Toluna Review

Toluna Review in summary: Toluna is just okay, not great. Has a good range of surveys and does pay out but we’ve heard foots problems from users in the past. A good one to have in your line up of possibilities but not one to rely on. We give it an 6.5/10.

Note: Toluna is one of the only survey panels we recommend which can also pay in Bitcoin. This makes it worth checking out for that reason alone.

What Is Toluna?

In the world of online survey sites, Toluna is a well-known presence, and our Toluna review will let you know what it does, and whether it’s a great fit for you. With a global community of over nine million users, Toluna Group brags about being “the world’s largest social voting community and streamlined research platform”. This free online community was founded in Paris, back in 2000, and it now brings together brands and consumers from across 57 countries via sophisticated and potentially rewarding surveys set up.

This road is paved with surveys and polls, rewards and battles, thumb it and gifts. If you’re not sure what some of these words actually mean, don’t worry – they’re just a few of the terms you will come across if you decide to sign up to the Toluma experience. What you should keep in mind, for now, is that the platform serves:

• Companies and brands, on one hand, helping them to automate research processes, reduce insight time and get accurate feedback straight from their end consumers
• People like you and me, on the other hand – ordinary consumers that have something to say about the products they use ,or who simply want to know what other people think of everyday products and items.

This second part of their activity is what’s of real concern to us in our Toluna review, so let’s take a closer look.

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Another related survey site:

MNOW Review

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How Toluna Works

Not too long ago, on a quiet afternoon when I should have been working but was actually dreaming about my approaching holiday, my colleague’s smartphone woke me up. It started to buzz like crazy and she suddenly became really excited. Naturally, I was curious to know what made this normally passive workmate take her head out of the pile of folders she was struggling with, and it turned out that Toluna was the answer.

She was too busy with this new thing to even explain what she was doing or why it excited her, so of course, I just had to take a look over her shoulder, and then the truth lay revealed. That was when I found out my colleague is a Toluna addict, and her afternoons at the office have never been the same since. When the smartphone buzzes, I know it’s sure to be survey-related.

Within a few clicks, I soon managed to get a fair grasp of how it works and what’s with all those gifts and thumb it that Toluna loving people seemed to be so obsessed with. And best of all, it didn’t take me long to realize that Toluna really is legit.

If you’re a newbie to the world of Toluna like I was, I imagine you’ll really want to know these 10 vital facts about this website:

1. It is a platform for surveys, so you will have to spend time participating in surveys and questionnaires. Research companies are dying to know your thoughts on certain products are, which is why they create the questions you’ll find via the site. Your answers will tell them if and how to adjust their marketing efforts. For your efforts, you will receive points. It’s a win-win situation.
2. The best way to receive invites that match your profile is to make your user profile as detailed as possible. Even though each survey starts with some basic initial questions that indicate if you are a good match, having your profile completed gives you extra shots at completing a survey. Sometimes, instead of a 15 to 30 minutes survey, you might have the chance to rapidly complete a sponsored poll, which is nothing but a quick vote you give on a particular topic with multiple choices.
3. You have a huge community to consult if you are having second thoughts about one or more products or services. This is where Thumb Its and Battles come into play, and the difference between them is very simple:

• You make a statement about a product and ask users to Thumb it. They can thumb it either up or down and following their feedback, you can draw your own informed conclusion.
• Are you finding it hard to decide between two different products or services? List them up in a battle and let users decide which will be the winner. Toluna makes this easy to do.

4. You can even create your own polls – apart from the previously mentioned sponsored polls, created by companies in search of your opinion, you can create your own personal polls with up to 10 voting options, right from the “Create” menu. It’s one of the simplest interfaces I’ve seen.

5. Communication on Toluna.com isn’t just standard responses and multiple choices – you can create a topic and start a truly open conversation with other users. That means you can ask the community whatever you want, and complex, informative and fulsome answers will soon start coming your way.

6. Your contributions will earn you points – change them for specific prizes when you reach the target amount, or try your luck earlier with a giftie. For every survey, poll or questionnaire you complete, a certain number of points will enter into your virtual wallet. When you reach the threshold of 60,000 points, you can redeem them for a large selection of prizes on famous stores or, even more alluringly, for cash. Alternatively, if you don’t want to wait too long to reach 60,000, you can decide to “pay” fewer points and try your luck with a so-called giftie. In short, it’s a gamble – are you prepared to risk your accumulated points for a possible prize? Gifties are a sort of scratch card game where you click on the ‘get it’ button, watch how certain points drain from your account and wait open-mouthed to see if you’ve won the anticipated gift or not.

7. Gifts can be passed on to someone else. If you are lucky enough to grab the prize you tested your chances for, you can deliver it to your personal mail or surprise another friend. You can even send it to someone who isn’t a Toluna member at all, if you’re feeling particularly generous!

8. If you love trying new things, you can sign up to be a product tester. Once more, this is a lottery, where brands offer their new products for testing, in exchange for a little bit of honest feedback. There’s a list of available products and you pick the one you would like to try. After you sign-up, you will automatically enter a randomized list but only luck will determine if you are the one to receive the product in the mail or not.

