cautions, warnings, blacklists, rankings, reviews, and other things to watch about "free paid surveys online"

Legitimate Survey Companies Will:

Have contact information on their website, and a person available to answer questions/concerns.

Limit the number of free surveys you can take.

Ask people to answer screening questions to see if they meet demographic requirements needed for their research sample for those particular paid surveys.

Value the time you take to complete their surveys by offering modest rewards and “thank yous” such as sweepstakes entries, coupons or a nominal monetary reward.

Generally affiliate themselves with a trade group. (Most associations require members to meet certain ethical standards).

Have accessible terms and conditions and a privacy policy regarding their paid surveys online.

Honor your request to discontinue sending e-mail invitations for incentive surveys or to remove you from their research panel.
 

Legitimate Survey Companies Won’t:

Request credit card or bank account information or your Social Security number to take their free surveys.

Try to sell or promote a product along with their surveys.

Request payment for anything. ANYTHING!

Try to get you to join with a one-question surveys (e.g., “What’s your favorite color?”) in a pop-up ad or unsolicited e-mail.

Contact or seek personal information from any child under the age of 13 without a parent’s prior consent.

Before you sign up with any free paid surveys company...

...carefully read their "Terms of Use" or "Rewards" sections regarding their free online surveys BEFORE you participate.

This page should explain how you're going to make money online earning the free product or cash/money award. You may think that you'll receive a prize or award by simply completing surveys, while in fact that may merely register you in a drawing to win the item. You need to make sure!

Just because the introduction screen says "cash paid surveys," doesn't mean that's the only form of compensation available. If they broker paid online surveys from many different companies, the rewards will vary with the type of study. They may include cash or prize drawings or sweepstakes entries. All surveys and their rewards are different.

Find out exactly what "cash" means. Sometimes it's a check in your name, a pre-paid debit card, a PayPal transaction, or pre-paid gift cards, etc.

Before you sign up for ANY paid surveys online...

...carefully read their "Privacy Policy."

Most of the qualitative research firms will tell you they don't share your information. If they belong to CASRO or ESOMAR or AMA or any of the other professional organizations, then they have to abide by typical codes of conduct.

Some of quantitative research companies work together and help out their colleagues. Which means they'll sometimes share information with each other. They'll have to state that fact in their privacy policy. Most of the time it's no big deal, and you'll get e-mails from places you never signed up with. Which doesn't necessarily constitute a spam-attack, a scam, or anything else mean and evil. Necessarily.

If foreign dignitaries are suddenly requesting your help with finances and bank accounts, that's a different story.

Reviews... 

Take survey review sites and the reviews with a grain of salt. While actual user reviews can provide some valuable insight on SOME of these surveys, be cautious of what you swallow hook, line and sinker. Work from home stuff is notorious for self promotion. And we're really trying to stay away from that.

It only takes one malcontent with an axe to grind to register as a few different users and post bad reviews to give a survey firm a "bad grade." On the flip side, a few positive reviews could be the work of an affiliate of that particular company.

You'll hear about people that have had lots of paid surveys sent to them, and people that say they haven't gotten that many. This points back to the fact that consumer research is driven by the demand for different demographics at different times for different projects.

And, as with most things in life, your experience with anything, much less these free surveys, will probably be completely different than anyone else's.

Rankings... 

Take paid surveys "rankings" with another grain of salt.

Just what does everybody mean by "top paid surveys?" If the list would disclose what they're actually ranking, it would be fine. Sometimes it's a list of the free online surveys that have been "reviewed" the most times. Or a number that represents the dollar figure they've paid out to date, that year, or to that website.  And there are a host of other things that won't necessarily represent which companies will actually pay YOU the most from taking their online surveys for money.

Why are all the rankings different? If one site says that their "top 20 online survey companies" are the best, why do ten other sites say that their 20 different paid surveys companies are the best? If someone can answer that, we'll remove this "caution."

Paid surveys blacklists...

Take survey "blacklists" with, yes, better fill up your salt shaker for this one. Again, a little poking around, and you can usually weed out the truth. Some companies deserve to be blacklisted, others do not.

Depending on the motivation behind the posting, the time it was last updated, or other reasons, they just may not be valid anymore. Plain and simple.

Someone else sees a few complaints on a blog, and thinks they're doing everyone a favor by making a paid surveys "black-list" without performing their own due diligence.

Still someone else sees the name on a list of "bogus" paid surveys for money, visits the website, and because they couldn't find the "sign-up" page, carelessly puts them on a blacklist without investigating that particular company's actual role in the research industry.

Yeah, most of the "black-lists" we've checked out are not worth the digital space they occupy. When you're trying to operate paid surveys information site, you chase down every lead. While a few survey black-list offenders have been rightly identified and removed from our paid surveys list, many many more have been vetted and found to be improperly placed on the dreaded "black-list"....

Nothing in life, much less business, is guaranteed... ok?

The best thing about money back guarantees, is knowing that the majority of consumers will never exercise the option. It's an advertising mantra.

One of the most powerful marketing strategies you can use to instantly increase sales is a strong guarantee. The reason why a guarantee is such a powerful sales tool is that it eliminates the risk a customer faces when doing business with you. It is like giving your customer an insurance policy to protect them against shoddy products or services.

Think about it. One of the leading reasons why people choose NOT to buy a product or service is they are worried that if the product or service sucks, they are going to lose their money and they will feel like a fool for buying it. And nobody wants to feel like a fool.

This whole technique is known as "risk reversal". Way back when no one (or very few companies) guaranteed anything about their products, marketers realized that there was something that stopped clients from buying freely (especially impulse buyers). It was the risk involved in any purchase that was made! When you buy anything you make a deal. With no guarantee, you risk everything in case the service/product doesn't make you happy. The seller on the other hand, has nothing to lose. There's a whole lotta' psychology that goes into the final delivery. An illusion perhaps?

Look, your exposure to the most worthwhile paid surveys and maximum earnings will depend on how many companies you sign-on with, your honesty, dependability, age, gender, ethnicity, location, income and so on and so forth - NOT SOMEONE'S GUARANTEE YOU WILL.  No one can predict which free paid survey firms will be hired for future consumer studies, which demographic will be in demand at any particular time, or what those surveys will necessarily pay YOU. As far as we know, a "fortune telling crystal ball" has never been registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We've seen lots of pictures, but never a working model. You?

Calling for help... 

If you're unsure about any "paid surveys" company, there is help. Check the Better Business Bureau for complaints, site advisor, rip off report, or SCAM.com.

To file a complaint for an internet crime, use the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

You'll see plenty of posts that claim "surveys for money" are scams. Again, just because you read it or saw it somewhere, doesn't make it true. It's suspicious that anyone claiming paid surveys are scams, are usually trying to sell you on buying into something else. And they just happen to have all the "information" you'll need to make money. Hmmmmmm.

Fair warning about typing paid surveys and "scam" into a search engine. It's not fool-proof. Just for giggles, type your name and scam into the search box and see what comes up. You might be amused. Or not. All joking aside, it can be a very useful tool in weeding out the truth but it's NOT the last word regarding these surveys for money.

There's also the Federal Trade Commission. After all is said and done, however, they may ultimately direct you to your individual states regulatory agencies or attorney general's office.