The first time I spend money online in order to make money online is buying a paid surveys membership.
It turn out to be short of a scam or a semi-scam. Basically, after paying the membership fees, using the user ID and password given, you get into a website containing hyperlinks to a lot of different websites.
Then you need to sign up individually with each of the websites in the given hyperlinks.
I won’t say that the Paid Surveys is a total scam, it’s just that there are rarely any survey companies that pays you. They usually compensate with saying that your name is entered into a lucky draw. The compensation is a lucky draw chance. What the hell is this?
In addition, your email address will receive a hell lot of spam, signing up individually with each of the websites in the given hyperlinks which they in turn sold your email address to some other third parties.
If you unfortunately has already signed up for those paid surveys as in the following list, surveyscash.blogspot.com, then at least open another “spam” email account from Hotmail, Yahoo mail or Gmail. If not, I guaranteed you that you are going to receive spam in your personal email account until the day you die. Er no, the email account will continue to have spam even after you depart from this Earth.
In short, the only survey company that I got being paid some money is Synovate. But now in the year 2007, I still haven’t make back the fees paid to join the program.
I fall trick to the paid surveys in 2004.
Some lessons learned from this first investment:
1. Co-invest with a friend who are also interested in making money online, especially when the things you are buying is some digital products, like ebooks, pdf files, software and of course, membership sites like above.
Since it is a pdf file in the case of an ebook, there is no reason why you and your friends, boyfriends, girlfriends or sex partners need to pay the purchase price each and at the end of the day getting the same thing. Two or more persons pay, then copy and paste the digital products to another thumdrive or email the digital products to others. Should it turn out to a scams or semi-scams, the amount of money you lost is reduced.
In the case of a membership sites above, you definitely don’t even need to pay for it by yourself, share the purchase price with two or more like minded people, at the end of the day, get a user ID and password, which the whole lot of you can use, be it subscriptions to a paid content site or like some other surveys websites mentioned above, which essentially just contained some hyperlinks to other surveys companies mentioned above.
I would like to add in that as with the following similar survey websites, you need to pay a standard price of $34.95, to access the hyperlinks to the survey companies that pay you to do surveys, you do not need to pay the individual market research companies in order to do surveys.
2. Make sure that the direct response websites got offer money back guarantees. I cannot understand how and why at that time, I choose that particular paid surveys website and not some others as mentioned above. But even if the websites got say money back guarantees, there is also no guarantees that you will get your money back, unless the website uses clickbank to manage its sales.
3. If you find the information or some other digital products to be less desirable than what you thought the sales letter say it is, then please do yourself or your mother a flavor, request your money back. That money is better spent to give yourself or your mother a good treat at a local restaurant.
4. Not researching on forums and see what other people are talking about. Simply typing “Paid Surveys Scams” into Google will reveal what other people are talking about.
5. If after reading the above words, you don’t believe what I said, then go ahead and survey anyway. I bet $10 that you won’t even make enough to cover the cost of joining the program.