How To Find The Best Online Surveys For Money

Successful navigation of the extensive online survey system requires a clear understanding of what you, the potential participant, want to achieve by taking surveys. The advice that follows is designed to help you make as much money as you can by taking as few surveys as possible, thereby making the best use of your valuable time while protecting your personal privacy.

If the idea of maximizing your time by minimizing the number of surveys you take sounds contradictory, the explanation is simple: you can target the survey companies that offer you the most cash for answering one set of questions and will not renege on their commitment to pay you, rather than simply rushing into every online survey you find without checking the track record of the business conducting it.

Using Survey Site Aggregators

It's true that claims made by web-based surveyors can be difficult to assess without prior experience in the field, but you do have valuable online resources you can consult to help you determine which survey companies to trust. Those resources are called "aggregators," and they are websites that match survey participants (that's you) with the businesses that need, and will pay for, your opinion.

You may not know anything about Survey Company X, but an aggregator that has collective knowledge of and experience with online surveys does, and the fact that an aggregator continues to refer participants to Company X means their interaction with X has been satisfactory to the persons who have taken X's surveys and received their payments.

How Can You Tell an Aggregator is Reliable?

That is an important determination, because if you make a correct decision to depend on that website's judgment, you can conduct business through them with all the surveyors who have signed up to use participants recommended by that site and choose the most lucrative offers from that assortment of possibilities.

Of course you can do your own research on the aggregators, and a simple way to begin is by reviewing the information provided on that site.

• Does the site promise you will make a large amount of money on every survey, or conversely ask for payment from you in exchange for registering you as a participant? If so, move on to the next site.
• Look for information that offers you a realistic portrayal of what you will have to do, and how much you will receive in exchange. For example, participating in online surveys will not substitute for a full-time job, nor should you expect it to, but it will add an income stream to your existing budget, and how much money you make will depend on the time you spend working.
• Make sure the aggregator site presents believable details, such as a range of possible cash payouts that starts very low and does not exceed one hundred dollars (although any such high amount is rare).
• The site should also tell you if the surveys you will be asked to join do not all pay cash, and you should be aware some legitimate surveys do not provide any incentive for a response, while others may offer small rewards like product samples or sweepstakes entries in which you earn a chance to win a prize of some sort. Of course anyone who wants to produce income from taking surveys will not be interested in those terms, but if you have a particular interest in the sample products you'll be studying, you may wish to make exceptions to receive free items you know you will use.

One of the Most Revealing Places to Look is in the Terms of the Membership Agreement:

• Does the membership require you to provide too much personal information (name, telephone number, Social Security number, bank account or credit card data)?
• Does the aggregator tell you that you need to sign up for a "free trial" and give out your financial information to obtain a product you're being asked to review?
• Will your payments be held until you collect some stated amount, or can you withdraw your money from a member's deposit account only in multiples of a large sum (for example, if you have earned seventy-five dollars you can only withdraw fifty until your balance again reaches at least fifty dollars)?
• Are you being asked to pay for a list of survey sites?

Any similar restrictive or unfavorable terms are red flags warning you not to do business with any company that would engage in such a dubious practice.

Finding Survey Sites on Your Own

If you prefer to do your own legwork and move around to the individual survey sites without the assistance of an aggregator, you may look for help on yet another group of websites which have been set up to share lists of known reliable surveyors with people interested in participating.

In every occupation or area of technical interest, there are people who want to give others the benefit of all the knowledge they've acquired over the years, and that holds true in the world of online surveys. You can tell when you have found such a site because the site will offer you nothing other than information, without requesting any membership deal. You'll be able to click on a link to see the page where the recommended survey companies are listed, and some of those companies will be known to you already because they're frequently cited in news articles (think household names like Ipsos and Harris).

Once you have found such a helpful site and added its survey leads to your growing list of potential employers, you'll want to follow the same vetting procedures for each company on that list as were recommended for the aggregators, above. Precisely the same rules apply here, and when you've completed your list by making a full round of the assistance sites, you will be ready to investigate each of their recommendations and decide which companies you wish to approach.

The more surveyors and aggregators you contact, the more opportunities to earn money will appear in your inbox every morning.