Recent times have been so hard economically, that many thousands of people have found themselves out of work and desperate for money. You may be looking for ways to earn money from home, with nothing but an internet connection on your smartphone or computer to help you.
One way that some people have found as a method of earning money from home is to take online surveys. Market research companies, also known as Get-Paid-To or GPT companies, act on behalf of many businesses and brand names.
They need to know all about the general public, in order to be able to market their products effectively. The best way for them to find out about your shopping habits, lifestyle, preferences, and spending is to ask you directly.
Big businesses, therefore, hire GPT companies to conduct this research on their behalf. These GPT companies will pay you to take surveys and provide them with much-needed information.
One such company, supposedly, is SurveySay. If you are considering signing up with them, we suggest that you read further for a detailed SurveySay review.
How Do Get-Paid-To Sites work?
The conventional and trusted Get-Paid-To sites are mostly legitimate sites run by accredited market research companies. These companies need your information for their clients. Let us consider your favorite brand of potato chips.
They might be considering launching a new flavor, but they aren’t too sure how well it will be received by the public. So how do they overcome this problem? They hire a GPT company to find out what they need to know.
The GPT company will design a survey all about potato chips. They will invite people like you to participate and answer their questions. The questions will include some personal demographic information about you, such as age, gender, location, possibly occupation, and even income level.
There will also be a section about your potato chip preferences, such as flavors, texture, how often you eat them, and so on. In order to persuade you to take the survey, the GPT site will offer you an incentive, usually in the form of a gift card such as Amazon, iTunes, Starbucks, or similar. Or they may even offer cash via a PayPal account.
While you can never earn enough through doing online surveys to make it your full-time job, it is a nice way to make a little bit of extra money on the side, to supplement your regular income. This can give you the money to treat yourself and your family every now and then.
You may have some questions about getting paid to take surveys while lounging around at home. At the end of this article, we will try to answer some frequently asked questions, or FAQs, about the process.
What Is SurveySay?
SurveySay is not like the regular Get-Paid-To sites described above. Rather, they act as a kind of ‘middleman’ between you and other well-known active GPT sites. The truth is, you have no need for the middleman. All of the legitimate GPT sites are quite simple and straightforward, and it is easy enough for you to navigate them on your own and join up with them directly.
How Does SurveySay Work?
When you surf their website, you will see that SurveySay does not give you any information about themselves. Their landing page is extremely vague and has very little information on it. There is nothing about how it works.
All it tells you is that it is free, fast, and easy to sign up. Once you have signed up, you will get matched with companies that need your opinions and you can take their free surveys in order to earn cash.
You are asked to enter your date of birth and gender, and then click to join. Once you have done that, you are given options of other GPT survey sites to connect to and register with.
SurveySay does not distribute or carry out surveys themselves. They will not pay you directly. They partner with other conventional GPT sites and will connect you to other sites that actually do the surveys.
SurveySay urges you to register with as many of their partner sites as possible, in order to increase your opportunities to earn money by doing surveys online. You have to register with those sites in order to receive surveys from them, and you will be paid by those sites.
The most popular GPT sites with which SurveySay has partnered are sites such as OpinionOutpost, GlobalTestMarket, Toluna, and MySurvey.
Is SurveySay A Legitimate Get-Paid-To Site?
It is difficult to answer this question definitively, but we have a lot of reservations about this site. There is so little to go on that it is extremely difficult to verify their legitimacy, or otherwise.
This all seems somewhat dodgy to us. Nowhere on their website does SurveySay give any information about themselves. There is no ‘About Us’ tab to click for information about the company.
Questions such as how long they have been in existence, where they are based, and who owns the company all come to mind. None of this information is displayed on their website. It makes us wonder about their transparency. All other legitimate sites offer this information freely.
The fact that they do not ask you for a registration fee in order to sign up with them is one positive point to consider. Many of the more obvious scam sites demand that you pay a fee to join their program and supposedly ‘benefit’ from the opportunities that they can offer you.
You should never have to pay to sign up with an above-board GPT site. In fact, many of the more reputable sites will even offer you a small incentive, either in the form of a points credit or a small gift, for joining up.
While SurveySay does have a lengthy privacy policy, in which they undertake not to share your personal information, there are many negative reviews about them in this regard on the internet. Users have complained that shortly after signing up with SurveySay, their email inboxes have been flooded with spam emails.
Many of the complainants suspect that SurveySay has sold their private information and email addresses to unauthorized third parties. If this is indeed the case, it is clearly problematic. Your personal, private information should be just that – personal, and private!
If this information is made available to third parties and gets into the wrong hands, you could find yourself a victim of fraud and have your bank account or PayPal balance cleared out.
Another very dangerous possible scenario is being the victim of identity theft. If your private information is passed on, someone could impersonate you and run up debts in your name.
