Don't Be Fooled By Paid Survey Scams!

Hi, my name is Scott Welch and I'm one of the creators & founders of Top Site Reviews a website dedicated to the purpose of reviewing online paid survey sites to determine which ones are for real and which ones are frauds and scams.

The purpose of this blog is to give a forum to regular people to post about their own experiences on various paid survey websites, to obtain feedback from users about which sites are for real and offer real paid survey opportunities, and which are simply wastes of time.

To describe myself, I am a regular 35 year old guy who lives in Salt Lake City. I'm single, and I personally have made money online (and continue to) by taking online surveys for different companies. I've also lost a good chunk of money and time on fraudulent sites that claimed to offer paid surveys and I'm sick of it, which is why I'm putting together this blog in hopes of getting some real feedback from real people.

In the spirit of sharing, I'm also offering my top picks of sites that I know from personal experience are real survey opportunities. Each of these are sites I have joined, and I'll give my personal experiences for each. Anyone who has experience with any of these companies/websites, please feel free to post your own comments below.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Free to Join Paid Survey Sites


For a while now I've gotten questions about the paid survey sites that are free to join. A common question is why I tend to recommend the membership sites like Survey Absolute exclusively when there are other paid survey sites that are free to join.

The answer is... I don't. Meaning that I am well aware there are many, many paid survey sites that are free to join which are legitimate.
Some of them even pay you just for joining.

Here's a few examples of some good ones that I've personally used:

#1 -Inbox Dollars
Inbox Dollars is a site that pays it's members for reading email, taking surveys, playing computer games, and even offers a few mystery shopping assignments. They aren't strictly a paid survey site since they do other stuff too, and they don't offer a lot of paid surveys, but they do offer some paid surveys. They also pay all new members $5.00 just for signing up. While they can be a little annoying from all the emails they'll send you, you do get paid for reading those emails (usually between 2 and 5 cents each) so it's worth it to join, and they aren't a scam site (as always, feel free to post your own experiences with them in the comments section below; that's what this site is all about)


#2 - Survey Club
Here's another site I love to recommend to people. Survey Club is a paid survey site that's completely free to join (takes less than a minute in fact) and which sends people legitimate paid surveys by email (but doesn't send you a lot of spam garbage emails). Unlike Inbox Dollars they don't pay you a bonus just for signing up, but at the moment they are offering a $10 paid survey to all new members who sign up, and claim that all demographics are welcome. I joined up a while back so can't speak to this claim as I'm now ineligable, though I'd love to hear feedback from others on this.


#3 - #3 - Global Survey Group
Global Survey Group is another of the free-to-join paid survey sites I've stumbled across which is legitimate and not just a site that sends you a lot of garbage email. Their surveys don't pay all that much (a lot of them pay only $2 each) but by the same token they are pretty short too. I can recommend this one too.


So there's a few of the free-to-join paid survey sites that are legitimate. The problem is that the vast majority of those paid survey sites (so called) that are free to join actually don't really have paid surveys. Usually it's just little scam companies looking to scoop up your email and private information and then sell it to the highest bidder. Which is why you have to be careful of the scam sites.

Even the ones that are legitimate are usually pretty small companies. You might only get one or two paid surveys a month from these 'mini' paid survey sites. Of course, every little bit helps, but don't expect to join these sites and make a huge amount of money. If you want to get serious about making money at paid surveys, you're going to need to join one of the larger membership sites (I recommend Survey Absolute, which I've reviewed above).

I have collected a large list of fairly legitimate paid survey sites like the three listed above, which are all free-to-join, and I'm looking to expand that list all the time (so feel free to comment with your own experiences). If you'd like to see the larger list, be sure to join my mailing list, as it's a bonus I offer to everyone who joins the mailing list (which is free of course, and dedicated to finding more paid surveys and alerting people to the scams).

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I joined Inbox along time ago. They are everywhere anyway, so that's a no brainer. They send me mostly paid emails, but every once in a while I get a paid survey. I think I joined SurveyClub awhile back too, sounds familiear. Never heard of Global before but I'll give them a try and let you know.

Have you heard of Send Earnings? (go to this link to see it: http://www.topsitereviews.info/Ads/FPS/21to30/FPS25.html) There another paid email site like Inbox Dollars that I think pays you money to sign up too. And I know I've gotten surveys from them too.

Anonymous said...

Kudos on your choices. I've tried them all already and actually pretty much agree. Just want to turn you on to a site you might never have tried yet called Survey Savvy. Also free to join, has sent me a lot of legit surveys. Pays real money too.

Anonymous said...

SurveyClub is pretty good. I can't vouch for the others yet, but I'll give them a try.

Anonymous said...

Inbox dollars is for real, I do know that, and what Jonathan posted about send earnings is true too. It's very similar to inbox.

Anonymous said...

Inbox dollars is for real, I do know that, and what Jonathan posted about send earnings is true too. It's very similar to inbox.

Anonymous said...

I want to back up what someone said about survey savvy. Their another good service that's free to join. I usually get at least one paid survey a week from them. Also I like inboxdollars like the reviewer said. But he should think about adding survey savvy to his list too.

Unknown said...

I am also active member of Inboxdollar.This is good for earning some extra dollar.Even sendearning are also sam eas inboxdollar.Both the site u can do daily $1 servey(without giving credit card no,without spending any money,w/o shopping,only giving your opinion).So Guys,could you please tell me some servey site,where I get some $$ (w/o spending any money,w/o giving credit card)..pLease if anybody is having any real experience,then let me know.do not give any spam or any sweepstake....play site..