Are Online Surveys Worth The Effort?
I used to do online surveys for advertisers seeking reactions from consumers regarding new products, packaging/labeling, cost, existing products, etc. My favorite surveys were of new commercials for television. Those are fun! Some of the best commercials that I reviewed were the early Maxwell House coffee TV ads featuring homebuilder/contractor aficionado Mike Holmes. Those were brilliant! Better than ‘upcoming previews’ at the movies, this was like a ‘special screening’ of a much anticipated new movie! And I got to have a say on whether is good, great or uninteresting. It is your opinion that they seek, for if the commercial is not good they improve it based upon consensus opinions! How neat is that!
Some Trustworthy Online Survey Sites
There are hundreds of online survey sites out there eager for you sign up and use them. Some of the best are listed below. These are just a few of the many that I have used and feel that I trust:
My favorites online survey sites are SurveyLion and SurveySpot. Their surveys are easy to complete, well-written, and the reward payment worthwhile. I have earned some mad cash with LightSpeed too (link above) but this is achieved via an earned points system, redeemable for cash or gifts. I usually won’t do business with any survey site that doesn’t handle payments either by PayPal or personal checks via postal, or only offer 'coupons', 'retailer credit' or 'gift certificates.' LightSpeed is one of my exceptions in regards to 'earned points' rewards. They DO pay cash for accumulated points if that is what you wish, so I do continue to take their surveys.
Above is just a partial list of the many survey sites that I have been or currently am still a member of. Some survey sites I had signed up with proved to be a dismal disappointment. I had signed up with “OpinionOutpost” and only received one or two surveys, one at about every six months or so. And in both cases, I either failed to meet some nebulous minimum requirement or, even though I had taken the survey within minutes or an hour of receiving the e-mail notification, I was told at the end of the survey that;
“…this survey has reached it’s targeted number of participants for your demographic and has been closed.”
I’ll write about that next.
Too Many Requirements
And while the following link did provide some useful site data and led me to additional contacts, thesurveypro.com has a requirement that you must ‘register at 20 of the Top 25 Survey Sites’ that they provide and this is a little too shady for my taste. I seem to recall that 19 of these recommended sites were legitimate, trustworthy sites that could be found elsewhere on the web by their own merits. But the rest of this ‘list’ to pick and choose from to attain your “pick 20” were some kind of ‘webinar’ or 'web-commercial' that you would have to sit through and ‘sign up’ or ‘purchase’ something at the end to qualify or continue. Those endless ‘how many of THESE intrusive pop-up spammy-ads do you want to sign up for?’ seemed inexhaustible. We used to call those kinds of sign-up forms ‘popcorn.’ -A rather extensive and mind-numbing list of offers that you ‘tick’ the checkbox next to it. Then, you submit your sign-up page to move on to the next survey page. You cannot proceed without ticking at least ONE spammy offer. You will be presented with about a quarter-dozen more of these pages before you reach paydirt at the end, -if you ever do at all. Well, you will learn by the end of the first week or two how to create wildcard filters for your e-mail client to catch & kill junkmail as you WILL be getting many innovative and insistent spam-mails by the dozens I can guarantee that! Just be careful about creating 'blind filters' for specific text in the SUBJECT line. For instance; an 'e-mail filter' that blindly blocks any unsolicited ad containing the word "Cialis" (the male 'performance-enhancement' drug,) will have far-reaching effects. The 'wildcard block' might look like "*Cialis*" in your e-mail filter and it will stop e-mails containing this word used anywhere in the SUBJECT line, but this will also block e-mails containing the word "Specialist" as well! This could be a problem if you are an engineer, draftsman or perform any service that is considered 'specialized' and you receive work-related or job-offer e-mails in this same e-mail account.
