I’m sure that many of you received the email about the upcoming changes with Mysurvey. On the heels of toluna, Greenfield, and Your2Cents it makes you wonder if there’s just going to be one great big survey site this time next year!

MySurvey.com & Lightspeed Join Forces

In the June 2009 Edition of Opinion Matters we let you know that the parent company of Mysurvey.com became part of WPP’s information, insight and consultancy division, The Kantar Group. Another very similar online panel, lightspeed Consumer Panel, is also a part of The Kantar Group. Because Mysurvey.com and lightspeedPanel.com are owned by the same company, we are able to join forces to make your membership a more rewarding experience. Watch for exciting changes over the next few months, including more ways to share your opinions through surveys from both mysurvey.com and lightspeedpanel.com.

I’m bigger fan of mysurvey’s than lightspeed at the moment, but both are good quality survey sites in my opinion. It  isn’t clear yet if they will remain separate entities under the parent company or merge the two. If so, I think they should call it Lightmysurvey Yes, I know, that’s lame.

My only concern is that the bigger the panel, the less personal connection you will have in terms of solving issues, etc. Which survey site do you prefer, lightspeed or mysurvey?

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I did a review of Testspin back in May of 2008, and the opinion was mixed. Lots of folks were having issues with payments crediting and lack of availability of surveys. I was on the fence at that time as a newbie to Testspin, and I wasn’t sure it it would be worth it to stick with this one. Several improvements have been made, so I thought an update would be in order. 

One of the improvements has been the addition of Paypal as a form of payment. That’s the good news. The bad news is that for every $10 that you earn, you will receive $8.20. Apparently they take the money that they are charged out of the amount that you earn. I would still probably take Paypal over Amazon gift cards but it’s certainly not ideal to lose a percentage of your earnings.

Another improvements had been in the amount of surveys that are sent out weekly. I have received 7 surveys in the last week. The downside is that it is still hard to qualify. I’d say that about half of the surveys sent to me are for IT professionals. I may write a blog, but a computer whiz, I’m not.

Even with the improvements, my opinion hasn’t changed much. I have cashed out twice for $10 ($8.20) since I became a member. Although certainly not even close to my top earners, I’m not ready to kick it to the curb just yet.

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Stephanie, one of our blog readers, contacted me the other day about a suspicious email claiming that her Paypal account had been credited for $100. She didn’t remember having entered a contest, and the email was from surveysampling which she didn’t recognize.  After a little searching, she found that it was associated with Survey Spot, but was still wary because Survey Spot pays by check. I was impressed that she followed the steps that we all should by not opening an link on an unfamiliar email! She closed the email, went directly to her Paypal account and found that the $100 was indeed in her account. Lots of people could avoid costly errors by following Stephanie’s lead. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

The good news is that it was a legitimate deposit into her Paypal account by survey Spot for an instant win! Although they only pay by check for survey rewards, survey Spot does have an option for Paypal to redeem sweepstakes earnings. This is encouraging on many levels. Always the skeptic, I generally assume that nobody actually wins those things, and that sweepstakes and instant win games are just ploys to get us to take surveys for nothing. And so, with Stephanie’s win and also Tidyclean’s November win of a $100 instant music game win, I have to eat my words. It is real!

So remember, the next time that you get a survey that is instant win or sweepstakes, you may not want to pass it by. Survey Spot not only pays well for the surveys that you take, but it is also possible to win their sweepstakes!

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Tomorrow is our birthday! I can’t believe that it’s been a whole year since my very first blog post to Survival Guide To Online surveys! To celebrate and show our appreciation for your continued support and participation, I thought another Blog Contest would be in order. This time, it will be a contest for both the blog and the forum, so will have more options for entry. The following are the various ways to earn entries for your chance to win a reward for the contest:

1) Subscribe to the blog by email = 1 entry

2)Register at the forum = 1 entry

3) Post a comment to the blog = 1/3 entry

Comment 3 times to earn one entry to the contest, with a limit of 3 comments per  day. Comments must be relevant to the topic of the post or 2 a previous comment (posting “great post” isn’t really a comment). Subscribers can access the blog directly HERE to post a comment.

