325 – Is this real?: Tom talks Survey Cash

Episode 325 – Survey Cash
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode three hundred twenty five of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about survey cash. Can you make money participating in surveys, focus groups and studies? Well, yes, you can. If you have the right personality and you are willing to prove yourself to the right, companies don't get sucked in by the young kids telling you you can't. I'll explain why they can't and you can in a few minutes. Now I'm going to recommend an inexpensive clickbank product. If you like this idea and you want the basics at screwthecommute.com/surveycash gives you all the basics. Now, this will work if you have the right personality. All right. Hope you didn't miss Episode 324. That was Kris Reid. He's in search engine optimization expert who told us about how he and his dad cut drugged by beautiful women in Latvia.

[00:01:34] Oh, I told him this really upsets me because I've been trying to get drunk by beautiful women everywhere, and I couldn't do. Anyway, we had a really good discussion about how backlinks can do wonders for your Web site and your bottom line. Now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show has helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail, click on it and talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you and also put your website in there so I can give you a big shout out in your own voice in front of thousands of people on screw the commute and make sure you grab a copy of your automation book. It's an e-book that we sell for 27 bucks, but it's yours free for listening to the show. It saved me millions of keystrokes, it helps me handle customers lightning fast and gives me more free time, all the tips that I use are right in that ebook. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're at it, grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app where you can put it on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. It does all kinds of cool things for you. All right. I know people are freaking out still about the pandemic. They don't know if schools are going to open. Well, I'll tell you what, I've been racking my brain. That's one reason I'm doing the topic I'm doing today is anything I can do to help you make money from home is what I'm trying to accomplish. Because I've been preaching this for 20 years and I've been doing it myself for 26 years. So you really got to emphasize this now for both yourself and your kids, or if you don't have kids, do it for yourself or your own business for your own security, because nobody could predict this pandemic happening. But it's not hurting me or my business at all. And anybody that I've trained in doing this kind of stuff, it's the same thing. They can work from home and keep their clients, keep their business going. Yeah, there's going to be some downsides to it for sure. But the thing is, you can still sell around the world right from your desktop. That's what we're talking about here. Now, I formalized it in the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. It's IMTCVA.org. It's a distance learning school certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia. It's distance learning, but you still have an instructor. You still have access to me. You still have live events every week. And it's just amazing. Some people are making money a couple months into the school, so check it out. IMTCVA.org. Think about it. Rather than going to a four year college where you're going to learn how to protest and you're going to be competing for jobs at Starbucks and broke when you get out with tons of debt, we can wipe that off the plate for you by giving you the skills that every business on the earth needs. So check it out at IMTCVA.org.

[00:04:58] All right, let's get to the main event. The title to this episode is Survey Cash, but it's more than that really. You can earn money as a side hustle and it can be substantial, but don't think you're going to make a full time living doing this. There may be a few people that do, but when I say a few, I mean very few. But it can be some good money on the side.

[00:05:24] Now, I don't want you to dismiss this as some harebrained Internet scam where absolutely no one makes any money, you may have tried it before or you may have seen the many YouTube videos where some young person filled out surveys for two hours straight and one kid actually did it for eight hours straight. I couldn't believe. And he made about five dollars and seventy one cents or something like that, and I might add he might have trouble collecting that five dollars and seventy one says because many of the scam sites have a payout threshold so high, you'd have to work for a month to get to like a ten dollar payout. Yeah, these kids were accurate in what they were doing and it wasn't worth it. I agree with that. And and they got there hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. But were they correct overall? Well, they were correct about what they were doing, but they were totally incorrect overall. And as is typical by generations who want everything now with no work or thought put into it, what with, you know, what they're doing, they were getting sucked into the standard sites where there is little chance of making a lot of money. They spent a couple hours doing the obvious on video and never bothered to really research the ways to make more substantial money, and that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. Now, first, let's talk about what's called qualification and prequalification.

[00:07:03] The first and most obvious thing when it comes to qualification for a survey is that if they only want IT professionals to sign up and you're an artist, then you're totally wasting your time to even sign up, go sign up at other companies. So that's qualification on the broad sense.

