MDX Research

5 Ways to Avoid Paid Survey Scams

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This is a guest post from our friends over at HowMuchIsIt.com. Enjoy the post!

Nowadays, a lot of people have maximized the use of the internet in order to earn money. Some websites sell products and services. Others offer several internet marketing ideas in order to help both online and offline businesses to succeed. However, there are also websites claiming to pay outrageously big salaries in exchange for a very easy task but only to find everything was just part of a scam. One example of this is an online paid survey scam. Please note that not all websites offering paid survey are scams. But, you have to be very keen in figuring out if a certain website is legitimate. Otherwise, you run the risk of working for a website that has no intent of paying your hard work. In order to avoid such thing from happening, check out the following tips:

Find out if their “contact us” page is valid.

Many people became victims of paid survey scams because they immediately jump into starting the job without checking first the validity or authenticity of the contact page. But, after all the sleepless nights and the hard work of taking those surveys, that is the only time that they try to check the “contact us” page only to find out that they will never be paid because there is no one to contact for the processing of the payment.

Be wary about paid survey websites offering to pay hefty amount of money.

If they claim to pay too much for too little work, then you should be careful. Do not allow yourself to fall into their beguiling marketing talk trying to make the impossible sound too possible. If it is too good to be true, then it could never be a reality at all.

Check the forums that talk about scam sites.

Search the internet for websites that talk about different scam sites and see if that paid survey website is there. Make an effort to join the forum discussion and try to ask the people in there if they know something about that particular paid survey website. If one or two people would say something negative about it, better be careful.

Read the company profile.

One way to figure out if the website is not just a fly-by-night site is to read their profile. A valid company profile would consist of not just one paragraph or one sentence. You should also find there the picture as well as the names of the founders. Then try to Google the names of these people and see if they truly exist in such paid survey world.

Do not ignore your instinct.

Most of the time your instinct will be the one to tell you first if the website is valid or not. As you read the website from page to page, what do you feel? If you are skeptical about all of it in the beginning, then better not take the risk. There are thousands of other ways to earn in the internet so, never allow anybody else the victory of making you believe it is true.

This was a guest post written by Hannah. She runs HowMuchIsIt, a website that helps you answer questions such as, “How much does a new pool table cost?”

4 Commonly Held Misconceptions About Paid Surveys

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This is a guest post from one of our regular readers. Hope you enjoy the post!

Manufacturers must get feedback from consumers of their products. If not it would have a negative impact on sales. Market research and consumer feedback is essential to the success of any product.

1. The Questions Don’t Apply To Me

The number one complaint from persons who have signed up to take surveys is that the questions don’t apply to them. All online survey companies ask the survey taker to answer specific questions and give pertinent information as to their likes and interests. If the survey takers profile indicates they have knowledge or have worked in banking and finance then they can expect to receive surveys along those lines.

2. I Got What I Paid For

Getting what you pay for should not apply to being paid for completing surveys. As with any other business you should never pay to be allowed to work. Imagine walking into a fast food restaurant or a retail store and stating that you will pay them a monthly fee if they will let you work. There are online survey companies that require sign up fees and monthly membership dues. These should be avoided.

3. Surveys Are Only Done Online and By Phone

Market research must be performed to maintain sufficient interest in the manufacturers’ product. There may be two almost identical items on a store shelf. If one of them is selling and the other is not the manufacturer will want to find out why it doesn’t sell. These questions can be asked on a survey to purchasers of either product.

It may be an online questionnaire or the survey could be carried out by an independent contractor, or a merchandiser in the store.

Manufacturers must utilize any and all resources to remain competitive.

4. Assuming All Survey Companies Want Something for Nothing

There are several legitimate companies online and otherwise that are happy to pay substantial fees to someone who can provide the information they need. The survey may be a simple comparison of certain foods and other purchases. It may involve getting opinions from consumers on new products or new product names. The most reputable survey companies offer choices in receiving payments for survey work. Either cash or reward points that can be turned into cash may be offered. Once a certain amount of reward points has accumulated they can be exchanged for cash, gift cards or store credits.

Brendan Mitchell is a blogger who relies on the Australian business directory HirePulse for all his marketing needs from hiring people to help survey his customers to finding the right advertising agency.

Tips for Online Beginners to Make Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing

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These days a lot of people are trying to make money online. There are many ways to make money online. One best ways is to make money through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a process where you promote someone else’s products and get commission on the sales of those particular products. Affiliate marketing requires some money as investment. You can take out that money from your savings or ask your friends or family members or can even opt for payday loans. These are short term loans which provide instant cash and you can easily repay these loans on your next payday or within 31 days. Affiliate marketing when performed properly yields good results. Below are some of the tips which guide you to make money through affiliate marketing.

