Free or Fee-Based Paid Survey Sites - Which One Do I Choose?

You see them all of the time, "Get paid thousands to take a paid survey". Are they legitimate, do they really pay what they say the pay? Well, Yes and No. What I mean is that some of them pay you and some don't. You just have to find the right one. OK, so how does someone know if a paid survey website will pay or if they even have surveys to send me?

Paid Survey sites got their beginning, of course, with the development of the Internet. Before the Internet, many survey companies were conducting paid surveys in the mall. I am sure you have had people come up to you in the mall asking if you would take 5-10 minutes to fill out a survey and get paid a small amount of money. Well, those survey companies, just like other companies, saw the Internet as a powerful tool. Now they could get surveys out to thousands of people all over the world without paying employees or rent for space in the mall.

Thousands of Paid Survey websites started to pop up all over the Internet. Some had claims that you could make $10,000 a month to take surveys. Others were more realistic and let you know that you could make good money, you just had to work for it. You see, I hear a lot of people say they want to make a lot of money, but they don't want to put in the work. Could you make $10,000 a month taking paid surveys over the Internet? Maybe, but you would have to work 50-60 hours a week and sign up for many paid survey web sites. You would also have to take every survey sent to you.

Today, there are both paid survey sites that are Free and those that you pay to join. Which ones are best? It depends on your goals. If you want to get gift certificates and coupons, then go with the free paid survey sites, and if you want to make cash, then go with the ones you have to pay a fee to join.

Free Paid Survey Sites - These sites are free to join and have more than enough surveys to take. They usually offer small gift certificates or coupons to mane brand products. I would suggest these to you if you only have a few hours a month to do surveys.

Membership Fee Paid Survey Sites - These sites usually have a one-time fee of $34.95 to $79.95 and pay cash when you take surveys. Some surveys offer sweepstakes entries, but you can choose only the surveys that pay cash.

Why are some paid survey sites free and others require you to pay a fee? Well, that is a good question. Free paid survey sites charge the company that wants to submit a survey a fee. Because of this, most companies decide not to pay money (since they just paid a fee to the free survey web site), and instead pay in gift certificates and coupons. Gift certificates are just like cash, but only if you choose surveys that give you gift certificates to products you actually use. If you get a gift certificate to a company you don't need, they can be given as gifts or you just wasted your time.

On the other hand, the paid survey sites that charge you a fee do not charge the companies submitting a survey anything. Therefore, these sites usually have more surveys, and in addition, have more surveys that pay cash. I could see you earning a living on these sites, but only if you treat it like a job. That means you could make $25-$50 an hour, but you would have to put in 40 hours.

There you have it, Paid Survey sites are here to stay. If you want cash, pay the one-time fee and get to work. If you want gift certificates or coupons, sign up for the free sites. It is your choice. Happy Surveying!

For more information please visit: http://www.paid-survey-reviewer.com

Jeremy Noland is an expert on Paid Surveys. He has many years of experience making money of these unique websites and runs the web site Paid Survey

Reactivate Lapsed Donors With A Direct Mail Fundraising Survey.

A proven way to reactivate lapsed donors is to ask them why they have stopped giving.

You can do this with a survey that you enclose in your mailing. Or you can leave space on the reply device for a few questions. According to Stephen Hitchcock, in his book, Open Immediately! Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising, asking lapsed donors why they are no longer giving will generate some useful answers, and a sizeable percentage of the donors will mail back a gift.

You can use this new information to prevent other donors from lapsing. Review again the reasons that donors stop giving, found earlier in this handbook, to think up the kinds of questions you can ask in your survey to elicit each donor's reason for dropping support.

If you prefer, make the survey entirely qualitative, and ask questions that require original answers and not a simple checking off of a box on the survey form.

Whichever method of survey you employ, use the survey questions to discover the otherwise unknown--why your donors lapsed. Maybe the fault lies with you. Maybe it lies with the donor. Maybe the economy is at fault. You will never know unless you ask.