[00:07:25] So what is prequalification? Well, let's say a company wants to do a survey about what married women with a household income of forty thousand dollars a year and that have two or more kids under 16 living at home. All right. You see how this is thinks about laundry detergent.

[00:07:46] Ok, and and let's say that this isn't spelled out in the name of the survey, which is very common. Some actually just say mystery surveys so you don't know what it's about and some say mom surveys. So perfect. I delete that immediately because I don't have to waste any time on it because I'm not a mom.

[00:08:08] But anyway, many ask you some pre qualifying questions to see if you're right, you know the right person for the survey in this case, they ask me my sex, OK, male. They asked me my age, 64. The next screen might say thanks, but you don't qualify for this survey. Exactly, I'm not a woman and I don't have any kids, they don't want to see what I think about laundry detergent. That's not who they're targeting. Heck, if I'm lucky, I buy laundry detergent once a year, and when my Goddaughter and her family were living here, they put more wear and tear on my washer and dryer in nine months than I had in the previous 18 years. OK, that's the married lady of that family who buys laundry detergent. That's why they didn't want me in their survey for perfect. So long as they tell me up front, I'm happy with that. Get rid of me. I don't waste any time on it. Now, the industry average. Now, this isn't for sure, but it kind of says you will only qualify for one out of every five surveys you try. And that's one of the reasons patience in this endeavor is a virtue. OK, I'm going to address that more in a moment. See, I don't mind the pre qualifying questions, but what I can't stand and I won't use the site anymore is when they have you fill out the entire survey and then at the end they tell you, well, they've gotten enough responses.

[00:09:49] Yours doesn't count. You just wasted 10 or 15 minutes or more and you get nothing out of it. This is one of the ripoff type sites. They probably got paid for that response and just screwed you out of your money for it. Now, before we go too far about surveys, let me tell you, this isn't for everybody. I think you really need the right personality and really enjoy filling out surveys, watching videos and participating in focus groups, that kind of stuff. You've got to be patient and work the system because the longer you do this, the better surveys you get and the higher paying ones. And I'm going to tell you why, Sorley. You've got to be comfortable with giving up some information about yourself. That's the whole reason they survey, is they want to know who you are. The survey sites generally don't tie it to you personally, it's just a big thing, it's just the companies paying to take the surveys might want to know if you drive a Mercedes or a Hyundai or a pickup truck. Now, I'm going to talk about more about signing up for these sites a little later. But anyway, I've made a lot of money with this in the early days of my career just to prove it could be done.

[00:11:12] But when I can make hundred thousand or more doing a public speaking seminar, I mean, it's hard to get me to spend my time doing this, but if you're not in that situation and you're got time at home, this is a perfect way to make a little side money for sure. So let me tell you how many of the mainstream survey sites work and then I'll get into the higher paying gigs, which I do kind of like because I don't kind of like the drudgery of filling out surveys all day long.

[00:11:44] See, the main premise of these survey sites is that a company wants to get feedback from a certain number of people about a certain product or service that they sell and maybe they don't even sell it yet. Maybe they want to see if people would buy it. If not, they don't bother to develop the product. The survey may have cost them a couple thousand bucks, but the results could save them millions of dollars. So they tell one of these survey companies they'll pay, let's say, 25 cents for each good response they get to the survey. Now, let me take a sidebar here on good responses and proof of attention questions, see what the company asking for the survey. And the survey website that recruited you.

[00:12:37] Don't want what they don't want are people who just blow through the survey without reading the questions, so they might throw in a question with a list of, let's say, maybe 14 different colors. The question says, we want to make sure you're paying attention. So just pick the color blue below. Right. So if you just check any old box for a color other than blue, which proves you didn't read the instructions, they throw out the entire thing and you don't get paid. They also time how long it takes the average person to go through that particular survey. If you go too fast, you get disqualified. Some will even disqualified if you take too long. They're trying to get your full concentration on the questions, so you must pay attention to each question or you're wasting your time, you're they won't even pay you for that survey.

