Paid Survey Scam: 10 time-tested tips on how you can avoid it
Ever heard of the saying – nothing comes for free? Well, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong about free sites, but if what you want is to make money, free sites are not the best place for it.
Online paid survey is a popular choice to make money online. It’s easy, fast and you can get some money out of it by having as little as a few hours of work.
When something is popular, you should be careful of the scams.
So what can scam do to you? Well, they can ask you to join in their program which you got to pay some money, and poof! nothing happens – except you losing your money. Some scammers also use your details to sell it to marketers and you’ll end up having spam emails to your mailbox, which everyone just hates that.
So, before you join into any of the online paid survey here are some tips for you to avoid being scammed:
Tip No 1: Check the support from the paid survey website
This is one useful test to do. In the “contact us” from the website, check out the email or phone number that you can contact them. You can post a simple question to the email and see how fast they respond and how is the quality of the respond. If they don’t respond at all then you should be worried.
What happens if they don’t even have a “contact us” page? Then you really should be worried.
Tip No 2: If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is
Ever get into those websites that promises you to earn thousands per month doing online survey? And you’re telling yourself are they for real? Well, most of the time they probably are. As online surveys gives small pay outs when they are completed usually in the tens of dollars – now how many surveys can you do to actually get thousands of dollars?
Tip No 3: Check out the company profile
A genuine paid survey profile normally have a good write up on the profile. Not just a one-liner. And they would also mention how many years they’ve been around. This is important – coz you don’t want to end up getting involved in a fly-by-night kinda websites.
Tip No 4: Be careful of free sites
Ever heard of the saying – nothing comes for free? Well, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong about free sites, but if what you want is to make money, free sites are not the best place for it. You may get into mystery shopping or something like that but you don’t normally get good money from it.
Tip No 5: Avoid mystery shopping
As I mentioned in Tip No 4, mystery shopping is just what it is – a mystery gift or a shopping voucher. Why is it called mystery? Coz if you know what it is upfront, you probably won’t be interested. So, if you got into a website that promises more mystery gifts than real money, you should give that website a skip.
Tip No 6: Visit forums on scam to check out the paid survey website.
Forums on scam such as www.scam.com provide a lot of reviews on websites and story from people on how they got scammed. Check out the paid survey website on these forum. If something bad comes out from it, then avoid the website.
Tip No 7: Look for reviews
Some genuine paid survey website will have good independent reviews about them. What you shouldn’t do is to read the review directly from the paid survey website – coz it can just be another marketing gimmick. Just search at google and type “<website name> review” and you might get something from the search.
Tip No 8: Where is the location of the company?
Sometimes the scam website gives a big list of the companies that wants you to do the survey. Just make a random check on these companies on whether they actually exist and whether they are really a big companies, or just small companies. Remember, normally the big company pays you money for the survey. Small companies give you mystery gift (in which you probably wont like or use anyway).
Tip No 9: Be careful of pop ups
Try to avoid paid survey websites that suddenly jumps to you out of nowhere – a typical pop-up kinda thing. That’s because most pop-ups can lead to scams. Some are good no doubt – but it’s rare.
Tip No 10: Trust your instinct
After reading and looking and checking out the paid survey website – how do you feel about it? Is the website something you are comfortable with? Coz if you get into their program, you’ll be using the website for a lot of times. If you gut feeling tells you something can be wrong – maybe it’s time to take a step back and think again. After all, you gotta trust your gut feelings.
What next?
There are some paid survey websites that you can try below. I’ve checked it out and it looks ok to me.
I found a cool Paid Survey video on YouTube for you to check it out:
Popularity: 52% [?]
Related posts:
- Simplest way for you to make money online – Paid Surveys
- Make money scam - if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck …
I read your blog in a regular manner, and your way of writing is just awesome.
Please keep going, smile
your sierra
Thanks Sierra! I hope it’s been useful for you.
Is there any specific topic that you like me to write about?
Hey Nash: Great info, can i copy your article to my blog??
Hi PaidSurveyGuy,
Sure.. feel free to copy the article to your blog, but please give credit and link to my blog.
I checked out your blog and it looks good. All the best!
Hey, great post, very well written. You should write more about this.