When you see online survey ads beckoning you to take their free surveys and receive five to seventy-give dollars in return for ten minutes of your time, do you click on them? Or do you shoot a skeptical eye at the blinking text and click somewhere else? But what's even more likely, you've probably sat in your chair for twenty seconds or so, gazing at the ad and wondering if what it promises could really be true. If the latter most describes how you've reacted to an online survey ad, then this article is a must-read for you. Not only will it save you time, energy, and hassle, but it will also keep you from gullibly giving away all of your personal and financial information.
Like most online surfers, I've come across quite a few online survey ads, mostly like the ones listed above. Being of the curious, yet skeptical, sort, I had to find out if at least a small portion of the promises were true. Could I really make between five and seventy-five dollars in ten to fifteen minutes? I doubted it, but the only way I could find out for certain was to try it on my own.
But before I went spattering my email address all over the Internet to get spammed, I had the foresight to perform one, simple act. I created a junk email account entirely for survey purposes, and I did so for free by using a hotmail account. It only took about a minute to complete, and I was in business. Well, sort of. Before I could start making any money, I had to look for survey companies, which wasn't too difficult. A simple search in my favorite search engine took care of that part for me.
The initial survey site I tried out was called Survey Adventure. To subscribe, I needed to give out my first and last name, email address, and zip code. However, since this was a trial run, I gave out completely fake information. Fake name, fake zip code; my email address was the only real piece of information they got from me, and it was a disposable one at that. So far, so good. But was I done? No. Step 2 found me giving out my street address, date of birth, and ethnicity. I was also asked questions about household size, income, and other more personal info. So I sensibly answered. All in fakes. So I thought I was done. However, before I could actually become a member of Survey Adventure, I needed to sign up for three separate randomly generated survey sites. Growing a little weary, I started signing up for them, one by one. However, at the end of each of
these survey sites, I was given more survey site to sign up for. It never ended. In short, I grew tired of Survey Adventure's method, so I looked elsewhere.
Panda Research is one of the most popular survey site hubs around. However, it's well known for sending multiple emails per week, but no problem, I had my fake address for that. So I went through the same rigmarole as with Survey Adventure, played their little games, and finally got through the signup process. I was even awarded five dollars, just for signing up. I was eventually directed to a page of real, live surveys. Amazing, I thought. I'm getting somewhere after all. I started scanning down the page, looking for surveys worth enough money to trip my trigger. I found some worth twenty-five, thirty-five, and even seventy dollars. But I chose a thirty-dollar gem entitled, "Blockbuster DVD Rental." I took their ten-inquiry questionnaire and clicked "Submit" when I was finished. Not so painful. Then I got a load of the landing page.
In order to collect my thirty dollars, I needed to give out all of my real personal information, along with a credit card number, and purchase a $9.99 rental special for one month from Blockbuster Video. Remembering that the total survey payoff was $30.00, I realized that paying this rate would scrape off my earnings by one-third. Forget it. I wasn't interested in signing up for Blockbuster, trying to cancel the order afterwards, and then making sure a credit card got reimbursed for the cancellation. (Surveys still pay even after cancellations, or so they say.) So I headed back to the survey listing page and chose another.
Survey number 2 was no prize either, no pun intended. For this one, from a health food company, I was required to give my real address again, this time to receive a health food package for $14.99. And the survey payout was only $20.00. Plus, they would have my credit card information. So I passed again.
I spent a good portion of my day signing up for survey companies, receiving emails for survey options, and finding only disappointment. Most surveys required the use of my credit card, and those that didn't not only paid poorly or merely entered me in a sweepstakes contest, but also required my real address. In case you were wondering, the real address is required to ship offers to your house so that companies can "confirm" that you took the survey and consequently send the confirmation back to the original survey hub with which you signed up to begin with. And of course, your earnings total will be in a "pending" state unless confirmed, and until it's confirmed, you won't get paid until your earnings total passes the payment threshold, which was rather high in some cases.
Does my experience sound like fun to you? Maybe it does. Maybe you're not worried about throwing away your real personal information to a bunch of companies who, as I failed to mention, will now send you spam in your email and junk mail to your real address. But, if this doesn't bother you, I will outline five survey companies who are actually worth going through with.
Panda Research: They really do have some of the best survey options around; however, you will receive plenty of spam, and some of the offers will have surveys that literally never end, especially the one-dollar ones. Their payout threshold is a little high as well at one hundred smackers. They will pay via PayPal, which means there is no charge for sending a check.
Fusion Cash: Various offers, but most of them require credit card information. Their payout threshold is twenty-five dollars, but you must verify your identity, either by providing a real telephone number, which will be used for sales calls from now on, or by faxing in your identification. This is common with most sites. Fusion Cash pays only via check, just so you know.
Viva Research: The perk: they're similar to Panda Research. The drawback: they're similar to Panda Research. On the one hand, they'll pay via PayPal, and the payout threshold this time is only $50.00. However, the offered surveys are almost identical to those offered by Panda Research, so you're not getting much of a variety.
Inbox Dollars: Get paid one to ten cents for reading emails and visiting advertiser sites. It's not much, and you'll need to accrue $30.00 before they'll send your first check, but you don't need to complete the offers one the sites in order to be credited for reading the email. The drawback? Checks only.
TikTikCash: I've made a few cents by merely clicking on the ads that come in my emails. I made $5.00 just for signing up, and the payout threshold is $50.00 via PayPal, so long as there is $100.00 of approved money in the account. This is one of the more promising ones.
Further warnings: Some of the sites these survey places send you to are ones who have been flagged for offering invalid offers, or have been marked for sending over 400 emails of spam per week. So when giving out personal information, just make sure you think the compromise is worth the risk.
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