9. Toluna also organizes a cash sweepstake every month. But in order to be eligible for attending these events, you must have the status of an “active member” and a profile image on display. The carousel goes on, since in order to be an “active member” you must have initiated or participated in an opinion topic or in a poll with votes at least once during the past three months.

10. If you are a tech fan, you receive survey invitations on your mobile. Remember my colleague, and her excitement generating alert? You simply need to fill in your mobile number and you can then receive SMS notifications whenever you qualify for a survey. The message will direct you to the page of the survey itself, which you can access via your smartphone.

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Did you know that you can money on the go?

Surveys on the Go

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How Easy Is It To Use Toluna?

Since my colleague only needed an afternoon at the office to get to know the ins and outs of the platform, I would say that Toluna 2017 is pretty straightforward and intuitive to use just like Send Earnings.

You can sign up as a new user, or use your Facebook account to log in. After that, you can make your life even easier by going straight to the HELP page (the FAQ section from the bottom of the homepage). In there, you’ll find pretty much everything you need to get started earning points: from participation in surveys to mobile surveys and sweepstakes, polls, topics and opinions, battles and thumb it, and their area also explanations of some of the more technical aspects.

You’ll find that they make efforts to explain everything you need to do in plain language, which is always a bonus. For example, for most of the actions you will want to take, you have the option to add a photo or a video. The process is basically the same, whether it’s a survey, a poll, or a new topic, yet they still explain the process to you in detail. Can it get simpler than that?

And the best part of Toluna? You can make yourself better acquainted with the whole experience by simply navigating the website before you even create your account.

It allows you to take a look at the Rewards Center or the Test Products and see what happens in there.

You can also access the Poll or the Battles sections, to see what others have been posting. Obviously, you won’t be able to access the survey section or to vote on anything without being registered first, but you can still analyze the interface and decide for yourself if it’s something you can use and want to get involved with.

I, for one, found everything crystal clear, which isn’t always the case.

My Experience With Toluna

Many people can be skeptical when it comes to survey websites, but they can be reassured that Toluna is 100% free of charge. Not having to pay a dime allows people to sate their curiosity and explore the platform in complete safety, and without any outlay.

My first experience lived up to expectations gleaned from the use of other similar sites: survey invitations come in a rather limited number, because every user needs to fit certain demographic criteria. It makes sense that not everyone can qualify for all the surveys out there, but sometimes it can feel quite frustrating, especially when you think you’ve got a survey ready to complete. You receive an invitation, anxiously start answering its questions and then, after several minutes, you find out that you actually don’t qualify to continue with it. Time and nerves wasted, but I know it’s nothing that you won’t encounter on other similar platforms and websites.

What I really liked about the Toluna experience is that:

• They do have a very detailed HELP page. If you make the effort to carefully read it, you will find out pretty much everything you need to know to have an enjoyable experience. They explain to you in detail the most important terms, such as what menus to access in order to use the main facilities of the platform, and in what cases you are eligible to win something, and when you risk losing points.

• They have a very user-friendly platform. They even let you upload photos or short videos to accompany everything you post (from polls and topics to battles and thumb its).

• They are easy to work with and intuitive, allowing you to take surveys from your mobile phone or sign up using your Facebook account.

• They let you keep whatever product you earn the right to test. Once it reaches your address, it’s yours forever – you will only need to provide the feedback, which is the reason why you got the product in the first place of course.

What I didn’t actually like about it quite so much is that:

• Delivery of rewards can take longer than it should – you fill in a survey as fast as you can, yet you never know how fast you’ll receive the points after the survey has closed. In some cases, you can get your points within a few days or even faster, while at other times you can wait for up to six weeks.

• Points expire within 16 months of earning them. It almost feels like they are forcing your hand, pushing you to make 60,000 points within this period, otherwise you will start losing them. Around the end of each month, any points that you made 16 months earlier and haven’t used yet will disappear from your account forever.

• You cannot send gifties to someone from another country. It would have been nice to be able to spread the love to friends in another country.

  

  Could Toluna help your cash flow?

Toluna Review Conclusion

Toluna is a fun website to try, but, like all the survey websites out there, you cannot expect to get rich out of it. Having said that, the more you put in the more you can get out, and it’s certainly not a scam.

The whole thing, however, takes quite some effort in terms of invested time. Even though you have plenty of places where you can contribute, all of your answers must be unique. This means you can’t just copy and paste a few words and use them again to comment on different topics, thereby score more points. Do that and you will find yourself removed from the community, with all your points lost.

I know that some users have commented on how long it takes to gather points, and they ask why points disappear from the account. Again, it’s all in their FAQs, so forewarned is forearmed.

My final advice is to give Toluna a try. Take it as a fun experience, and the chances are you will enjoy it a lot. Just don’t expect to quit your job and spend the rest of your days on Toluna.com, and you’ll find that it has a lot to offer, and you might even win a reward or two. If you are looking for a better option than Toluna, go for MySurvey, it’s the best site.

Alternatives to Toluna

• Opinion Outpost
• Branded Surveys