How Survey Clubs Rip You Off
by Anthony Serrano, March 12, 2006
Survey clubs are get-rich-quick schemes disguised as real online survey resources. That is, they claim to know the best online survey companies to sign up with, but they are really just trying to make big commissions at your expense. Here's how they do it (again, images may be scaled depending on your browser):
1) They make you sign up for free membership to access their online survey company list. However, by giving them your personal info, you set yourself up for getting spammed. Spammers use crawler programs to scour the web for e-mail addresses and other personal info, and the ones entered in a survey club's database are prime targets. By signing up, you are making it easier for your e-mail address to be harvested. We at The Paid Online Survey Center will never ask you for your personal information, so your privacy is safe around us.
.jpg)
2) Survey clubs post referral links for every single online survey company in their "Top 25" list. They obviously do so in order to earn referral bonuses. They have no interest in informing the public of the best online survey companies; they only want to pick up as many affiliate bonuses possible. One survey club called Survey Club claims that it took 260 hours to determine their "Top 25," but my guess is that they spent about half that time looking for all and only the online survey companies that have affiliate programs.
We at The Paid Online Survey Center, on the other hand, do not list only the online survey companies which give us kickbacks on new members. Of course, we do make money when people sign up through certain banners on this site (I didn't say we were saints). However, what income we gain from the few banners that yield referral bonuses go to maintaining the website or renewing domain rights. The bottom line is that we at The Paid Online Survey Center post online survey companies if they pay well, whether or not we get a kickback.
3) Survey clubs list a ton of online survey companies (many of which I have demonstrated to be poor choices on the Survey Scams page) to make you feel like you are maximizing your earning potential. Unfortunately, these same online survey companies yield, you guessed it, referral bonuses for the survey club. The more survey companies they list, even if half of them are paltry, the more money they make on sign-ups. Never mind that the member won't make any actual money--he/she signed up, so the survey club is happy.
.jpg)
4) Survey clubs have affiliate ties to shady third-party companies, the ones who flood your e-mail inbox with dreams of enhanced virility or millions of dollars with no hard work. At the time of this writing, there was an ad at Survey Club for referral-ware software that you had to qualify to use. How do you qualify? By giving the company your personal information, that's how. At another time, they had an ad for a secret shopper program. Survey clubs get kickbacks from their scammers-in-arms, again, with no regard to your financial well-being. Survey Club is not the only one who does this. All survey clubs work pretty much the same way: clutter a page full of online survey companies that yield affiliate bonuses whether or not they pay the panelist, link to other internet thieves who make their scam operation sound exclusive, and collect personal info for e-mail crawler programs to harvest. It's all a scam.
Believe it or not, though, there are online survey resources that don't try three different ways to screw you.
- The Paid Online Survey Center doesn't link to shady affiliates.
- The Paid Online Survey Center doesn't get your personal info by requiring you to register to access the site's resources.
- The Paid Online Survey Center doesn't make lists comprised entirely of online survey companies that give me kickbacks on new members.
We link to legitimate companies. We put our analysis out in public. We avoid some survey companies with affiliate programs like the plague (again, see the Survey Scams page) even though we could make a fine mint on the referral bonuses generated by click-thru enrollment. That's what makes us different. We're not a survey club; we're a market research resource. Stay away from survey clubs if you value your money! Instead, join The Paid Online Survey Center's free online survey panels and paid e-mail companies selected without bias and listed on this site.
If I didn't make it obvious, avoid all survey clubs, including the following:
- Better Business Reviews - BBR's Better Business Bureau report
- Consumer Protection Company
- FreePaidSurveys.net - Registration isn't required, but it contains numerous Google Adsense ads for the same online frauds blacklisted here. Talk about hypocrisy--denouncing companies only to promote them.
- Survey Club - Survey Club's Better Business Bureau report
- Top 2005 Scams
- Top Site Ratings
Copyright © 2006 The Paid Online Survey Center (www.PaidOnlineSurveyCenter.com). All Rights Reserved.
