Searching For Legitimate Paid Surveys: My Review

When I first thought about trying my hand with a "get paid for surveys" program, I searched online for a review or website that would help me understand how to pick the company with the most legitimate paid surveys. Instead of finding honest paid survey reviews with clear opinions or conclusions, it seemed like every site I came across was nothing more than a collection of links to survey sites with little to no "review" information. I was cautious about signing up with just any site, for fear of falling prey to one of the many paid survey scams that I had read about. To help me take the first step, I decided the best place to start was with a site I had seen in the signature of a member of a forum I participate in .

I had a hunch that I would have to provide an e-mail address with each paid survey site registration, and not wanting to get overwhelmed with spam in my personal or business e-mail accounts, I decided to set up a free e-mail account dedicated just to my surveys. In this instance I choose yahoo.com, but gmail.com or hotmail.com would have worked just as well.

First Impressions based on the Main Webpage: Positive

Seeing the words free, payment the same day, and payment available through PayPal gives me a feeling of quality and legitimacy.

"No Real Minimum, It's Your Money Get It Today" "Payments within Minutes for Verified Users"

"NEVER Pay to become a member of a Survey Site. Survey Sites should be free to join so you can earn your FREE cash. You should never have to wait 15, 30, or in some cases 60 days for your money. Its your time, you spent it today, you should be paid today! We have no real minimum cash out. Our minimum cash out is only $0.50 for Paypal, $5.00 for Obopay, and $5.00 for checks. You can earn your free cash TODAY, cash out TODAY, and be paid TODAY! "

Additional compensation can be earned with their referral program: Earn 20% of everything your referrals earn and 5% of everything anyone they refer earns.

GetPaidTo.com is a supporter of an organization called GPTBoycott.com, whose focus is to keep tabs on, name and boycott fraudulent or scam-oriented survey or other online money making programs.

Signing Up

The initial sign-up took about 20 minutes. During the process of filling out the registration, I was offered many options to sign up for, such as receiving newsletters and to sign up with "partner sites" that offered other money making opportunities. I opted not to join anything else at that time. I didn't want to get overwhelmed with junk mail or get put on a mass market spam list. It could have been really easy to get "distracted" from the main goal of signing up with this one company.

When I signed up I was to receive the initial "bonus" of $.50. The payout threshold if $.50 with PayPal as the payment form. There are steps that have to be taken to get "verified" for receiving the payment. I followed the directions given, but since I was calling late at night, on the weekend, I had to leave a message. At one point over the weekend, I wondered if I was doing something wrong, so searched the main site, and found a link for customer support. After putting in a trouble ticket, I also discovered a very active Member Forum. In the end, it took two phone calls, but I was verified and the $.50 payment was put into my PayPal account, as promised.

Impression After First Use of Site: Positive

Navigating around the site is easy with the use of the side menu bar. With the ability to choose the category type of offers I want to see, I don't have to waste time "wading" through offers, for the only type of surveys or offers I want to see are the FREE ones. In addition, there are "Featured Offers" listed at the beginning of the list. These typically offer a higher dollar value, such as $2.00 to $.50, and rarely take more than filling out a form to receive more information by mail.

Conclusion: GetPaidTo.com is a straightforward, legitimate paid survey site. I use this one and recommend it with confidence.

First Impressions based on the Main Webpage: Uncertain. To participate with this site, you must "qualify" and be "selected".

The front page says you can earn $1 to $5 each time you qualify for and complete a survey. It also says you can be entered to win $5000 and you can earn "bonus bucks" for completing profile questionnaires which add to your chance of being selected for more surveys. There is a FAQ button, and after reading further I see that you must have a minimum of $10.00 for a payout, which is paid with a check that is mailed to you.

Signing Up

Initial registration took just a couple of minutes, however, the site encourages you to continue on and fill out the "profiles" Each profile you fill out collects different types of information. This information will be used to "pre-qualify" you to be invited (via e-mail) to participate to see if you do qualify for a survey. There are 8 profiles to fill out. Truthfully, you don't have to do them all in one go, but if you decide to, like I did, be prepared for a lot of questions. The word "tedious" describes very well the experience of answering question after question. (And this is just to get you "in the system").

Impression After First Use of Site: Reserved

Upon completing my registration and filling out my profiles, there were no surveys immediately available. After a couple of weeks I did receive an invitation to see if I could qualify for 2 different surveys. I did qualify for the first survey. And I earned every penny. This really is a survey. It must have taken me 20 minutes of reading, answering, really having to think and follow. But, I did finish.

The 2nd survey, after answering several questions, said I did not qualify. A little frustrating to have spent time answering questions, but did not get anything for it.

Conclusion: Your2Cents.com

I think the quality of this site is good, and it seems to be a legitimate paid survey company. If you do decide to signup and participate, be prepared to be rejected, or, if you do qualify, be prepared to really spend some time with the survey. For those wishing to build any "down lines", this site does not offer a referral program.

I recommend this site with reservation. Since I've signed up, I plan to keep an open mind and try it a few more times, but, I'm skeptical on the "return on the investment of time". It all depends on just how much

FusionCash.net

After signing up for this site and looking around, I discovered a couple of things that really bothered me. First, it requires a $15.00 minimum to "cashout" for payment. That seems rather high to me. Also, it was really difficult to find offers that appealed to me because so many of them were geared to having me sign up for more survey sites or other types of "sign up" offers. The FusionCash forum was very active, but a lot of the conversation was passing on more survey sites , and not so much being "helpful" about their own site. This site just didn't feel right, so I went on and closed my membership.

Cashcrate.com

This is another site that seemed to be spoken of a lot online, but when I checked it out, getting paid was , again, troubling. The $10.00 minimum and payment being by check, a month behind, seemed totally out of reason.

MakeThatDollar.com

At first I thought this was going to be a good site, for the cashout minimum was just $1.00, and could be made through PayPal, however, a red flag went up when every off I tried to click on resulted in a McAfee warning about massive spam potential, I said forget it, and closed the account.

SurveySpot.com

Any site that promotes sweepstakes as a major selling point makes me nervous. It seems that you will be contacted by them to take surveys, and from my experience, that means you are invited to see if you qualify for the survey, no guarantee that you will actually be taking it.

After all my research and checking out the paid survey sites that I did, I've come to the conclusion that you can spend a lot of time chasing down every site that people say they have done well with, and give it a try. Or, you can focus on 1 or 2 sites you feel good about and really work at them. That is what I am going to do.

I am going to focus on GetPaidTo.com as my legitimate paid survey site for my daily surveys and will see how things go if I am contacted by Your2Cents.com.

Once I get some surveys under my belt, and money into my account, I'll write a followup Hub, and will share some of my tips for how I've made money and what I have learned.