The key to getting paid more is to qualify for more surveys. You can do this easily if you follow the recommended steps of survey qualification.
A. Fill out your profiles
After you have answered the basic registration questions, you will be asked by survey companies to answer profile questions. These will help the company send you surveys which are relevant to you and for which you will most likely be eligible to take.
For instance, if you have indicated in your profile that you are a patient with diabetes, a survey company may send you surveys about diabetes medications, treatments, or related clinical procedures. Another example is if you have indicated in your profiles that you smoke, you will be sent surveys on tobacco or cigarettes. Often companies will go to a survey company like iGlobal Surveys, Opinion Outpost, or others like My Survey and request to access people who have interest in media, such as certain magazines or newspapers, and if you have indicated in your profile you are part of the readership they’re seeking, you are much more likely to receive a survey invite for their study.
Generally, profile questions will include but may not be limited to the following categories:
- Basic demographics
- Household
- Shopping habits
- Professional
- Leisure and Recreation
- Cars and Automobiles
- Health
- Household Technology
- Mobile Phones
- Pets
- TV Programs
- Websites and Internet Activities
- Magazines and Newspapers
- Books
- Restaurants and Fast Food
- Wine and Beverages
- Political Views
- Travel
By answering these questions in your profiles, you help survey companies and yourself avoid ‘hit and miss.’ This helps them find the right person for their surveys, and you will find the right survey selections in your inbox. If you don’t feel comfortable answering certain profile questions, you don't have to answer them, but remember—the more questions you answer, the more you will qualify for surveys.
B. Update your profiles
Sign into your account and update your profiles every six months, especially after life changes such as marriage, career or income change, or the addition of family members. Doing this will keep your data updated and relevant.
You wouldn’t want to miss a survey intended for those who ate at Taco Bell in the past 3 months or a diaper survey for women who recently had a baby. If you just got promoted to a manager or any decision-making position, you shouldn’t miss surveys intended for those positions, especially because those types of surveys usually pay higher rates.
C. Take surveys every day, and if possible take ALL of them
Take surveys every day, if you can. Take them as soon as you see the invitations in your email inbox. Every survey is set to a particular quota or required number of samples. Considering that: (a) survey companies send invites to A LOT of possible qualified survey takers so they are able to deliver the desired number of responses to their clients as soon as possible; and that (b) surveys are taken by respondents online, which makes it very convenient and easy to fill and submit quickly, it is better to get in the survey and finish it the soonest. Some quotas get filled up very easily, especially if a lot of panel members fit the profile the survey is seeking. When the quota for a particular survey is filled, the survey closes; thus if you had not answered it as quickly as possible, you would lose the opportunity for additional earnings.
Another secret we hope could help you earn more is: participate in ALL the survey invitations you get. This will give you a relatively higher response score. Survey companies, through the help of their database, check and group their respondents or panel members according to their response scores. Panel members with higher response scores are most likely to respond to a survey invitation and are therefore added to an ‘elite group’ which is is given higher priority and are sent survey invitations first.
D. Read and answer survey questions carefully
Survey companies have clients who pay them not just for survey data but for quality survey data. Accurate opinions are very important for them to make accurate business or political decisions, and incorrect opinions which mislead them into making wrong decisions are a waste of their time and money. Because of this, clients of survey companies won’t pay for bad survey data and will most likely refrain from doing business with survey companies which gave them bad survey data.
In market research, survey data is essential and therefore treated with special care, from the creation of the survey tool to gather it to its collection and analysis.
To check the quality of data, some surveys have trap questions that will ask you to click a particular option. Some survey companies can also check when you are not reading the questions, especially if your answers follow a uniform and predictable pattern and if you finish the survey unrealistically fast. They also have the technological capacity to check if you’ve typed gibberish responses to open-ended questions. If your data shows any indication of bad data, your account will be flagged, and you will be added to a group that should receive survey invitations.
E. Finish your surveys on time
While you should not just click options without reading in order to finish a survey quickly, you should also be careful that not to take an hour to finish a 30-minute survey. It may be possible that because you take the survey at home, there could be some distractions such as a phone call or some favorite TV show that steals your attention from your survey.
Surveys are programmed with a session-timeout feature, and this will disconnect or end your session if you have been idle for a certain amount of time. Additionally, most surveys are also programmed to run only for the time indicated in the survey invitation and going beyond that specified time will disconnect you from the survey.
If you pay attention to each of these tips, it should be very easy for you to qualify. After all, success in survey taking is always a two-way road: you getting paid for your opinions and the survey companies and their clients getting the good, accurate, quality data they need from you.