[00:13:39] Now, a minute ago, I told you patience is a virtue. All right, so so now I want to tell you why that is especially true in this field. Remember that the company, you know, and website that you signed up at once, big companies, let's say Johnson and Johnson, to come to them to do surveys of Johnson and Johnson gets a bunch of idiots filling out the surveys. And those surveys get rejected in lots of high numbers. Johnson and Johnson won't come back to that Web site to have surveys done because too many of the responses got rejected. In other words, Johnson and Johnson didn't get the information they needed because the people filling out the survey did a lousy job. They went too fast. They didn't pay attention, whatever. So the survey company doesn't want this because they won't get any more of Johnson and Johnson's business. So in the beginning, you have to prove yourself with relatively crappy, low paying surveys. And most people get discouraged at this point and quit instead of continuing to do a good job and proving that their responses are good. See, once you've done that, usually they will you'll start getting better and higher paying surveys because the survey company now trusts that you don't alienate their bigger and higher paying clients. They really do watch you closely and will kick you out promptly if you don't pay close attention to every survey you fill out. All right. So you get that the if you're a if you just blow through the surveys and lousy answers that don't make sense. And all of this, they're going to kick you out and never give you any better surveys. See, that's kind of the gist of it.

[00:15:35] Ok, before we talk about higher paying opportunities, let's talk about watching out for scam sites and exactly what to look for. Now, first of all, you should never and I mean never be asked to pay anything to participate. Never, never, never, never. That's the first sign. Boom. Gone. Leave as fast as you can. Now, you will be required to give some personal information like where you live, your age, your sex, but you should never be asked for things like your Social Security number or credit card number. Absolutely no. Now, another thing to watch out for is their threshold for payment. I mentioned this earlier. Some sites make their minimum payouts so high it would take you forever to reach it. So when you finally get fed up and quit, instead of paying you anything, they get to keep the money you worked for. Now, it may be a small amount to you like three or four or five bucks, but multiply that by tens of thousands of people that they didn't pay. And it means a lot of money to those scammers. So if the threshold of payment is really high, leave. Don't use that site.

[00:16:59] Now, many of the mainstream sites are so busy, they look like a circus tent. OK, you have to take your time to work through them and look closely at the address bar of your browser. Even the legitimate sites are affiliates for other sites, so you might click on something and all of a sudden you're filling out a survey on a site you never signed up at. You can be sure the original site is getting paid for sending you there. It's a very subtle on how they do it. So be careful what you click on.

[00:17:37] Another thing that scares me is if you originally started a survey on one topic and all of a sudden you're on some totally different topic, while that's a sign that this is not a good site and one more thing, like I mentioned before, you fill out the entire survey and at the end they tell you it's for to me that's totally fraudulent. Some sites appease you by giving you a few censor points. I'm going to cover payments and points and stuff in a minute. But that just sucks to spend 10, 15 minutes or more and then get nothing for. Now, if you question a site or want to avoid bad sites altogether, look for as many reviews as you can check, read it and see the sites that treats you fairly and that have low payout threshold so you can get your money quicker. Some sites have corresponding Facebook pages where you can go to look at comments about their program and Web site. Now, let's talk about payments, some sites use a point system where different things you do get you points which you will then trade in for cash or gift cards. And some are just straight money systems. They don't fool with the points. Some have sign up bonuses for opting in and confirming your email. Some pay in various gift cards like Target or Amazon or something. Now, one advanced tip is to watch for specials where let's say you can get a 25 dollar Target gift card or Amazon gift card for only 20 bucks. You just made an extra five bucks there. You can see those all the time. Now, I know one lady who does this stuff in her spare time and. All through the year and then cashes it all out at Christmas and has a bunch of money and gift cards to buy all her presents for Christmas.

[00:19:36] Now, most sites pay different amounts for different surveys and tasks, but some pay a flat amount for every survey or task that you do, you have to check all this out for each site that you want to sign up on. Now, there are all kinds of ways you can make bonuses, some just for visiting the site every day, some have games you get paid for playing, some you watch videos and get paid, some you take polls.

[00:20:04] Some have micro tasks like choosing which logo or color scheme you like for a product you just pick and you get paid for that.

