A paid survey involves someone answering a list of pre-generated questions in return for some inducement, usually a cash payment.
They are normally used by marketing companies and targeted to specific demographics in order to guage response to potential new advertisements or products.
Paid surveys usually illicit a better response than, say, targetting busy people in town centres because the payment buys the respondent’s time.
Paid surveys are an effective means of soliciting a target market’s opinion for a minimal outlay.
The vast majority of the time these paid surveys can be found online or through newspaper advertisements, junk mail, etc.
Scammers have become involved in this lucrative business in a few different ways.
The most typical scam is to charge potential survey takers a fee for registration to a service that provides surveys.
However, upon paying, all the respondent receives is lists of more paid survey sites.
Quite often these will be out of date or they too will charge a fee and thereby perpetuate the scam.
Another common scam is to set a minimum number of surveys to take before payment is issued.
The company offering the surveys will be getting paid as each one is completed.
However, they will never give the survey takers enough work to reach their payout level, thereby raking in all the proceeds with no outlay.
A good way to spot a paid survey scam is to look out for their requirements.
Market research requires opinions from specific demographics.
Therefore, if you are being asked to take surveys without giving any kind of background information about yourself then it is liable to be a scam.
Additionally, remember that you are the one looking to get paid.
If a survey site looks for you to pay them in advance then be very cautious!
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