Cheque for $54 from Global Test Market says 'Merry Christmas'

Well its that time of year again....
 It was really nice to get a cheque from Global Test Market for $54 to wrap the year. Just when I needed it too, Now I can buy ME a present :)

Both Global Test Market and Valued Opinions are sending a lot of surveys right now (at least daily).


All the Best to you and yours.......

Focus Group on Tax

Next Monday I have got a focus group on Tax, $80 for 90 minutes.

If you haven't worked out what a focus group is yet, have look at the article on Focus Groups on my web site.

If you live in Brisbane (like me) make sure you are on the books of 'Taylor Research' for focus groups like these.

Adding to the Survey Village Story.....

Back in October I joined 'Survey Village' and posted a review of the paid survey panel here.

At the time I recommended a verdict of JOIN.

Well I am happy I did, because I just ordered my first $20 voucher. I wonder you long it will take to get here?

My Opinions - lots of surveys - Cash & transfer to Rewards Central

I have just finished doing a number of surveys with My Opinions. The whole experience left me with a positive feeling towards them today, I like getting something (anything) if you get screened out, even it is only 20 points.

The surveys that I completed were worth around $1.50 and $2 each and took less than 5 minutes to complete.

Perhaps the biggest reaon I am happy with them is I now have enough points to transfer to Rewards Central and get a cheque in the mail :)

'Choose Freedom' - Business Opportunity or Cheesy Wham Song? - Let's See...

Choose Freedom,, sounds a bit like a cheesy Wham song, or was that just a T Shirt, I can't remember...

The promotional blurb says you can have a business for life, just fill in the profile survey and they will match you with business opportunities....and give you free stuff.

Can't hurt I guess...

26/11/09

Have just filled in the survey and waiting for a response...damm it, where is my business for life and free stuff? Not in the junk folder......btw isn't MS outlook tough on spam email, I nearly lost my official notification of winning the Nigerian Lottery.....

Anyway, I will update when I get a response I suppose.

2/12/09

No word yet on the Freedom thing....perhaps George Michael, ah forget it, no more Wham jokes ok? Perhaps I needed to 'CRY' Freedom rather than sing it? Still waiting....

Why is Valued Opinions one of my favourite survey panels?

Perhaps because it is simple.

You sign up, fill in the profile section, and they send you surveys that are easy to complete, and pay quite well. You can set your account up to get your prefered type of gift voucherwhen you reach the threshold, and it arrives in the mail. I love getting David Jones gift vouchers, it make my wife sooooooo happy.

If you haven't tried Valued Opinions yet, the you should. You can read how I rate them here.

Qualified Opinions becomes 'Live Tribe'

Qualified Opinions has changed its name to 'Live Tribe' and added this character........................

What else is new? looks like they are moving to a generate points, and claim rewards type of arrangement.

At the moment you do surveys for the chance to win $50 instantly, and go into a monthly prize draw, and you get a 10 line lottery ticket each time you fill in a survey.

As I have said before, I am not a fan of prize draws, I want money or gift vouchers as my reward. But that would probably change if I won the $50,000 on offer.....

Can't hurt to check it out, Live Tribe

Winning Choice?

I would love to win a collection of Penfold's Grange, Winning Choice, not sure what I would do with it though....any suggestions?

Review: Survey Village

I haven't joined a new survey panel in a while, lets have a look at this one....Survey Village.

Says I can earn Vouchers from 12 online and high street stores, I hope it includes David Jones gift cards, they make great christmas presents....

Registration:
Sign up is a two page form with contact details, asks what sort of market research you are interested in doing, I clicked everything, you can always say no when they contact you....

At the end of the sign up pages they send you an email confirmation, says look out for an email from Penny (such a nice name don't you think?)

When it arrives (took about 5 seconds), click on it and entered a password and you are ready to go.

Fill in the profile Section

Next step is to fill in the profile section (this is important because its how they work out who to send jobs to)

My First Assignment:
Now I am waiting for my first assignment.....let you know when it happens.

Update (28/10/09)
I have received 2 surveys from Survey Village so far, One for 300 points, other for 500 points. You get 10 points for a screen out.

100 Points are worth $1 and with 2000 points you can order a $20 gift voucher from EB Games, The Good Guys, Sussan, iSubscribe, Mitre 10, ABC Shop, Rebel Sports, Sanity Music, Angus & Robertson, Sportsgirl, Supercheap, Hoyts, or iTunes.

The 500 point survey, which is essentially $5 in value took me 15 minutes to complete. I guess thats not too bad...

