How Paid Surveys Work

Many people are unaware that companies will pay you to take surveys by answering sets of detailed questions, because payment has not traditionally been associated with the more familiar types of surveys like the political polls conducted in advance of elections.

The interviewers who collect opinions on political topics generally use the telephone to contact their subjects, and those surveys take place in dialogue form: the interviewer asks a question and the subject responds, and the two move through the list of questions together. Everyone the interviewer contacts will have been selected beforehand because he or she belongs to the voting population the company needs to sample.

Web Surveys Offer Flexibility

Web-based surveys have a different ultimate purpose for the data they collect, and they do not require the personal assistance of anyone who works for the surveying company. Rather, after you sign-up with a survey company, you will receive various survey requests from that business, who is in fact represnting other businesses.

Those questionnaires, which come to you by e-mail, will be sent to you because of the demographic information you provided when you signed-up, which means you are part of whichever consumer population the surveyor needs to sample. (Demographic information commonly used includes gender, race or ethnicity, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and location, but it does not include personal information like your name or bank account information.) You will answer all the questions yourself, without help from anyone at the company, and return the finished questionnaire, also by e-mail, to receive payment.

Why Does the Surveyor Want Answers to Particular Questions?

Surveyors ask specific questions because another business, which is likely trying to design or modify a consumer product (soap, microwavable food, a coffee maker, etc.), wants to know what potential customers would think about those products. That business has hired the surveyor to do what's called "sampling the population" of people who might want to buy the resulting product, in the hope that the information the surveyor collects will help it design a product that sells more units than its competitors' products.

Everyone who has studied the sampling process in a statistics class will remember that term refers to gathering enough examples of some kind of data (in this case, consumer opinions about products) to predict all future examples of the data (in this case, the buying habits of an entire group of people, who the business thinks are most likely to be the ones shopping for that product).

Thus, the business that hires the surveyor is trying to find out the following type of information:

• What do customers like or dislike in a soap?
• What improvements would they like to see in a microwave pizza?
• When they next shop for a coffee maker, do they want to pay more to enjoy the convenience of certain extra features, or will price be the first consideration and prompt selection of the cheapest model available?

It's easy to see why a business would pay to get that data, because it can make the difference between spending a lot of money to produce a soap no one will buy, or profiting indefinitely from a runaway hit - a product that flies off the shelves year-round.

Why Does the Surveyor Want Your Honest Opinions?

The potential value of a properly conducted survey to a business is sufficient...enough to warrant spending the money to get accurate results, and for this type of market research to yield valid data on consumer likes, dislikes, spending habits and so on, a statistically significant number of people who fit the sample population's demographics and are willing to answer questions must be found. And that is where you come in, and why your input is something the market research company (which is the technical business designation for a company that surveys consumers) needs and will pay to obtain.

Without an accurate sample population to answer questions, the market researcher cannot sell the desired information to the original business that wants to design or improve a product/service. This information cannot be falsified or computer-generated, because its inaccuracy will become obvious when a product designed to meet its specifications fails completely. Thus, market research absolutely requires genuine, original consumer input made by way of taking surveys.

Keeping the Surveyors Honest Pays Off for You

There's also a statistical reason to introduce payment into the process, and that is to make sure those responding to the survey are not what market researchers call a "self-selected" population, meaning a special subgroup that has a particular interest in the type of product about which opinions are being collected.

Self-selected groups will often flock to take particular surveys because they want to see a certain design that would not interest most of the people expected to buy the product. Because of that intense interest, they do not need to be paid to take surveys, because they very much want to have input in the matter. However, since they do not represent the population as a whole, a survey depending only on those volunteer responders will be inaccurate and therefore worthless.

It was precisely to avoid that self-selection effect that the idea of offering small sums in exchange for survey responses arose, to ensure the answers obtained represented the ordinary consumer who lacks any particular hobbyist's interest in the product studied.

Paid surveys have a formal name, "incentivized surveys," which reflects the fact that those surveys provide payment as an incentive to attract answers from people who normally would be too busy or disinterested to take the time needed to answer the necessary questions.

How You Get Paid for Your Participation in Online Surveys

Now that you understand why companies are willing to pay to hear your opinion, the next question is exactly how those payments are made.

You will be offered reimbursement in several legitimate forms: cash deposited into your PayPal account, a check mailed to your home address, drawings for prizes that include cash or consumer goods like television sets, or even free product samples mailed to you at home.

It is very important that you examine the terms of any payment described to you as cash, because some cash payments are not immediately accessible. In some payment systems, your dollars are held in an online account with the surveyor's website until you reach a certain total amount, at which time you can request that the money be provided to you by PayPal or check. You should always make sure you know exactly what the survey company's payment terms are, and what you have to do to qualify for payment before you engage in a survey.