Survival Guide to Online Surveys

There are 2 reasons for writing this post today. The first is for those of you who may already be a member of MyOpinionNow.com. While researching this one, I found this fraud alert on the website.

“***FRAUD ALERT***
It has been brought to our attention that a fraudulent company is masking themselves as “My Opinion Now Market Research” and claiming they have a secret shopper program that you can participate in if you send them money.MyOpinionNow.com is in no way associated with this company. Please be aware that there are many scams out there and this might not be the first time this will happen. Please note that MyOpinionNow.com will never collect money for any reason or ask panelists to provide any information regarding banking accounts or funds.

If you have been affected by this scam we strongly advise you to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission or the United States Postal Inspection Service ”

So I wanted to give everyone a heads up on this particular fraud. It is no reflection on MyOpinionNow, but rather an unscrupulous impersonator. Always check the source, and if it doesn’t look like the other “invitations” that you generally receive, send an email to customer service to be sure that it was sent from them.

I was introduced to MyOpinionNow.com because of  a request for review of this survey site from Maplaver. It is a partner to a very well respected market research firm, MarketView Reseach. It is relatively new, so I haven’t found much about it on my google searches. You can expect 1 to 2 survey invitations a month. For each survey you will earn Reward Points which are redeemable for cash or merchandise. I took a look at the merchandise, some of them are good, others are a bit odd, unless of course you have always dreamed of having your very own chocolate fountain for 7500. It’s a bit too early to recommend this one, but I’ll let you know how long it takes to build up points. Let me know if any of you are already a member. It looks legitimate to me, but it’s going to take 5 years to earn a reward, I think I won’t waste my time.

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I’ve been updating the Canadian research panels for our Canadian members and found that Survey Lion is now accepting US members as well. Having read about what a popular survey site it is in Canada, I thought I would give it a try!

Here is some information from the SurveyLion website:

SurveyLion.com is the Consumer Panel Website of Canadian Viewpiont, one of Canada’s largest opinion data collection companies with particular expertise in quantitative fieldwork. Recently, we have expanded our coverage to include Canada, the U.S. and other international centers. Canadian Viewpoint is well respected as a research industry leader in project management and data collection services.

“Canadian Viewpoint uses the SurveyLion panel to field its online studies. Panelists receive an email invitation when a study becomes available that they may qualify for. The invitation contains a link to the survey and also contains some basic information about the survey such as the topic, the length of the interview and the amount of incentive.”

I had been a member for about 4 weeks, and hadn’t gotten a survey from them yet, so I sent an email to customer service to see if there was a problem. The responded within 24 hours and explained that the amount of surveys available for the US in limited, but are working to send more in the future. Since then I have gotten one survey invitation from them. They pay by check, with no minimum payout.

Bottom line is that unless you live in Canada, the surveys will be few and far between. I’ll keep you posted as to whether the surveys for the US become more frequent.

Come on over to the forum to ask questions, get answers and share your knowledge! We are having a $300 blog contest as well. Click here for contest information.

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Keynote Panel is not a “survey site” per se, but rather a website that rewards you for evaluating their website and providing feedback on your experiences with them. In essence, you will be providing information to those websites as to what works for you and what doesn’t. When you get your first evaluation invitation, you will be instructed on how to install the “keystone connector” to your computer so that they can guide you to the website to complete tasks and answer related questions. These tasks can take up to 45 minutes. As you know, I usually run screaming from websites that require a download, but I did a lot of research, and the Keystone connector ONLY monitors you activity while you are on the evaluation website.

I joined about a month ago, and it took 45 minutes to complete the registration process. There are lots of profile questions to answer about your level of Internet knowledge and preferences. My computer may be slower than most because I have so much “junk” clogging it up but it did take longer than most other registration profiles to complete.

Payment is in the form of an Amazon gift card, and generally arrives in your email inbox within 3 days. My payout was $10, although not all of the evaluations pay. You will get information on the payout amount when you receive your invitation. So far so good! But I would love to get feedback from everybody who is already a member, so please let us know your experiences with this survey site!

Don’t miss out on any survey news! Subscribe by email or RSS feed to get each new post daily!

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Hold on to your hat, we have a new contest to announce! Mark has upped the ante this time, and there will be more chances to win. Effective immediately, everyone who joins the new forum at www.yourfreesurveys.com/forum, will get 10 entries. Each time you post to the forum you will get 1 entry. These posts must be relevant and informative, no “I agree” or posts that don’t really contribute to the conversation. The contest will end on July 31st, with announcement of the winners in the forum (and here on the blog) on Aug. 1st. The $300 in prize money will be paid out as follows:

$150

$50

$30

$20

$10

$5

$5

$5

$5

$5

$5

$5

$5

The 13 winners will be selected at random from all of the entries received by midnight on July 31st.

What a great way to promote the forum, and offer everyone a chance to win some extra money! Come on over and join the discussions that we have going on at the forum. We have 78 threads started to date with almost 300 responses, and it’s only going to get better! Don’t see what you are looking for yet? Just start a new thread with a question or some input. Want to add your 2 cents to an ongoing subject? Just click reply to let us know what you think.

See you there!

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I think I spoke too soon in my post last week. VivaResearch is NOT the survey site with the most complaints, AW Surveys is! I had tried to forget my association with AW Surveys, but Jash18 jogged my memory when he added the thread about them to the Yourfreesurveys Forum under the “sites we don’t recommend” section.

If you can believe it, there is even a website dedicated to spreading the word about AW Surveys, http://www.awsurveyscam.com/comment.php. Click on the link and you’ll find evidence, testimonials, and even a petetion to sign. It takes a lot of unhappy campers to go to the trouble to make that happen! There are a couple of complaints on ripoffreport.com which isn’t as high as you would think, but I guess everybody just goes to the awsurveyscam website instead There are countless complaints on the internet about them deleting accounts and non-payment. It’s a wonder that a website with that much bad press could stay in business.

I usually don’t do two negative reviews in a row, but I do think that alerting everyone to bad experiences is as important as talking about the good ones. There are literally thousands of online paid survey sites out there, and most of you don’t have the time or the inclination to research them all. That’s why I’m here! So if you run across any site that you would like for me to look into, just post a comment and let me know!

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