[00:20:14] Many have an affiliate program where they pay you to recruit others to their site. Some even give you a percentage of your referral person's income. That's like a two tier affiliate program, they call it. When you refer someone, usually they have to become active and reach so many points or earn so much money before you get a commission. Now, let's talk about signing up for these kinds of survey sites. I do recommend an inexpensive clickbank product to get you started on the basics. My explanation, an affiliate link is going to be in the show notes at screwthecommute.com/surveycash will tell you about. That program is very inexpensive, but I'll give you a get you all psyched up and, you know, get you started. Now, you'll be signing up at many of these sites, so having an automatic form filler on your computer is a handy thing. I use roboform as both a password manager and form fellow filler. I got details and of course, my affiliate link that screwthecommute.com/roboform. Now, the reason you want a form filler is that many of the details you'll need to sign up at the various survey sites are the same. It'll just save you tons of time signing up. Plus, I've been using roboform for many years as a highly encrypted place where my passwords and tons of other confidential information like my dogs' birthdays are stored.

[00:21:56] Really, it uses military grade encryption protocols and it's known as the gold standard in password protection.

[00:22:06] Plus it has stuff like one click login. So let's say I want to go to eBay. I just click once and it goes to eBay, the login page, and puts in my user ID and password and opens it up all with one click, saves a lot of time and hassle and trying to memorize all these passwords. I mean, I really don't know what I do without it. And it'll generate passwords for you too. And it makes it easy anywhere you sign up for it to easily have roboform. Save all the all your new logging stuff at one time, as soon as you sign up for a new site or do something new, and I can't tell you how many times people pay me a lot of money for a consultation. And 20 minutes later, they still can't find the password to what they wanted to show me. All right. This is not acceptable.

[00:22:56] This is as bad as taping your passwords up on your monitor so that the next time somebody comes to your house, they see them all. Or if you get broken into, you just hand in the keys to your computer, to the burglar.

[00:23:12] So anyway, check it out at screwthecommute.com/roboform. So when you sign up, I have some suggestions, make up a Gmail account just for doing surveys. Because some are going to start sending the survey opportunities immediately. No, no longer than the next day if you sign up at a lot of these places. I let them I let them come into my main inbox because I'm used to tons of email every day, but maybe that would drive you crazy. Also, I suggest changing your birthday a little so that you're not plastering your real birthday at all. These sites, if they get hacked, I don't want them to give up my real birthday, in fact, other than government or motor vehicle or health insurance sites and stuff where it really matters, I never put my real birthday online. Actually, I'm only 29 years old. You believe that, right? Anyway, it does pay off to jump on a survey as soon as you get the notice. So having that the email come to you or checking that regularly is better because many thousands of people are seeing the same survey. And if they only need a thousand people and you're one thousand and one, you don't get to do or get paid for the survey.

[00:24:35] Now, before I get into the higher money stuff, let me tell you about how I can teach you this. Plus hundreds of other things you need to know to have a four part time successful online business. Well, I've been doing the longest running, most successful, most unique mentor program in the field of Internet and digital marketing ever, and I'll put my program up against anybody. You can come to the value you get here. And a lot of these people want enormous amounts of money up front. While I turned that on its head 20 years ago by charging an entry fee, which is relatively small compared to what they're trying to charge you up front. And then I get a percentage of your profits that's capped. So here's the benefits of that. I'm not going to disappear on you. So for me to get my big money, you know, my cap is 50000. So for me to get my 50000, you have to make 200000 and then you don't owe me another nickel. See, you're not stuck with me forever. So I'm not taking part of your business forever.

[00:25:44] And you can get in to to this whole thing that we have going on here with all the people that I've trained will tutor you one on one. You have an immersion trip to the great Internet marketing retreat center, of course, after the pandemic's over. But you know what? We don't even let anybody come here for at least four months of training so that they can take advantage of their trip here. We to shoot you in our TV studio. You have access to our TV studio. So there's all kinds of benefits here. You can't get anywhere else, including one of the biggest ones is it's one on one. I don't like group coaching because half the time somebody is lost and the other time they're bored, they. So you're not lumped in with everybody else. We actually I mean, we can take over your computer screen, teach you say don't click here, don't click there. This is how you do it. So you make rapid progress like that. So it's a maze and that's me and and everybody that works here will make those appointments with you. And also, if you have an assistant and you're busy doing something else, see, most professionals get busy with a client and then all this marketing stuff goes down the tubes and then they start working on it.

