Paid Surveys Tips & Tricks - General Considerations

Ok, let's get started ! First of all let me start off by telling you that you are not going to become a millionaire by doing surveys! This work-at-home opportunity represents a way to get a steady, regular income. The income is influenced by:

• The number of the market research companies you signed up with;
• The time you are willing to spend on doing surveys;
• Your demographics (based on your profile);
• Your luck. Yes, it's no joke. As many of the surveys "prize" is an entry in a sweepstake, your luck can be a big factor.

The first thing you need to do is create an email account that you can check often. Why not your personal email account? Read below for answers. The next step is joining the paid survey panels. After signing up, create or update your profile. Usually the first survey you take is information about you: name, gender, location, age, car you drive, any kids, education level, your job, and so on.

Wait for surveys invitations and take the surveys. These paid surveys are basically about what televisions shows you watch, type of pizza you eat or soda you drink, banking, opinions about logo or shape designs of future products, type of restaurants you go to, how much are you willing to pay for certain items, etc.

So, taking up paid surveys is easy as 1,2,3 :)

1. Setting up an email account

The first step is to create a "dedicated" email account. There are a couple of reasons why you should do that:

• Most market research companies contact you via email. It's better to have all the emails on paid surveys in the same place. It's easier to organize them, easier to find something and you don't miss important surveys invitations;
• Avoid SPAM on your current email address. You will sign up with the new email address on multiple sites. The sites on our list don't spam (it's tested), but maybe you decide to sign up for other sites using this email address. Anyway, it's better to "play it safe";
• You know what they say … don't mix pleasure with business. :) By keeping it separate from your personal email account, you become disciplined at checking for new paid online surveys because they won't be mixed in with other personal stuff.

As there are quite a few free emails accounts providers around this is only a matter of choosing one to your liking. Our advice is to create an email account at a provider that offers the possibility to check your email using an email client such as Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird, but this is not mandatory. It's only because for some people is easier to handle emails via an email client rather than checking a website online.

2. Signing Up

Start. Check out our list of paid surveys sites and start signing up on them one by one. It will take you more than one day, but the golden rule is, if you want to make some money out of this, sign up to AS MANY AS POSSIBLE. Pay attention to the Availability field in the site's description. Some of the sites accept panelists only from a short list of countries. If the value says International, it means you can sign up and be entitled to receive rewards, no matter where you live.

Research. Upon arrival on the company's site, before searching for the Sign Up page, you might want to take a look at the F.A.Q page (most of the sites have a F.A.Q / Help page). You can find answers to most common questions like: How can I join? What will I earn? How can I receive the payment?

Signing Up. The sign up process is different on different sites. Some sites ask only some contact information in the sign up process (like name, address, email, country, etc.), others ask for more detailed information (like gender, interests, what house appliances you have, etc.). The information will become your "demographics", and it will be used to narrow the search for a specific type of a consumer. More details about this below.

Confirmation email. In most cases, in order to verify that the email address is not a false one, you will get an email to confirm your account. So, don't forget to check your inbox and activate your account. After confirmation, you can login and update/create profiles.

Profiles. Profiles are a suite of questions about you, your health, your habits, etc. It's the only way the market research company can know about you, so give as many details as possible. Be honest. Profiles are very important and should be completed right after signing up and updated regularly you there are changes. By having all profiles completed and updated you increase your chance to receive more surveys. As the majority of the marketing research companies are from North America, they are interested mainly in the opinions of the panelists from North America (U.S. and Canada), so they will have a greater chance of receiving surveys invitations. If you have concerns about your privacy, ready the site's Privacy Terms, but any legit market research company uses this information only for selecting and narrowing the list of possible panelists for a specific survey.

3. Stay Organized

If you plan to sign up on multiple paid surveys sites, which is recommended, tracking down where and when you signed up, what is the username and password for al the sites can become cumbersome. If you decide to apply for affiliate systems, you have to remember the affiliate link in case you wish to send it to your friends or post it on your site or in the forums.

So, our advice is to stay organized. How? I think everyone knows better what's the best way for him or her. We will only offer a few guidelines, it's up to you if you find them useful or not or you follow them or not. Here are a few tips:

• After setting up an email account, organize your incoming emails by creating new folders and filters. The goal is to classify the emails in order to find them easier. Let's think functionality … You will have emails regarding your accounts (confirmation emails, forget password emails, accounts updates, etc.) and emails regarding surveys. So, create two folders: Accounts and Invitations. After you get a sign up confirmation email with username and password for a site move it from Inbox to the Accounts folder. This way it's easier to track down passwords or surveys you took.
  

      

• Some of the sites listed are Paid To Read emails, which means they will send more than 1 email daily that you need to click on, and it will not be a survey. In this case we recommend to create another folder, let's call it Click_Emails. Usually this type of emails are coming from the same source, so if you create a filter based on the sender you can make them go directly in the Click_Emails folder. This way you keep your inbox clean and ready for most important emails - the surveys invitations.
• Make sure the emails are getting to you. In order to fight spam, your email server host and/or your email client can have spam filters installed and some of the sites may be considered as spam by these filters. Add the address of the site where you signed up to the "white list" to make sure you're getting their emails.
• Be active. You don't have to take every survey that they send to you, but complete one once in a while. Many of the sites have a "weed out" system for inactive accounts. Usually the time period for an account to be classified as inactive is around 6 months, but check the site's F.A.Q to make sure.
• Most of the sites contact you with invitations via emails. We recommend though, to take a "grand tour" once every 1-2 months of the surveys sites. It means login and check the members area for all the sites you signed up for news and changes. This will indicate that you are an active member and you also get to check out your account details and rewards status. For this, you can download and use the following Document File (.rtf): Surveys_Organizer. When you sign up for a site from the list, add the details on the file and save it. This way you can have at any time given an update on all your activity. Just copy/paste the content from the first page on a new page to accommodate more entries. Once every 1-2 months check out all the sites listed in the document.
• And last but not least, sign up for our Newsletter or bookmark us (press Ctrl - D) and check the News section. We are adding and updating the sites on the list frequently. If a new site is added, we let you know. If you need to update a profile on an existing site or a new profile is added, we let you know.

Good luck and remember to have fun whilst you're doing this!
You are shaping the products and services of the future.
You should be proud of what you are doing and not only for the rewards you're getting ;)

If you have any questions regarding this page we are glad to help. Contact us.

All the best,
The SurveyProfs.com Team.