While admittedly there is no evidence to prove that SurveySay shares personal information with third parties, there are very strong suspicions that this may be the case, and there is also no evidence to refute the allegations contained in some reviews.
One of the things that can reassure you that a GPT site is safe and legitimate, is that it is registered with the Better Business Bureau. We could not find any evidence to show that SurveySay is in fact registered with them, leading us to assume that they have not been accredited by the BBB.
Who Is SurveySay For?
SurveySay claims to be for anyone who wants to earn money from taking surveys online. While it seems like a great opportunity, we would advise you to proceed with caution.
If you enjoy spending your free time browsing the internet and playing around on your phone, you may think that you have nothing to lose from signing up with them. While this may indeed be the case, it is advisable to exercise extreme caution when sharing personal and private information.
What We Like About SurveySay
The only really positive thing that we can say about SurveySay is that they offer a platform to connect you with numerous other GPT sites. But the question is, “Do you really need them to make that connection?” We would say, probably not. It is easy enough for you to register with those sites on your own, without using SurveySay as the middleman.
What We Don’t Like About SurveySay
Unfortunately, there are a number of things that we don’t like about this site. Let us start with the website itself. It is very plain and has only minimal information. Before we use a company or service, we like to see what they stand for and how they work.
SurveySay does not tell us any of this on their website. A company’s website is its first means of connecting with its customers. When you open their site and see their landing page for the first time, that is their only opportunity to make a good first impression. Regrettably, SurveySay’s website landing page has very little to offer.
The beauty of the internet is the ease with which one can share information with others. If you want to know anything about a company, it is a simple matter to type the name into a search engine, and you will have endless information about them at your fingertips.
Reviews by users of GPT sites abound on the internet. Many of the better-known and reputable sites have lots of good reviews with high ratings. This enhances their credibility and reassures potential new members that they are safe and can be trusted.
This is regrettably not the case with SurveySay. We found many very negative reviews with poor ratings, and we actually struggled to find even a few positive reviews that encourage people to sign up with them.
We don’t like the fact that even though you have to register with SurveySay to sign up with them, they do not pay you directly, and take no responsibility for ensuring that you are actually paid by their partner sites for the surveys you have completed.
PROS
- Free to join
CONS
- Not registered with the Better Business Bureau
- Many negative user reviews
- Too little information known about the company
What Does SurveySay Offer?
The only thing that they offer is that they will connect you to other GPT sites. They offer you the opportunity to earn money by registering with their partner sites and then taking their surveys in exchange for rewards.
SurveySay Review Summary
While we would love to be able to tell you that SurveySay is a good site to make a little bit of extra cash, sadly we don’t think that this is true. All our research points to the reality that you would probably be better off avoiding this site.
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FAQs About Taking Online Surveys For Rewards
What are online surveys?
These are surveys that have been created and distributed by market research companies that are called Get-Paid-To companies. They act on behalf of other companies that need the information in order to know how best to market their products.
You will be invited to sign up on their site, and they will reward you for answering their questions and submitting the survey to them.
Do you earn actual cash for completing surveys online?
This depends on which site you are working with. Many of the better known and more reputable sites will offer you the choice of cash or other rewards. If you elect to be paid in cash, you will need a PayPal account, and the money will be credited to your Paypal balance.
What are the other rewards that are available?
A lot of the GPT sites offer gift cards for different places and experiences. The most popular gift cards are for Amazon and Starbucks, but on some sites, you can also get gift cards for iTunes and many other places. It is also possible to choose vouchers for things like movie tickets and entrance to other attractions.
How much can I earn by doing online surveys?
This is the most commonly asked question about taking surveys online. The answer is that there is no standard answer. It depends on the company, and it also depends on the survey.
Some surveys are very short, consisting of 3 or 4 questions, and taking only 2 or 3 minutes to complete. These will pay very little, possibly even as little as $0.50.
Other surveys may be much longer and require a lot more detail in your responses. These may take as long as 15-20 minutes to complete, and will usually offer more attractive compensation, possibly up to between $2 and $3.
The bottom line here is that doing online surveys is NOT a huge money-spinner. You will never be able to resign from your day job and replace your salary by lying on the couch in your pajamas and completing surveys online. At best, you might be able to make enough to treat yourself to a delicious coffee now and again or buy that cool gadget that you’ve had your eye on while browsing on Amazon.
Are online surveys a legitimate way to earn money?
Yes, they are legitimate, but you have to be cautious, and aware of the pitfalls. There are some GPT sites that are NOT legitimate and are just a front for scammers. These scammers are very clever and design a site that aims to elicit sensitive personal information from you. This information is then either sold on to unauthorized third parties or is used by the scam site owner himself to defraud you.
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