  • Create a blog or website to promote somebody’s products and services. Ensure that your blog or website is getting good traffic. When your blog gets targeted traffic then there is a chance for you to promote the products to a larger number of target customers and thus generate good sales
  • Write about the products and its working and post it onto your blog or site. You can also post the upcoming products and services and how it will be useful for your audience. You can also post the links of these posts on social networking sites which will also bring traffic to your site
  • It is better not to choose low- quality products as there is a chance that they may hurt your credibility.  If you sell a low –quality product once to your customers there is a chance they don’t buy from you anymore
  • Ensure that the products you choose are of high quality. It is advisable to research about the product before promoting it. You can do this by checking out the review blogs where you can know about the product
  • Before you start to promote a product, you need to build a big list of subscribers. Ensure that the subscribers of your list are potential customers. Promote your products to them and start making money. Building an email list is the basic thing which every online business owner requires
  • Always start promoting the products only after using that product. This will allow you to know the working of the product and you will be able to produce genuine reviews on the product. Don’t ever write reviews on the product without using it or understanding it as it may hurt your credibility

Make use of the above tips to start earning good amounts of money through affiliate marketing.

About the Author:
My name is Michelle.  I am a tech writer from UK.  I am into Finance :).  Catch me @financeport

5 Quick and Easy Ways to Make Money Online

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This is a guest post from one of our friends about five quick and easy ways to make money online (excluding paid surveys). Hope you enjoy the post!

Most people think that a regular 8-5 job is the only thing they could have as a reliable source of income. Even though we know that there is no quick way earning cash, there are other ways to earn money and all we have to do is be creative and look for other opportunities around us. Making money online is becoming very popular nowadays because it is easier and more flexible to work with. But again, there is no quick way to becoming a millionaire however, there are quicker ways to earn money.

Here are 5 examples to make money faster online:

Amazon Mechanical Turk– this is where you can find a list of works available, it is somewhat a marketplace for jobs. You can find a list of testing sites; articles based jobs, survey jobs and many more. Create your online portfolio for others to see and for employers to hire you easily online. Complete these simple tasks and you’ll earn money in no time. https://www.mturk.com

Conduit– this job is very easy because all you have to do is create custom toolbars. When someone downloads the toolbars that you’ve created, you get paid. It’s that quick and easy! In order to get more people to download your toolbars, do some research and learn more about the techniques of creating one to earn more money. http://www.conduit.com

eBay– do you know the saying that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”?. Rummage through your closet and post some of your items on ebay to earn easy money. Just make sure that the products you’re selling are still in good shape to avoid having negative comments on your profile. http://www.ebay.com

Experts’ exchange– techie’s are best for this one. All you have to do is answer other people’s question about hardware; software, programming etc. make sure you know a lot about these topics because you’ll be paid depending on how you answer it. http://www.experts-exchange.com

Student of fortune– this is an online tutoring and homework type of job. You’ll be helping out students who post questions and again, you’ll be paid depending on how you answer it. The top tutor in this site earns as much as $ 127,000, and who knows, you might earn more than that person soon! http://studentoffortune.com

How can making money help my credit score? Earning extra money online will really help you with your managing your finances. If you get to pay for your bills on time, you’ll definitely be improving your credit report’s health as well. Check your credit score regularly to be able to keep track of it and the items in it.

You can get a free copy of your credit history from the three major credit agencies once every year. Get a copy of your credit every 4 months to make sure that the items on it are updated and new. Get all the errors removed (if there are any) to avoid affecting other transactions in the future.

Online jobs may be flexible but it will require time from you, find the job that best suits you and your schedule so that you can do your job well. It would also help if you love what you’re doing because you’ll be more in to it and you’ll work on it longer and faster. The examples above are just a few of the jobs available online; freelancing, designing, editing, logo making are other quick earning jobs as well. do more research and start making money online now!

About Author:

Shimpy is a financial blogger who loves to share financial tips to manage personal finances, improve credit scores, and credit reports. In her spare time, she also writes for http://www.seo-smo.net/

What is TRUSTe & Why Do They Endorse Some Paid Survey Companies?

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truste logoA lot of our site visitors email us and ask us about TRUSTe. Most of their questions revolve around what are they and why do they endorse some of the paid survey companies out there.

So first, what is TRUSTe?