[00:27:00] Then they get another client and then all the marketing goes down the tubes. No, you want a constant flow of clients coming at you? Well, what that means is, is that you can have an assistant talk to us directly and all the team here about your project and keep it going while you're doing your actual work. Nobody else does stuff like that. So anyway, check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And also, when you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to the school, which you can either use yourself or gift to somebody. We have people that gifted it to their kids and the kids are making money in a few months rather than four years of heavy debt and no usable skills when they get out other than learn how to protest. So and then they're competing for jobs at Starbucks. So this is a very, very powerful program. It's been running over twenty years. People just love it because my success is is tied to your success. It's not you just giving me loads of money and then good luck to you. All right. So check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, and give me a call.

[00:28:14] All right, now let's get into some of the ways to make larger amounts of money for less time spent. You don't find these kinds of opportunities in the mainstream survey sites, these are the kinds of things that I did when I did this, because they take way less time and we're much more intellectually stimulating to me. Also, the opportunities come in here and there.

[00:28:39] So it wasn't drudgery for me doing surveys and things and focus groups all day long for smaller amounts of money. And that was much too busy for that. I don't have the patience for it. And like I said, if I do one speech and bring in a hundred grand and then got a bunch of new students, I got to take care of them. I can't be fooling around with this little stuff. But this little stuff could add up to significant car payments, house payments for you as just a side hustle.

[00:29:07] And when you don't have the bigger stuff to do now, when you are looking for an higher paying surveys, our research studies, jobs that require you to be interviewed by phone critiques of websites and other law online programs that you would do live focus groups and things like that nature. Now, in other words, more serious, higher level studies that pay much more. The most I made for a couple hours was 300 bucks. And but I've seen people make 500 bucks and but most of the time it was 10, 25, 50, 75 bucks for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes worth of time.

[00:29:52] Usually, the longer time it took, the more money you made.

[00:29:56] Now, just to get back in the swing of things, I got ten bucks for ten minute critique of a Web site at one of these places. That would be sixty dollars an hour.

[00:30:06] But you're probably not going to get six of them in a day or maybe even a month if you like this and want a steady stream of opportunities. That's why you sign up with multiple sites.

[00:30:19] Now, another good place for the higher fee stuff is through studies at universities, they almost always list these on their website. In this case, I would stick with local ones to start because sometimes they want live participation, but you can expand to other ones who are doing studies remotely. You just have to search it out a little bit. Now, I think this next place for higher paid ones is going to surprise you, it's Craigslist. If you go to Craigslist, your local Craigslist and you type in market research into the search bar in your local Craigslist, you will most likely find opportunities you can check back regularly for different ones. However, there's tons of scams on Craigslist, so you must do your due diligence, check out the company first. For instance, there's one running in my area right now where you would have to visit several grocery stores, check stock and expiration dates of certain beverages and fill out a report, you make about 12 bucks per store and you could make about 90 bucks doing this in a couple hours. Now, I didn't do my due diligence on this particular offer, but I'm telling you that these kinds of offers exist for real.

[00:31:47] You just have to make sure the one you're dealing with is real and has paid other people that are real. And that's just a little bit searching online. Now, another thing you can type into Craigslist is surveys. And I went directly to one on vaping. And guess who it was conducted by?Virginia Commonwealth University. Remember I told you about universities? They advertise on Craigslist in their local areas to get participants.

[00:32:15] Now, there was no due diligence required other than to make sure I'm actually on their university site and not a fake clone. But that one piece of cake I don't have to do. I know it's real if I qualify for it, bam, I can get paid.

[00:32:31] Another term you can try is focus group on Craigslist. Now, if this interests you, I suggest you go get that cheap basic course to get started at screwthecommute.com/surveycash and then apply these advanced techniques and be patient.

[00:32:51] And soon you'll most likely have a stream of opportunities coming to you to make a good side hustle income. And, of course, for full training on this and all the other things you could be doing to make a full time living from home, check out my mentor program in school or just give me a call. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:33:14] All right. Good luck to you on your survey hustle. And I'll catch you on the next episode. See ya later.

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