Online Survey Report

Transcription

1 Online Survey Report Author: Date: Business: Site: Copyright: Kelvin Eldridge 19 May 2014 Online Connections Kelvin Eldridge 2014 Copyright Notice This document is copyright to Kelvin Eldridge. All rights reserved. You are provided with this document for your personal use. You are welcome to forward this document on to others as long as no charge is made to another person. The person receiving this document agrees to respect the copyright of Kelvin Eldridge. The recipient of this document in turn receives the same rights as yourself, which is they can forward on this document to others on the same condition. Disclaimer You agree that by accepting this document that you release Kelvin Eldridge of all legal responsibility. The document is released for information purposes only and should not be taken as advice or guidance, but simply as information for you to review. You assume full responsibility for any actions you take based on this document. Disclosure I have no connection with any of the companies listed except for signing up to their services. My research was independently carried out for my own interests. No company or individual commissioned me to undertake this review. Summary Can you make money completing online surveys? The quick answer is yes. But the longer answer is, the hourly rate for your time is generally less (much less) than any form of work you would be paid for. If you can get paid work grab it, but if you can t, then it may be worth considering online surveys to supplement your income. For some having the opportunity to work from home, in their own time, or for any other reason that may apply to them, it may be the difference between eating, paying a bill, or even rewarding themselves with a small luxury. To be able to use a $20 Coles gift voucher to put towards your groceries can enable you to save money, or in some cases buy what you need.

2 I estimate that people should be able to make between $25- $30 per week, which amounts to $1,300 to $1,560 a year. That s not a bad bonus. Typically you can only do about an hour to an hour and a half of surveys per day. Every now and then there may be an unexpected bonus. The work is not the most exciting and it can get tedious. On the other hand I did a tyre survey so when I went to buy a set of tyres, I first checked a company I remembered from the survey that I d never heard of. I found the company had good prices and when asked the local tyre company if they d match, the did saving $40. An unexpected bonus. You may also learn some interesting information and gain some insights along the way. Most importantly keep focused. Remind yourself why your doing this. You ll be tempted to sign up for a whole range of services, to enter numerous competitions. None of that is usually in your interests. If you re tempted chances are you ll end up spending more than you re making. So be disciplined and only go after one thing. That money. Then you should be better off. The strategy There is a two part strategy. 1. Make money completing surveys. 2. Make money by referring others. I m of the belief that you shouldn t get others to do what you re not prepared to do yourself. So if completing surveys works for you, then refer others. That way people will always win. If you just refer you may be the only winner, but it is short term. You ll have a lot of friends that may not be particularly happy. Background Late in December 2013 I saw an advertisement in the Google search results promoting making money by completing online surveys. My thought was, could it be legitimate or could it be a scam. A lot of people may need a top up for whatever reason and if online surveys did pay, and for whatever reason people may need extra money, then perhaps this was worth investigating. To make this real I decided I needed to put in a complete month and attempt to do every survey I received. I d live the situation as someone else would. On the 8 th of January 2014 I decided to start recording the time taken for each survey and the amount I made. There was indeed quite a few lessons to be learnt. 1. Some survey companies offer you a good fee to sign up but then never give you any more surveys, so you can never collect the money. 2. Quite a few survey companies pay around the $2- $3 an hour which to me is too low. Some do however pay in the $4- $5 range and one in the $9- $10 range.