TRUSTe is the leading provider of online privacy solutions. They have a robust suite of privacy services that help businesses, big and small, build trust with their visitors and help them create and increase engagement across all of their online channels. This includes their websites, mobile applications, their advertising and marketing efforts, etc.

TRUSTe’s mission is simple… “Trust in Privacy”. They review and hold companies (not just paid survey companies) accountable regarding the collection and use of personal data and information. When they provide a business their seal, this is a sign of responsible privacy protection practices and this seal is trusted by millions of consumers all across the world.

Second, why does TRUSTe endorse some paid survey companies?

I think the answer to the first question pretty much answers this second question. When legitimate paid survey companies engage in responsible privacy protection practices, they are endorsed by TRUSTe and this is an organization that you can trust to not only protect your privacy, but to do business with.

I hope that this has answered your questions about TRUSTe. If you have any others, please feel free to contact us.

Why Are Paid Surveys Conducted?

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One of the mor common questions that are asked by the visitors or MDXResearch.com is, why are paid surveys conducted? To most, it just doesn’t make sense that someone or some company would be willing to pay a person for completing a survey.

The answer to this is quite simple, paid surveys are conducted because businesses (big and small), government agencies, public bodies, and other types of organizations are interested in the views and opinions of average people like you and me who already use their products or services or who might be interested in using their products or services.

By conducting survey research (paid surveys), they are able to know more about what their customers think about their product or service offering and from there, they are better able to tweak it to better fulfill their wants and needs.

What it comes down to is that businesses want to make MORE money and the way they do that is to find out what their current and potential customers want in a product or service and tweak their current offering or add to it so that they can offer something that more people will buy.

This is why paid surveys are offered and why companies are willing to pay you for participating in this research. If you put simple math to it, if they pay you $10 for taking a survey and they can get you to buy a product or service from them for more than $10, that is a win. So the next time someone tells you that paid surveys aren’t legit or are a scam, now you know the truth and can point them in the right direction.

How To Use Autofill Forms For Quick & Easy Paid Survey Registration [Video]

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Hey everyone… I got to thinking the other night that there has to be a much faster way to register with so many different paid survey companies.

I mean the ultimate goal of taking paid surveys is to earn cash… that’s it! And in order to do that, you have to sign up for dozens of paid survey companies and take surveys with each one. The daunting part is the registration forms for each site and I think I’ve come up with a great solution. Please watch the video below and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below.

Video Summary

I wanted to introduce you to something called “autofill forms”. It is an addon (plugin) that you can add to the firefox web browser that will let you save your information and with the click of a button load that information into a form.

To get started you need to download the addon and you can do it here.

Once installed you will want to click on the pencil in your navigation area and start filling out the form section. You will want to enter as much information as you can including your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number.

After you do this you will want to visit the paid survey company and get started. Once you get to the registration form, you will want to click on the pencil and it will start autofilling information for you. If it doesn’t know what piece of information to fill in, it will drop down a box that you can choose the data from.

Depending on how many survey sites you sign up with, this can save you anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so. After you zip through the registrations, all you need to do is confirm them and you are off and running.

How To Make Money Online [Infographic]

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As our faithful readers already know, we at MDXResearch.com are always looking for other ways to make money online so one, we can profit from it, and two, we can share it with you and you can profit from it.

Through our research, we come across a lot of legitimate stuff, a lot of scams, and sometimes we come across some seriously funny stuff.

Today, I wanted to share with you an infographic that I have come across more than once in my research of ways to make more money online. You can blow this up by clicking on it.

how to make money online infographic

We would love to hear your thoughts about this graphic. We’d also love for you to share this on Twitter and on Pinterest.

Graphic Courtesy of Fast Company

Old School Marketing Research vs New School Marketing Research (Memes)

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This is going to be a pretty short post today, simply because most of the message is found within the images I will be posting.

It’s kind of funny when you think about how old school marketing research was performed. In the early days, there would be one or two agents on regular telephones in some dark basement, flipping through a phone book, cold calling anyone who would pick up their phones to ask them questions about products or services. Flash forward twenty years and the do not call registry was rolled out and people got very angry when someone would call, even if it was for collecting survey data. So here’s your first meme.

old school marketing research memeYears later we would be introduced to the internet and a new way of collecting survey data. When paid surveys were introduced to the general public, people were not only super pumped to be earning cash for sharing their opinions, but you could answer the surveys on your time, not theirs.

new school marketing research meme

To learn more about paid surveys and how you can participate in online marketing research, click here.

If you like either of these images, please share them on Twitter and Pinterest.