Get Paid for Internet Surveys - Give Your Opinion, Get Checks in the Mail!

Your opinions are worth money. You can cash them in if you want to, and know where and how to do it...

The old, traditional consumer opinion surveys have moved to the Internet.  To encourage people to sign up and participate, the market researchers are paying cash to survey participants.

The money comes from the big companies who want to know the preferences of their protential customers.  Market researchers get hired to find out what the preferences are. They use surveys to measure consumer opinion. 

The market researchers then pass on part of their fees (and part of the savings from using the Internet) to the people who actually fill out the questionnaires.

To qualify, you must be a consumer, at least 18 years old and be able to switch on your computer and send and receive e-mails.  That's it!

Here is how to participate:

1. You need to get your name on the lists of the survey makers.  There are over 700 of these in the U.S. alone, over 3,000 worldwide.  Some are good, some are bad.  Some are actually sales companies in disguise, whose objective is to sell you something.

The field is new and constantly changing.  You need a guide company to steer you to the good survey makers who pay in cash and away from the bad ones that pay in lottery tickets or not at all.  There are maybe 200+ of these guide companies out there. They keep list of which survey makers are good ones and they charge a small membership fee for access to their lists

2. You need to select a good guide company.  There are three metrics for picking a good one: size, guarantee and refund rate.

Size.  Pick a larger one that has been around for a while.  To get large and stay that way they had to be doing something right.

Guarantee.  Look for a 60 to 90 day money-back guarantee backed up by a bank or financial company such as PayPal or ClickBank. The guarantee tells you that they are willing to stand behind the quality of their services.

Refund rate.  This is the most important indication.  The refund rate is the percentage of clients who demand their money back. A low rate means happy clients.  A high rate means many unhappy clients (and you don't want to be amongst them!). 

Look for a refund rate of 3-5% (ideal).  Avoid anything 10% or over (10% means one client in every 10 demanded his money back).

3. When you have picked your guide company and received a copy of their list, sign up with all their preferred survey makers.  This is very important. These companies are the ones that actually send out the surveys to be taken and the checks to pay participants.

To pick someone to be part of the group that receives a given survey, they must have his or her contact and demographic information on file.  They get this info from the applications that you submit to them. No application means no data. No data means no survey. No survey means no money.

4. Open a separate e-mail address and use that on all your applications. (You are likely to get a lot of mail). Turn off the spam filters or they will reject your survey offers.

Check you inbox at least daily, answer all correspondence promptly. When offers for surveys come in, accept them quickly and finish the survey quickly. (Sometimes they send out 5,000 invitations for a 3,500 person survey, take the first that come in and tell the rest, "Sorry, but the survey is now fully subscribed and ïs closed.

5. Money?  When you complete surveys your money will come in in the form of checks by USPS mail or deposits in your PayPal account.  How much you receive will depend largely on your diligence and your demographics. Most serious survey takers report incomes of $200 to $600 a month with some reporting incomes of $1,000 or more.

Jorge Chavez is an experienced paid internet survey expert at: http://surveysentinel.ya23.com