you also hurt yourself because, after several paid surveys that are incomplete, you may be disqualified from that survey and even dropped from future initiations.

Don’t cheat. Another way to get dropped like a hot potato from survey sites is to act in an unethical manner. This can include trying to beat the system by registering as different people under different email addresses or providing false information in your answers. Also, as mentioned above, don’t fly through surveys by randomly clicking buttons, without regard to the data you are providing – this can be considered cheating. Many surveys have questions built in that check to see if you are paying attention – like repeating the same question and the beginning and end or asking you in the text to disregard the question but just mark a certain number as your answer to show that you are actually reading the text.

Time To Get Started Taking Surveys For Money

What is stopping you from taking online surveys? For some people, the fear of sharing personal information keeps them from participating, while others think it takes too much time or doesn’t even know where to search out reputable companies that offer paid surveys. Do any of these self-created obstacles sound like roadblocks you’ve set up to keep you from taking surveys? Well, read on for answers to these top concerns about taking surveys online — and you might just change your mind and earn some great perks in the process!

Privacy Concerns: Yes, there are terrible stories about personal information being stolen on and off the internet at the expense of some poor soul. Or, perhaps you’re worried about Big Brother looking over your shoulder. However, this is NOT the case for the overwhelming majority of online survey sites – don’t let the rare bad apple ruin a potentially fruitful experience for you. Typically the comments and opinions you share through online surveys are aggregated into one data set before they are presented to the client – this means that your answers don’t stand alone connected to your identity. The best way to choose safe surveys to take is to join a reputable survey database that lists top survey providers that have been researched and validated for their honesty. If you have further concerns, by all means, you are in charge of protecting yourself – read the privacy policy of each survey site before you join to verify how they use your personal information.

Time Concerns: As a society, we are crazy busy rushing from a job to family obligations to a favorite hobby – who has time to take paid surveys? Don’t worry, taking online surveys actually takes very little of your time, especially after you’ve spent the initial time investment to sign up with various survey providers. When a company has a survey that fits your profile, you will typically be emailed an invitation to participate – the average survey takes anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to complete. While some more in-depth market research projects can take longer to complete, you always have the veto power to say “No, I can’t take this paid survey today.”

Finding paid surveys isn’t too difficult you can simply begin by Googling “Paid Online Surveys” to begin your journey into becoming a successful paid online survey taker. Happy survey taking!