VERDICT: JOIN SURVEY VILLAGE

Review of 'Power Home Income System'

Review: Power Home Income System

The statement 'Earning an Income from Home' sounds very alluring doesn't it? I wonder what the attraction is? is it the freedom? the flexibility? or just the option of working in your pajamas?

From my own experience of working at home, I know that it doesn't necessarily equate to the nirvana that this statement portrays. One of the secrets is that you need to be very clear on why you want to work from home in the first place.

You also need to get yourself very organised in particular with your hours of work because once you start 'working for yourself' it can consume your whole life. Remember that family you once had?

Anyway, on to the subject of the review of 'Power Home Income System'

I am going to have a look at this program over the next couple of days and write a review.

The promo says: 'Discover how the Power Home Income system can set you up to get cheques every month from companies like Amazon.com and other Internet giants. Request your Free Information Kit with all the details today.'

Cheques every month eh? from Amazon eh? we'll see about that.....

If anybody else has feedback / experience with this program, please let me know.

Update: 29/09/09

Not a great start :(

The registration page for this program asks you for an email address and a phone number. After the registration page you get to a page with a toll free phone number to ring which advises you will be directed to a short message that describes the program.

Rang the number, which transferred to a US based call centre and was advised that operating hours are from 8am to 8pm and I should call back then adn was then disconnected.

Will I / Should I bother to ring again?

Update 02/10/2009

Well I got a call from the 'Power Home Income' Call Centre

You speak with a guy (mine was Kane) who screens you and then introduces you to a recorded message. The message basically tells you about 'affiliate marketing' It gives a reasonable picture of what it is, where its come from, and the hugeness of the market now, but they certainly aroused my 'know it all' gene when they claimed 'Amazon' invented it.

Basically their offer on the recorded message is that for a fee they will set you up with a web site and some affiliate programs from Amazon, Yahoo and some other electronics store that I hadn't heard of.....and wait there's more, for the gold package at only $500 US you get to be in their affiliate program too.

At the end of the call the guy you talked to quickly introduces you to his associate, he called her the 'account manager', but 'the closer' would be more accurate. She tries to get you to say 'yes' to some previously covered points, tells you they can have you earning money in minutes, and then gives you a 'got to do it today' line and then asks 'how would you like to pay?'

I love a slick and determined sales process as much as anyone...but seriously.

They want me to pay $500 US for a web site with some links to affiliate programs that I can sign up to on any day of the week for free?

For all I know they might have been going to make me a fortune and give me that 'work from home' dream. But they hung up very quickly when I asked about 'Option D' - don't think so....

BTW, if anyone is interested in how you can actually make money with affiliate programs, just email me or check out my web site, www.avaricemedia.com where you will find information on the niche content micro web sites that I am developing to make money. I'd love to show you how to do it and I promise you won't pay $500, its all free :)

What are the Best Survey Sites to Join?

Perhaps the first question I always get asked when someone asks about paid surveys is which one's are the best to join?

Well, here is a little paid survey scoresheet I have put together based on my own experience.

If you have an opinion on these or another one I haven't reviewed, I'd love to hear it.

Eating Chips & Getting Paid, I feel so dirty.....

Been trying real hard to stick to a 1500 calorie diet, then along comes a focus group to eat potato chips...1000 calories in one sitting. At least I got paid $40 I guess.

Join the panel at Taylor Research for this type of opportunity.

Which Mystery Shopping Sites to Join?

I have been doing quite a bit of mystery shopping over the last month. I have been finding that you can make about $100-150 per day if you get yourself organised.

You'll be testing the sales performance of retail shops, liquor outlets, fast food, and test driving cars....you'll get cash and sometimes you get to keep products or have a free meal.

Which ones would I recommend joining?

• Hoed (much better since they upgraded their web site)
• GapBuster (easy, lots of assignments)
• Retail Mystery Shopping Australia (lots of assignments)
• Coredata (not so many assignments, but the rewards are really good)
• The Realise Group (not as easy to use as the others, but still has quite a few assignments)

WDYT increases payout by 100%!!!

Yes thats right folks, the good people at 'What Do YOU Think?' have made a huge move in the pay per click email stakes. Previously you would get 5 points for clicking on an ad in the email they send you. Now it has increased to 10 points. I know you are impressed.....

They have also started sending more than one email a day, and they occassionally send a survey to do that is worth more points, so I guess it adds up, and it won't take that long to get to that $20 gift voucher.

