Sharing your opinions about poorly performing products, gross services, and brands that don’t care is important for all the stakeholders. If you raise your voice, you’d favor not only the audience but also the brands. User opinions matter for companies to perform better, fill the gaps in the market, and work harder to provide better services.

And the cherry on the cake is: You earn some rewards, such as gift vouchers or cash from best paid survey sites. This blog post lists 5 ways you can participate in surveys and make money.

Types of Surveys You Can Participate In

1.     Online Surveys

Brands collect users’ inputs about their products and services through one of the most popular and convenient ways—online surveys. You can also earn some rewards, such as redeemable points or vouchers. Sometimes cash, too. But remember, an online survey can only help you to amp up your pocket money, not pay your debts.

You can refer your friends and family to get some brownie points.

Online surveys open an easy route to share your views. Just enroll with a panel that conducts surveys and maintains the privacy of the users. Fill out your demographic details. Mention your interests and complete your profile by completing all the optional questions.

Make sure never to share sensitive personal information such as bank details. Or never pay a panel company to participate.

Once you get an email or an app notification from the panel company, complete the survey. For open-ended questions (those requiring you to write short or long answers instead of clicking on radio buttons or checkboxes), articulate your answer clearly and precisely.

Pro-tip: Read how to find legit paid surveys.

2.     Focus Groups

In a focus group, people using the same product or service gather. A mediator, mostly the brand’s representative or a market research consultant, conducts the group discussion for a product satisfaction survey or similar study. They ask questions and collect data from each participant.

For instance, to improve the learning system in your college, you’re invited to a group discussion to seek your input. In this case, be attentive to the meeting, ask about the context of the meeting, make yourself aware of the topics if you don’t know already, and don’t get distracted during the meeting by checking your screen.

Providing honest, clear, and succinct feedback can improve the system in your favor.

When you participate for brands, try to be as truthful in your reactions and responses as possible. This will help you get better products and services in the future.

In this digital age, focus group meetings could be organized online, too.

3.     CATI

CATI, or a computer-assisted telephonic interview, is a one-on-one meeting between participants. The agent asks you certain questions by dialing your mobile number and seeks your opinions about a recent product you purchased or a service you used.

The calls are sometimes deep about a topic covering several aspects if you’re an expert in the field.

For instance, assume you are a research fellow in a college working on people’s social behavior in the case of natural calamities. A brand offering services during such crises can seek your input as an expert.

CATI can be short calls or as long as 15-20 minutes, depending on the topic and depth. It can offer you rewards in the form of vouchers. Sometimes, you’ve better chances to earn money through surveys such as CATI when you are an expert.

Read tips to participate in a CATI survey smoothly.

4. Personal Interviews

Personal interviews can be similar to CATI, but they might happen on voice calls, video calls, or face-to-face without the assistance of any software as opposed to CATI. They work effectively during field surveys.

For instance, a company working on fertilizers can study the farmers in rural regions and seek their opinions personally.

These interviews can be highly rewarding for you as a participant. Because best paid survey sites have resources to conduct them.

5. Diary Studies

A diary study is a qualitative data collection method. You would be asked to maintain a diary around a topic. For instance, your water, liquid, and other apt food intake during summer. You need to record all your food habits and intake for a few days in a diary so that the concerned brand can work on its business strategy accordingly.

This method needs detailed description, precision in the logs, and honesty, as you aren’t given multiple-choice questions to select from. You’ve to record your full day’s activities truthfully on the topic.

Learn how to not get rejected from surveys.

How Opinionest Can Help You with Survey Participation

Opinionest is one of the best panels on which you can earn money through surveys. We work in various industries and maintain a panel of 4.8M users. If you wish to participate in surveys and offer data for consumer insight surveys, please register yourself for free here.