Paid Online Survey Programs. Do They Really Pay?

We have received several queries about the sudden surge in Online Paid Survey Programs, we decided to look into some of the programs offered through ClickBank. The ads typically claim that members may earn cash back by using the list of paying online survey sites provided by the company marketing the survey rewards. Members complete the online surveys, and are paid for completing the online forms.

Here are several of highest traffic programs being marketed online:

PaidSurveysOnline.com

SurveyScout.com

ShoppingJobsHere.com

ExpressPaidSurveys.com

Survey Platinum

We decided to pay the fee for enrollment in one of the programs and see if we could earn cash back by taking the online surveys offered. Our most important questions:

1) Is it possible for someone who enrolls in the program earn more back (and ultimately be paid) than the cost of the program?

2) Is the email address used for payment and enrollment going to be spammed?

3) Does the ClickBank affiliate tracking work correctly for affiliates offering the survey programs on their website?

We chose to pay via Paypal. One of the three payment methods offered by the survey program. Online credit card payments and check payments are offered through a link through ClickBanks processing center, but we wanted to see if the company offering the paid survey list was set up to track payments made through Paypal and report them back for commission payments through ClickBank.

After making payment, we were redirected to an enrollment page where we were offered a free subscription to three magazines. Enrollment would require providing a physical mailing address. We declined.

The enrollment page asked for an email address, but specifically said to avoid Hotmail addresses as messages may be blocked by spam filters.

So we created a brand new email account,

companyx@<domainmasked>.com

specifically for use in completing the form, so we could be sure this email was not available anywhere else and any spam (any emails at all!) that come to this address would be a direct result of signing up with the survey site company.

There was a very nice, warm and fuzzy thank you page after we completed the form. The thank you page is the main page of the private area of the survey site, so we were already automatically logged in. There was also a note at the top that asks the buyer to bookmark the page, so you may return to it easily in the future.

We clicked on the linking tab to the database of paid survey sites. The information on the page said the database was last modified on January 18th, at 9:35 am. This is twelve days earlier than our enrollment date. What is seems to indicate is that this particular company is NOT using an automated page script to display the current date and time and make it seem as though the database is updated every minute of the day, and that the survey sites listed in the directory are actually updated as new sites become available.

We checked our newly created email account, and there was a welcome email from the survey company we joined. No additional spam messages (at this time).

What we found:

When you pay for one of the survey site programs through ClickBank, what you are getting is a consolidated list of hundreds of directly linked or sub-affiliated survey sites. These sites offer cash, cash and prizes, hotel stays, airfare certs, sweepstakes points and so-on that can be redeemed for gift certificates, or other forms of cash and prizes.

Most of the survey sites referenced also have a direct affiliate program. It follows that if you are a person looking to earn some extra money or cash rewards by completing surveys, joining one of these programs will offer you a list of these types of programs. If you have your own website, you can also join the programs indexed by these 'affiliate consolidators' and add the links to your site, and promote them with the hope of having others join to earn additional cash rewards.

Be cautious when selecting forms and surveys to complete as some say "you become eligible to win various prizes" as opposed to "you will be paid cash" or other specific terms that guarantee a return for your time.

Additional feedback and comments are welcome. Please send you personal experiences with these survey sites to us via our support form, and we will be adding several to the end of this article.

We will also be reporting the cash-back results of the surveys we completed as the information becomes available, the results of our spam test, and the result of the affiliate reporting test mentioned above.