One advantage of a survey, if worded well, is that the questions themselves inspire the donor again to support your cause. Let's say, for example, that your organization lobbies the federal government to ban handguns. Your donors, even the ones who lapse, are people concerned about handgun violence to some degree. In your survey, you could include questions like these:

1. True of False? An average of five children are killed each day in gun-related accidents and suicides.

2. True of False? 40% of American households with children have guns.

3. True of False? A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting, than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.

As you can imagine, these survey questions are likely to provoke the same anger among decent, concerned lapsed donors that moved them to mail you their first and successive gifts. Survey questions like this prompt lapsed donors to contemplate your work again, thing again about who you help, and ponder the need you meet, and the role that the lapsed donor has in making the world a better place by giving again.

? 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online and in print provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the "About the Author" message).

Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer, instructor, coach, author and newsletter publisher who helps non-profit organizations to raise funds, build relationships and retain loyal donors using cost-effective, compelling, creative fundraising letters. Sign up for free weekly tips like this at http://www.RaiserSharpe.com

Does Size matter? - How many questions is too many in your online survey?

Surveys are all about collecting information. To get the right information you need to ask the right questions. While 'the right questions' is covered elsewhere, here I am going to discuss the number of questions as an aspect of design.

As with most things the answer is "it depends". However with online surveys a good rule is the fewer the better. How many times have we seen a great focussed survey get a poor response because every person in the approval chain has decided to add another question? The logic being that seeing we are asking people questions I would like to add just one more. This inevitably will be somewhat off topic and with each additional item the integrity of the survey dies a little death.

Rule 1 - Focus the survey! As soon as you wander, even slightly, the respondents will start to question why they are responding at all. I must say the most successful surveys are the 'front of mind' type topics with up to ten questions. The questions follow a logical progression to help the user think about the answers in a logical way. For example you may ask about? 1. what they thought the process was like before 2. did they feel involved in the problem identification process 3. did they feel all problems were identified 4. did the upgrade plan make sense to them 5. was there sufficient communications during the upgrade 6. did the new system live up to what they expected 7. What could have been done better Can you see how the questions followed a rational order, in this case time/process based?

Rule 2 - 10 minutes is an inconvenience, 15 minutes is an investment. When you ask users to respond to a survey you are asking them to spend some of their hard earned time for you. - What are they getting in return? For many surveys it is little if anything. Most people will spend up to 10 minutes out of charity. Anything over this and they will be expecting something in return. It may be as basic at a raffle ticket or as complex as a detailed analysis of their response against a broader population of respondents. Either way it needs to have value to them and be clear at the outset.

This brings me to my next point: No matter how long your survey is, there must be an introduction that states what is expected of the respondent and what they are going to get in return. This is usually put as how long the survey is expected to take (don't lie!) and what if anything they can expect in return. Eg. "?will take approximately 10 minutes and will help lead us to devise a system that works to your best interests."

Rule 3 - Trapped users don't care. We have all done these sorts of surveys, where you start and it seems to go on and on. You get lost as the questions seem to repeat and you are getting no closer to the end. In frustration you then start selecting the mid range response without really reading the question. Not I! I hear you saying. Can I tell you that statistics imply that this starts to happen to some extent after the first ten questions! With only limited investment users can quickly turn to prisoners looking for a way out ignoring you hard thought questions.

I want to make a last note here. A short survey is five questions of a multiple choice type, say radio button or checkbox. A long survey is only 20 questions. Think about why your respondents are investing the time. If you have come to the lower limit of your questions and you are still well over twenty, you might consider putting the more critical ones towards the front.

If you have any topics you would like covered please mail me at SteveWrightMail@gmail.com and I will include them in my growing list.

cheers Steve

Hi, after years of designing survyes I am collecting together some of the key lessons. http://surveysurvival.2leadership.com