3 3. It is possible, but rare to earn $10- $20 an hour for a particular survey. The higher paying survey are often only for a few minutes work so the rate may be high, but the actual money earned is fairly small. Still, it all adds up. 4. Some survey companies pay more for a survey than another for the identical survey from the same company. 5. Avoid Nielsen surveys. They have a large survey and allow 3 hours so the return looks good. Unfortunately it takes between 5-7 hours. I found little value in doing surveys from Nielsen. Nielsen are a well known market research company in Australia. 6. Be careful with long surveys as you risk putting in more time and often the return isn t there for the time. 7. Sometimes it may take a couple of months before you ve done enough surveys to get a reward because either the rate is low, the amount you need to earn is high, or the surveys come infrequently. 8. You can make around 82% of the money from doing 64% of the surveys, so if you don t want to work for peanuts, you can pick the surveys which return a better reward for your time and skip the rest. 9. I wrote a calculator to help quickly determine how much a survey was worth in terms of rate per hour. After I completed the trial period I continued for a while only doing the better paid surveys. It can be a good way to pass time. 10. One survey company (Toluna) has a large number of points for their surveys, but the points aren t worth much. Don t think large points means large reward. It just creates a perception. Use the calculator to determine the real reward. 11. Whilst not worth much, I do enjoy the s where there s an advertisement and you get 10 cents (10 points) just for viewing the ads. If you re quick they can trickle in an amount over time. I still do these months later. A click takes almost no time. 12. Avoid anything that requires you to spend money. There s lots of offers to get you to join up for products and services but my gut tells me they re not worth it and anything you make from surveys is likely to be consumed. 13. Check how the rewards are issued such as gift card, bank transfer, PayPal transfer, as you may not be able to actually get access to the rewards easily. 14. Don t get side tracked with competitions. You re here to get some money and luck has no part to play in making money. 15. You can make some extra money by referring others. I ve worked out those I would refer based on them working for others. Keep clear of the others. 16. You have to be prepared to give away a lot of personal information when you join and complete your profile. This makes me shudder sometimes. Each person has to decide what they re prepared to share. In the end you can t trust anyone with your information so you have to decide what is sufficient. My gut feeling is some companies use surveys to get you to sign up and provide your information and then they have all they need. You get no more surveys and they have vital statistics they can sell to other businesses. Just be careful with what you share. I don t for example like to

4 share medical information, but each person will differ. If it doesn t feel right, don t do it. 17. Keep in mind you may not end up with cash in your hand. For example you may decide on a Coles gift voucher and in any case cash is not an option. I then use that voucher to go towards the groceries so that reduces my costs and the money I would have spent on groceries can then be spent elsewhere or saved. 18. One survey company (MyView) appeared to pay well but often never recorded the survey results for me so I d waste too much time following up to be rewarded. That time to me exceeded the reward. 19. Surveys often fail (due to technology) part way through the survey which can be frustrating. 20. Some survey companies do a small survey before they rule you out which can waste time. With some you feel like you ve almost completed the full survey before they rule you out and to me that feels like a rort. You won t know in advance, but I m sure there s a pattern that if recognised may save some time. 21. Most surveys state the survey will take a certain amount of time and most understate the time so you don t make as much money as you should. When using the calculator consider the hourly rate figure to be the upper limit you ll earn and if it is borderline for the rate you re happy with, it may be better to skip the survey. 22. You can refer others and make a once of referral reward (sometimes ongoing but mostly once off). It is my belief you shouldn t refer others unless what you refer works for you. If you just refer to make money then you re referring something that doesn t necessarily work. Make sure it works and then refer. You win and you re friends win. 23. Even though in some cases you can sign in with Facebook, I only used my address. I m not comfortable with them having access to my Facebook information. I felt it best to keep them separate. Survey Companies I reviewed The following is the list of survey companies I ended up reviewing. They are in no particular order. GlobalTestMarket Hiving izatso Mint Surveys MyOpinions MySurvey MyView OpinionWorld PureProfile RewardsCentral SpiderMetrix Survey Village Toluna

5 ValuedOpinions WDYT Your Opinion YourVoice The survey companies I d recommend The following are the survey companies I d recommend along with the effective hourly rate. This takes into account all the time taken including surveys I was ruled out from because I didn t match their requirement. Mint Surveys - $9.98 MySurvey - $4.78 PureProfile - $3.48 ValuedOpinions - $3.51 WDYT - $3.96 GlobalTestMarket below is borderline because whilst it did earn points, the time it takes to reach the point of getting a $20 Coles Myer Gift Card would be 2-3 months and $40 PayPal 4-6 months. GlobalTestMarket - $3.48 (This company was frustrating as I was ruled out all the time, but may be worth considering) You ll notice that in general the effective hourly rate is in the $3- $5 range. It is only because of Mint surveys higher rate that I consider the hourly rate to be in the $5- $6 range. With PureProfile I found the best way to use this site was to check it often and not wait for s. I d go to the site often and click on the big red button with?> in white to view the next campaign. I actually liked the quick campaigns that made 10 cents. I liked their site. The reasons for ruling out the others were: Spidermetrix no real activity that generated income Hiving no rewards during period MyOpinions not enough activity MyView appeared average but often didn t record result so wasted time following up OpinionWorld rate $0.73/hour RewardsCentral made nothing Survey Village rate was good at $8 but little activity. Made $2 so far too long to get a return Toluna rate was $2.38. Their high points makes it appear you re making a lot but the points aren t worth much. Had fun with them as it had a good community spirit, but in the end it is about rewards. Your Opinion made $1.1 in a month, insufficient activity

