Understanding payment and online surveys

There are so many misconceptions about online surveys all over the Internet. The most troublesome is that it can become a full-time or even a part-time job.

Don’t expect online surveys to supplement your income, nor think that online surveys can become your primary source of income because it can’t in both counts. It’s good for a few minutes at work when you find you have free time to take a 10 or 15-minute survey. Most online surveys can be done as you task switch between some boring task at work and then switching to take a survey to stop yourself from going crazy over a repetitious task.

You won’t get rich, but depending upon your demographics and lifestyle information that you gave to the online survey company, you will get some money, gift certificate, or some kind of remuneration after a couple of months. Some people get a few hundred dollars every few months, while others barely cash out once a year or more.

Original article at http://hubpages.com/hub/Understanding-payment-and-online-surveys

The “I got terminated” or “I was terminated because of over-quota” or the survey crashed and the survey company is stealing my money statement? I’ve seen this often from people who don’t understand how online survey companies operate. I’m talking about “real” online survey companies that work within the market research industry.

These are different from the companies that pretend to be online survey companies but give you “special offers” to join subscriptions or asking you to pay to join their service. If these two options apply to the site your looking at, then you did not join an online survey company servicing the market research industry.

If a survey isn’t completed, whether by being terminated, over-quota or something happened in mid survey and you experienced an Internet problem, then nobody gets paid. This means the client will never pay the online survey company anything if there is an incomplete survey. I’ve worked both sides of the industry and I know clients will only pay for completed surveys, and they will be adamant about this. This is normal within the industry.

Let’s look at it this way; a market research client need tos sample 5000 respondents divided between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to see the effect of a media campaign that was just finished. This company goes to a market research firm and expects 5000 completed surveys. Market research firm then goes to an online survey company to give them a quote for a total of 5000 completes in those four countries. Now, the online survey company targets people who fit the profile that was given to them by the market research firm to get those completed surveys.

Original article at http://hubpages.com/hub/Understanding-payment-and-online-surveys

Now here’s the important part. Clients will never pay an online survey company for any kind of terminate or drop. What market research clients will pay for are completed surveys and that’s it.

Clients will also not pay for data that looks strange – a 10-minute survey that took 1 minute to complete, all the answers are the same, the age doesn’t match with the profile, the gender doesn’t match with the profile, wrong geography (someone in Florida taking a survey for California residents), the list is endless.

Normally, the end client has quotas for gender and age, then some get very specific depending on the focus of the online survey, for example, some client in the gaming industry will want only Halo online players, or if there is a car survey, a quota will be set for each brand of car, the list is endless, and there are so many ways a person can be terminated from a survey so you might as well answer honestly because second guessing a survey will only just piss you off.

Let’s look at a simple question… now this is a car survey…

Do you have a car?

Yes

No

OK, so you know it’s a car survey. You’d think the right answer is yes. You don’t have a car, but you click “Yes” because, hell, it’s a car survey! The next page you see is the terminate page.

Stop second-guessing and just answer the truth! The survey could have been for people who don’t have a car. Do you remember answering a profile when you registered? Just maybe the online survey company sent the invitation to only people who answered “no” in the profile to owning a car.

The end client who are either the market research firms or their clients such as Microsoft, GM, Apple, etc. creates online surveys; the job of the online survey company is to invite its members to take the surveys to get those completes – that’s it. The online survey company has no control over terminates or wording of the survey.

By the time the online survey is given to the online survey company, the person who creates the survey should have tested the survey. If there is an error, someone in the long chain of companies will try to fix the problem, first will be the guys at the online survey company who talks to the guys at the market research firm who maybe talks to the end client if there is an issue with some kind of text problem with the survey. Most surveys run smoothly when launched, but some need more refinement once it gets down to the online survey company.

Original article at http://hubpages.com/hub/Understanding-payment-and-online-surveys

To sum it all up, surveys that are not completed are thrown away. They’re basically not even looked at. It’s the completed survey responses that are used in research reports. No one will pay for responses from terminated surveys.