Filling online surveys is one quick way to make some extra bucks for your famine days. No harm in getting some legit coupons, vouchers, and gift cards, right? You can also refer to your friends and families and gain extra benefits.

Of course, all these come with a little time investment.

But imagine a website making fools out of people and fleeing away with their precious data. Yes, such scammers aren’t few. But this should not deter your plans from investing your free time to make some profits. All you need is to have keen eyes for finding the best online survey sites. Legit sites that pay you for your time, not fool around by collecting data.

Here is a rundown of prerequisites you should check before enrolling in a website to fill surveys and make easy money online.

How to Find Legit Paid Surveys?

1. Asking for Personal Sensitive Information?

More often than not, sketchy websites ask for information you would never be comfortable sharing. A bank account number, your driving license details, or your social security number: all these are your extremely private data. These values are sensitive and might land you with scams if shared.

Most legit websites will never share your private information outside their context. At least, they would seek your consent before sharing it for market researches. Questionable surveys could be the middlemen and would collect your data that might get leaked to tele callers.

2. Asking to Pay in Cash?

Is the website asking you to pay for filling in survey forms?

Most of the online panel companies process their survey forms for free. If a website asks for a membership fee, you can end up with a dubious membership. Some companies might even list third party website and would divert you to fill forms there. Avoid such websites and intermediaries.

No legit market surveys ask for money. They exchange your basic information with surveys. In return, pay you in vouchers and some discounts with their affiliated eCommerce and other websites.

3. What About Reviews?

Most legit companies collect reviews from their audience. You should check for reviews of a website before you fill any survey or open an account.

Positive reviews about a website on various software marketplaces can help you to make your choice. These reviews can help you understand tips and warnings about a particular panel company.

Beware of the false positives, though. Scan if the reviews look similar to each other or too cool to be really cool.

4. Have Privacy Policies and FAQs?

Jump on the privacy policy and FAQs pages of a survey website before you create an account.

A website that doesn’t define the policies about using your data, survey information, and conflict resolution terms and conditions is a red signal. Go through the frequently asked questions and check what needs to be done in case of conflicts.

Do they have a grievance redressal policy? Or at least a contact information available to reach out to in case of issues? Many of these websites have to abide by the national laws for privacy like GDPR. Do they mention anything like that? Do they have the policy to handle cookies?

All in all, a survey company should clearly mention their data usage policies.

5. Do They Overpromise?

If you think their payment promises are incredibly tall, quite likely they are fake.

Most of the companies don’t pay in cash. They either reward you points on each survey that you can redeem after a specific value/time or provide you coupons, vouchers, and deals. But none of these sites offers a bank transfer to your account. If this is a part of their pay policy, chances are they are shady.

6. Can You Smell Fishy?

Anything that you feel off about a website is a sign to turn your back. The security issue, redirecting to another website, a blank or missing contact page, super-slow page loading, dishonest testimonials, fake reviews… it could be anything.

Bring your sixth sense to the fore and decide if it looks right.

When Should You Steer Clear of a Survey Website?

• If they ask for a payment. Whether you are filling questionnaires for online survey sites in India, the US, or anywhere else in the world, you should earn, not pay. Legit websites don’t ask for money at any stage.
• If you need to provide your bank account or social security number. Such information is a key to your data misuse and online fraud. Stay away from sharing such information, however tempting the deal is.
• If the security settings of the website are sketchy or outdated. HTTPS is a thing. Unsecured websites may create problems. Websites that look outdated are probably from companies who don’t care about their digital endeavors. Do you think they would care about their respondents enough?
• Disqualifying your surveys often? If you have invested time filling many surveys that get rejected for some unexplained reasons, then the website is shady.
• Is the payment pseudo? Overpromising to pay a lot that no other site offers? Run! Paying in pennies, and you feel drained after filling the surveys? Stop! Legit websites and market research companies pay anything between $0.20 to $5 per survey on an average.

 

 

Wrapping Up

Whether you are a pro in the game of online paid survey sites or a novice, mistakes can happen anytime. After all, to err is human. So, follow these tips and find websites and online panel companies that are legit and care for their respondents.

Another important point to remember is, money from surveys should be treated as pocket money. You can’t make a living out of this activity. If you are new to this, please acquaint yourself with facts and policies. And to start playing the game, join Opinionest for free.