4) Write about the contest on your blog with a link back to us = 5 entries

5) Post a reply or comment on the forum = 1/3 entry

3 comments = 1 entry, limit 3 comments per day (relevant content as discussed in #3)

6) Digg , Stumble or submit a post to Technorati = 1 entry

Every post that you submit to stumbleupon.com, digg.com or Technorati.com will earn 1 entry to the contest. You can use the archives to submit as many posts as you like.

The $300 will be rewarded in the following increments:

1 $75 prize

2 $50 prizes

3 $25 prizes

5 $10 prizes

10 $5 prizes

So let’s get started with the birthday celebration! The contest will end on Feb. 8 and the winners will be announced on Feb 9th. Payment will be paid directly to your Paypal account. The more entries you have, the better your chances of winning!

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We’ve decided that it’s time for another blog contest! We’ve found that it’s a great way to encourage participation and feedback, and you get a chance to win cold hard cash! Sounds like fun to me. I’m adding a new way to earn entries to shake it up a bit. Every time that you submit one of my posts to a social networking site you’ll get an entry into the contest. Some of you may already be members of Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati etc. But even is you aren’t, when you click the link on the social networking sites at the bottom of each post (these are the colorful buttons) you will be guided through the process of joining.

The contest begins today, Oct. 1 and will end on Oct. 30th. The winners will be announced on Oct. 31st. To enter you can:

1) Subscribe to the blog by email = 1 entry

2) Post a comment to the blog (with relevant content and no more than 3 a day) = 1 entry

3) Submit one of my blog posts to a social networking site = 1 entry

4) Write your own blog post about this blog and link back to us. (This applies to those of you who have your own blog) = 10 entries

Winners will be randomly selected. The more entries you have, the greater your chances of winning! Prizes will be awarded in the following manner:

1) $50

2) $25

3) $25

4) $25

5) $10

6) $10

7) $10

$10

9) $10

10) $5

11) $5

12) $5

13) $5

14) $5

Let the contest begin!

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Now that Yourfreesurveys offers daily surveys through their website, I thought you all might benefit from a refresher course on how it all works. Because you can take them EVERY day, the potential for extra income is better than almost any other survey. Can it be frustrating? You bet! But armed with some information and tips, your experience can be much more rewarding.

1) Don’t give up if you find that you don’t qualify the first time. Keep in mind that you can COMPLETE one every day, so you can keep trying as many times as it takes to complete a survey and get paid. Persistence pays off!

2) Don’t try to get greedy and take OTX/AMP or Greenfield (the Yourfreesurvey’s daily survey) surveys from more than one site. If won’t work and you’ll be automatically disqualified. Pick your venue and take them from one place.

3) Daily surveys are notoriously finicky. You can spend a great deal of time, only to receive an error message for your efforts. Don’t despair, overall, it’s worth a few error messages in the long run.

4) Take your time! The easiest way to disqualify yourself from a survey is to hurry through it. Big Brother is watching, and will assume that you aren’t answering the questions thoughtfully. Boom. You’re out.

5) I’m SURE that none of you try to beat the system. That’s a bad idea. But if you know anyone who does, make sure that they know that questions will sometimes be repeated at the beginning and the end of a survey to see if your answers match up.

6) CLEAR THOSE COOKIES! This is the most important thing that you can do to ensure a good experience. Always clear your cookies BEFORE you start a survey. This will pave the way for you to be credited properly. There are even programs out there that will help you with this, like CCleaner, which will keep a list of cookies that you don’t want to delete. It can be a hassle when you have to keep logging into websites or forums, and this free download can save you that headache.

7) Be sure that you either take your daily survey from your unique link sent to you by Yourfreesurveys via email or from Yourfreesurveys once you have logged in to the site.

I hope this helps to make taking Daily Surveys a little less stressful. Taking the daily surveys at Yourfreesurveys can put an extra $1.95 in your pocket everyday. It adds up!

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An email came the other day with an announcement about Nielsen/Net Ratings that I thought might be of interest to y’all (that would be “you guys” to all my northern friends ) My issue with them has always been that they didn’t pay out in cash, as this has been a sweepstakes only site for years. Now they will be paying $5 for every quarter that you continue to participate with them ($20 a year).

