by Costas Chryanthou

Created on: August 03, 2008   Last Updated: September 25, 2011

Whilst getting paid to take surveys the payment level required can take many weeks, months and perhaps up to a year or two before a survey account has reached the minimum required level before a cash redemption can be made.

There are a number of survey companies that pay cheques, paypal, and some other survey sites that reward users on free product trials, amazon credits, sweepstakes, product based redemption of gifts.

Whilst the registration of these sites is fairly straightforward and easy to create, filling out a profile which covers a number of questions to receive survey invitations can be quite time consuming to complete. Then the survey company after a few days, weeks or months will send an e-mail invitation for the account holder to fill out a survey.

Usually what happens is that the survey starts off asking screening questions to see if the account holder passes this initial stage. Usually the survey company will want to accept answers from certain demographic, age group based responses, or product lifestyle choice groups etc. The way to getting paid is by filling out the survey before the study has closed and by ensuring that the person has passed through the initial screening questions. After this section there seems to be no right or wrong questions. The length of time and rewards vary from survey to survey and in completing the survey in full will allow the completed survey holder to earn points which are then exchanged into a cash redemption at a later stage.

Completing the surveys on time before the study has closed is one aspect of getting paid to take surveys. Sometimes online or in real life there may be other companies that offer focus group surveys which by contrast is far better paying and once the focus group has concluded the cash or cheque is given to the respondent there and then.

Telephone based surveys are another form of surveys that tend to be associated with the online survey company. This is a quite rare experience in my opinion though it tends to offer good levels of points in relation to the time needed to take part and complete a telephone call survey. Similarly to the focus group, studies may once in a while exist to take part in focus based telephone research whereby the respondent is pre-selected for a chosen study and receives an agreed rate of payment which is usually sent by cheque.

Another way of maximizing the chance of being selected for paid surveys is to have a number of good survey e-mail and web based accounts with a number of different companies.

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