Introduction
Last Christmas I saw an advertisement for the Paid Online Surveys home business opportunity. The ad talked about earning up to $125 for a survey and $150 for focus groups. I could not believe what I read...wow... can earning a side income really be that easy? The mathematician in me got the calculator out and started doing the sums. Prudently, I worked out the average payment of a survey at $50 and $100 for a focus group (down from the quoted amounts to allow for ad embellishment) and... Voila ...just two of these surveys a day and some focus groups over the weekend would bring me in about $50,000 a year.
At that moment I was jumping for joy. Alas, I had found what I was looking for ...the perfect home based business opportunity. How could I be so lucky? It was like coming across a chocolate cake when you are absolutely famished. The words 'Carpe Diem' kept going through my mind. The perfect opportunity was before me and I was about to reach out for it ...How Cool!
The Sign-Up
I quickly invested in a $50 dollars resource and got access to a database of about 400 survey companies. I was advised to sign-up with as many companies as possible to maximise the number of surveys I received.
The sign-up with hundreds of companies was a pretty tedious task but the motivation to earn an extra $50K a year certainly kept me going. However, what got me really uncomfortable was the personal information I had to fill out for each of the registrations. I knew that the idea of doing this was to enable companies to build up my profile so I would only receive targeted surveys but nonetheless, I found this quite discomforting from a safety point of view.
The Surveys
With all the sign-ups complete, it was time to sit back and wait for the surveys to come in. Without giving away too much at this point, I must say this was probably the highest point of the whole venture. From here on, it was all downhill.
Anyhow, soon the wait was over and the emails the started coming in. On my first day, I received about 20 emails from the companies that I had signed up with. About 15 of these mails had absolutely nothing to do with surveys and were simply promoting products. The remaining 5 were surveys but, interestingly, only one or two of these were actually paying any cash, the rest were all paying in the form of vouchers and raffle tickets.
I was in the Paid Online Survey arena for about two weeks and during this time I must have received about 200 emails of which probably only about 40 or 50 were actually surveys and the rest were all, to use the official term - Spam. The consideration offered throughout was once again mainly vouchers and raffle tickets and where cash was being offered, the amount was so small that it was simply not worth the effort. The highest amount I ever came across for a single survey was about $4. The rest were paying much less and some were not even paying a dollar. What makes it worse is that most companies will only send you a check when you reach a certain amount like $50 or $100 and with the rates they pay, it would probably be months before you actually see any money.
Each and every day of my two week association with Paid Online Surveys proved to be more and more frustrating. By the end of the first week I knew in my heart that it was all over and that this venture was another waste of time and money but I had to give it another go to confirm what I already suspected. As expected the second week was as bad as the first one and at the end of that week, I felt that it was time to call it a day.
Conclusion:
Paid Online Surveys was another in a line of failed business ventures for me. The disappointment was huge but I did not give up and have successfully moved onto affiliate marketing where I have found peace as well as a small side income.
I must strongly reiterate that this article is purely my own personal experience. Others may find better luck but for me this is a venture that must be avoided at all costs.
Richard Anderson writes reviews and articles on home based business opportunities.His writings are based mostly around his own personal experiences and can be found at www.thehomebusinesscafe.com/ |
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