Paid Surveys: Scam or Not?

Hi. I'm Yvonne Weng, and I am on a mission. Well, not really, but I am a young college student with internet access and way too much time on her hands, currently on an experimental investigation about those too-good-to-be-true, get-rich-quick offers floating around on our wonderful world wide web. I admit, I can't say I am an expert on detecting internet scams. In fact, in the past two weeks since I started my casual investigation I was almost duped into many of these suspicious offers. I am still in the process of finding out more about these possible scams as I type this article. Meanwhile I will give my experience about the paid surveys.

It started out one Tuesday night as I surfed the classifieds on the web. Craigslist.com is a favorite of mine, and I came across the usual postings proclaiming that the average American can make thousands a week without leaving their homes. Normally I would just raise an eyebrow and ignore the silly ads, but my curiosity got the best of me. I decided to follow the postings that boasted of making money from taking surveys, and eventually I was led to a site called SurveyScout.com, and with a membership fee of $34.95 they will give me access to their vast database of money-making surveys while they shoot miles of success story testimonials at my eyes encouraging me to sign up now! I was skeptical of course, but once again I was curious and I figured "hey, if the site is telling the truth, I can easily earn back that membership fee while earning some extra bucks for myself." It was worth a shot. And besides, I was bored at the moment.

I pay my dues, and immediately began my new "career" as online survey taker. On my first impression, I was fascinated that SurveyScout did not rip me off but delivered what it promised: a long listing of various different websites that offer cash or other forms of reward for participating. I eagerly sign up for a couple right away while noticing that all of these independent survey sites are actually free to join. (Later on, I realized that I could've easily gone straight to these sites without the help of SurveyScout and still sign up for free.)

After putting up with the many annoying basic forms that ask me to provide my personal information such as name, birthday, email, etc., there is a site called SendEarnings.com that caught (and held) my interest. I'm sure there are many other sites like this, but for now I'll concentrate on SendEarnings. It offers to pay you for reading emails, taking surveys, checking out their advertisers' offers, and more. Getting paid to read emails? Wow. That was new to me, and I just HAD to try it. In fact, I've been a member for two weeks, and I've earned about $16 from doing a combination of paid emails, surveys, and offers. (But I have not been PAID yet; there's a minimum cut-off level of $40 before a member can receive a check.) Emails are actually worth very little, between two and five cents usually. But the point is to accumulate the little change while going for the bigger incentives like advertiser offers that'll reward you full dollar amounts, for example, paying you $10 to try a free trail of some service. Currently, as you can tell from my $16, I am still working on accumulating my cash earnings.

One thing I regret doing is signing up mindlessly for those many many sites and offers. In fact, I can't remember exactly what I have signed up for anymore, there's just too many. I think I signed up for a few survey sites, a few "free offers" sites, and some other stuff that are somehow affiliated with this site and that. What I do know is that I have a bunch of spam in my mailbox. That's right, SPAM. We all hate spam, working hard to equip our mailboxes with special spam blockers and filters. If there's ever a price to pay for these free sign-ups of various sites promising rewards or jackpot giveaways (if you win the sweepstakes that is), it's the spam. I've even gotten the occasional phone call and text message promoting even more random sweepstakes and offers. It's very annoying.

Back to the root of all the annoyances: a few days later from that fateful Tuesday, I asked for a refund from SurveyScout. After all, they were selling me a bunch of stuff that I could've gotten free somewhere else, probably from some intensive Googling and linking around. But you gotta give them props for good customer service; they refunded me the very next business day. I am happy that my $34.95 didn't go to waste.

Words of advice if you are to plunge into this world of online money-making: always do your research, read the FAQ's and Terms of Conditions before committing your personal info to any site, and make a separate email account just for these special websites. Googling about these survey sites couldn't hurt; for example, I've come across discussion boards and blogs of people voicing their advice and concerns about SurveyScout. Unfortunately, I didn't do that until after I joined and paid for SurveyScout (big mistake), but I did get the idea of asking for a refund from my Google research. The best thing to do is to simply keep your guard up for fast cash offers. Many are actually legitimate, but they inaccurately promote their services. In my opinion, there is no way a person can make the advertised hundreds or thousands of dollars a week - unless they have absolutely no life and love getting spam. I, however, have a life as a full-time student and find spam as annoying as hell.

As for my current status on my survey "career", I am still keeping up with a couple of the sites I signed up with, taking a survey (or two) a day in my spare time while putting up with the daily dose of spam. Hopefully I will be able to receive a check from SendEarnings in a month or two. I can't say this experience was a waste of time, but I have yet to find out if it's WORTH my time.