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I was scheduled to talk about Directive Analytics today. But I sent in my information to them and never heard back. I’m feeling a little rejected so I thought I would ramble a bit about some of the discussions going on in this blog. I am so happy that we have so much participation and great information coming in. If you haven’t gone to the blog itself (if you are a subscriber), you’ll want to click on the blog title in your email to read all of the comments!

So, first of all, those of you who have joined Directive Anaylitics, please tell us how it works. How long is it before you get a confirmation email, or do they just start sending surveys when they have them? I’ve never run into this before. It does sound promising and I’m anxious to get started so that I can review it. I found a little information about it with some investigation on the Internet, but not a lot.

Some of you had mentioned that I might look into some more of the long list of “paid survey sites” but that’s not as easy as it sounds. The ones that I have investigated to date call themselves survey sites, and I guess technically they are, but they don’t pay cash. I received an email from Planet Panel asking me to look into it.

“Please take a moment to check out PlanetPanel. We’re a legitimate survey site and we’ve been around for years although most of our advertising efforts have been via email and member promotions.
We pay via a monthly cash prize drawing and I know they get paid because…well simply because it is one small part of my job as the PlanetPanel Community Manager.”

Yes, this is a survey site, but I’m not sure how many of our readers are interested in taking surveys for entries into cash prize drawings alone. I have joined the site, and to date, I have only gotten drawing entries. I’ll do a review of it when or if that changes. I have joined several sites that work this way, but I’m not sure I want to waste my time or yours on them. So leave me a comment if “prize drawing” survey sites are of interest to you. If so, I’ll get cracking!

And finally, there as been some discussion about Opinion Outpost. I hadn’t gotten a survey from them in over a month, but the good news is that I received 6 survey invitations in the last week. So be patient, it looks like they are on a roll!

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First of all, let me say that I appreciate all of the new subscribers to our blog. Since installing the new email subscription option and moving the RSS feed to the top of the page, we have gotten 30o new subscribers in a month! Our readers are commenting more than ever which makes this blog more interactive AND more informative for everyone. So many of you have let your opinions be known, and that makes the content here invaluable to those of us who are trying to find their way through the sometimes frustrating world of online paid surveys.

I think you’ll find that my reviews of surveys and offer sites are more honest (sometimes brutally so ) than you’ll find anywhere else. But it’s only my opinion, so the more we hear from the more seasoned survey takers the more we have to gain in terms of knowledge. And input from the newbies can help me to provide the information that you are looking for to make this blog even better. For those of you who are already subscribers, just click on the title of blog post in your email which will take you to the blog, where you’ll just click on “comments” at the top of the post to read and add your own.

So for a little fun and reward for participating, from now until May 15th we are going to have a contest, and the winner will get $200 added to their Yourfreesurveys account (with immediate payment to your Paypal account) Here’s how it will work:

1) For every 3 comments that you post during that time, you’ll get one entry into the contest.

2) For any of you who have your own blog, you’ll get 2 entries for blogging about this blog or the contest ( send me your blog url after you post it)

3) And finally, everyone who subscribes by email or RSS will get 1 entry (send me an email to let me know that you have subscribed and to which feed reader)

Again, thanks to everyone who has subscribed and participated! And good luck with the contest!

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I just read an interesting comment from Eddie on my earlier post, Online surveys: Ups and Downs . He was agreeing with my point that you never know what you’re going to get from week to week with online paid surveys. He took it a step further and I almost fell off of my chair! Who knew that you could click on a survey that you think would only be paying you $2, but come to find out, it actually paid $125! Wow! That’s never happened to me. But I must admit that sometimes I can get lazy, and not want to bother with the lower paying surveys.

Never again! I wonder how many good ones I’ve missed! You hear people say that the more you take, the better chance that you’ll get higher paying ones, but I really had no idea that I may have been passing up “the biggies” because I would rather watch American Idol than take a survey with a low payout. I never take the sweepstakes surveys either because it drives me nuts to know that I’m spending my time for nothing. I wonder if they ever do the switch on those? Hmmm….I won’t pass up any more $1 or $2 surveys, but I just don’t think I can bring myself to take the endless “enter a chance to win the moon” opportunities. Or at least I’ll hold off until someone confirms that it could happen.

Thanks Eddie, I learned something today! And it’s Friday, so this is going to be short and sweet. Not to mention the fact that now I have to go through my trash folder to see if I got the same Survey Spot email that he did!

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