6 Your Voice made $1.50 in a month, insufficient activity izatso no activity Survey Downline no activity Survey Reward Calculator To me there s little point for working for $1- $2 per hour. It is sometimes hard to work out what a survey is worth, so I wrote a calculator to help me more quickly determine what the effectively hourly rate would be for a survey. What do I mean by effective hourly rate. Each survey takes a period of time. For example I received a Toluna survey for 6,000 points taking 35 minutes. I worked out that 30,000 points is required for a $10 reward, so 6,000 points is worth $2. We re not working for a full hour, but if we did, then what hourly rate would this be. The answer is $3.43 per hour. By knowing the hourly rate we can make a better decision as to whether we are using our time wisely or not. You can access the Survey Reward Calculator at Whilst I don t think people should be paid so little for work, for some making some money instead of playing a game, may just be the help they need. Referring others Now that you know you can make some money, if you find others who would like to make some money you could simply let them know of the site, but you can also use the referral mechanism many sites have. That way you make a little extra and your friends help you when you help them. NOTE: Each sites require some profile information to be completed. When sites pay commission and require one or more surveys to be completed they are not talking about the profile information. Completing your profile can take half an hour to an hour to complete. Of the sites I ve recommend, the following have referral rewards. Mint Surveys There is no referral reward. You can register from the page ValuedOpinions Referral reward $2. You need to invite people using the form on their site. You can find it under the More menu option. You can refer five friends per three months. You get paid once the person completes two surveys. In theory that could add up to $40 a year.

7 PureProfile Referral reward $2. You need to invite people using the form on their site. You can invite as many as you like. They need to register, complete two surveys and one must be completed in the first 30 days. MySurvey Referral reward $1.74 (200 points). You use the form on the website. You can only invite up to 10 people per week. WYDT No referral reward. The above are the preferred survey companies based on my testing. There are however two more worth considering. As long as people know where they stand I feel these may be OK. GlobalTestMarket Referral reward $0.80. On the main page ( click on More in the menu to see Refer a friend. Then use the form to send invitations to friends. MyView Referral reward $5. This is the best referral reward I ve seen. The problem I had with MyView is a lot of the time after completing the survey I was not credited with the survey. I simply gave up on them. The reward was OK and the surveys come out regularly. They would have made my preferred list except their system was bad at allocating the points to you for your effort and to me that s a waste of time. However, at $5 for a referral you could sign up. Do the required number of surveys and then refer. Your patience may also be greater than mine. You need to select Refer Friend from the menu on the main page Recommended procedure for signing up a friend First you need to sign up and experience what you are going to share with a friend. If you re not happy then your friend may not be happy either. I wouldn t refer anything to a friend if I felt it wasn t good enough. By signing yourself up first, you are then able to help them sign up. In addition, since you are the referrer, you can make some money too. Why this is important is you are then showing your friend how they can refer as well and make money referring. All of this without spending a cent. However keep in mind what you may feel is good may not suit your friend. Make sure when you share this opportunity with your friend make sure it is suitable for them.

8 Let s begin. Let s say I m the start of this process and I am going to refer you. This is what I would do. 1. Discuss the opportunity with you and make sure it really interests you and suits you. We re now good to go. 2. I d suggest first using the online forms and sending out invitations for the following. You need to log on to your account to send out invitations. Valued Opinions PureProfile MySurvey GlobalTestMarket MyView 3. Now provide the links for the two other sites where you don t make a referral reward. Mint Surveys WDYT 4. Send the person a copy of this document. It is copyright to me but you are welcome to send it out to others as long as the document is not changed or used for other purposes. The person now knows what you know and can also help others. 5. Provide a link to the Reward Survey Calculator ( so others can determine which surveys are worthwhile for them to complete. 6. The person who you share this with should then complete the sign up process for each site. They should complete the required profiles and once they are happy they can make money, they are then ready to refer others and benefit from the referral rewards. Summary Online surveys can be a good method to supplement a person s income. The rewards are great, but they may be sufficient for many people, or simply provide an enjoyable pastime. You can make money by completing the surveys and also referring others. Most importantly however, is you should always look after the interests of others. Don t just refer. Make sure you ve done what is required so you know what you re referring works. I hope others receive value from my research.