From my extensive calculations I have worked out this will get you 2 or 3 X $20 gift vouchers a year, so why not join if you haven't already.....WDYT.

Could I Survive Unemployment?

I had the last week off work and with all the talk of unemployment queues in Australia growing over the next year or so, I wanted to do a little experiment to find out whether I could make a liveable amount of money in a week for doing surveys, focus groups and mystery shopping.

The cheques from Global Test Market and Rewards Central would certainly have helped, but realistically mystery shopping and focus groups would have to be the avenues for making a wage for the week....

So how did I go?

Here is a summary:

Monday - Mystery Shopping Assignments with GapBuster $47 (3 hours)
Tuesday - Mystery Shopping Assignment with HOED $68 (3 hours)
Wednesday - Mystery Shopping Assignments with RMSA $75 + ($100 Products) + Mystery Shopping Assignment with Service Integrity $15 (6 hours)
Thursday - Mystery Shopping Assignments with GapBuster $75 (4 hours)
Friday - Mystery Shopping Assignments with RMSA $30 (2 hours)

Total for the Week: $310 + $100 in products for about 18 hours work.

During the week I also did approx $40 (in cash and gift vouchers) worth of surveys and put together the bones of a new web site for a friend of mine. (www.freeexport.info)

Is it a weekly wage? the minimum working wage is $560 odd dollars a week, and the unemployment benefit is about $240 a week, so I guess you could survive on doing mystery shops, surveys and focus groups.......

Cheques this week from Global Test Market and Rewards Central

Cheques from Global Test Market $61.42 and Rewards Central $50

Its alway nice to receive cheques in the mail rather than bills. On Friday, I was lucky enough to open the mailbox to find two nice cheques. It really is a nice feeling to get money in the mail.

Enough of the nice already....

Excited...Test driving a Sports Car tommorow.

Getting paid $35 to test drive a sports car tommorow, should be good :)

Email me for the company to register with to get this opportunity.

General Comments

Didn't win $53 Million in Tuesday's lotto?

Yeah I know, it would have been nice to be a $53 Million winner wouldn't it? Well maybe next time eh....you can still get a $5 credit to enter the next draw by joining Ozlottories.

And until I do win the big prize, there is still paid surveys, rewards programs and mystery shopping to do and it might not be enough to retire to Bermuda on but its very real. Another $20 Bunnings Voucher courtesy of Valued Opinions ordered from their web site today :)

Some money from Ciao

I have previously blogged that Ciao (Greenfield Online) was a bit miserally in the amount they pay for each survey. In fact they do offer many surveys that are listed as being 93 cents of a 20 minute survey.

In recent weeks I have noticed a few surveys with higher amounts such as $5 for a 15 minute survey and $3 for a 10 minute survey.

So I have done a couple of these and frankly if you have been doing surveys for a while the time quoted to fill them out is very much on the high side. While I was at it, I tried a few of the 93 cent ones (yes, I was bored:) and they didn't take anywhere near 20 minutes.

So although I still wouldn't recommend that you do the 93 cent ones if you have anything better to do, I guess its a better return for your time than playing texas hold em poker on facebook......

I have just transferred $17.65 to my paypal account from Ciao (Greenfield Online) for maybe 1 hour of survey doodling over about the last 2-3 weeks.

$90 MILLION OZLOTTO DRAW on TUESDAY NIGHT!

The biggest Jackpot in Lotto ever in Australia will be drawn on Tuesday night (30 June 2009). If you open an account at OzLottories today, you can get a $5 credit to enter this MEGA Draw for free...

Yes you can earn some money....

Paid Surveys, Rewards Programs, Focus Groups and Mystery Shopping hasn't made me rich....BUT it sure does add a little bit extra to our family budget. For the month of June 2009, I have received around $347. (Hey its real money!)

I have started a page to record where the money and gift vouchers are coming from so you can get an idea of which programs are the best to get involved with, check out the 'Record of Money Earnt' page.

2 Hour Focus Group for $80

Attended a 2 hour focus group to discuss banking tonight. It was quite fun really and $80 is good money. If you would like to participate in focus groups, make sure you join survey panels such as Light Speed.

Nice Month for Bunnings Vouchers

My Mail box had another $20 Bunnings Voucher yesterday, this one from Valued Opinions.

Back in May I used Bunnings vouchers to buy a new Ryobi whipper snipper. This month has been pretty good for getting bunnings vouchers ($80) so I'll be going back for either the pruning attachment or a new mailbox (the old one is looking a little sad).

$53.76 in Cash from Pureprofile

Pureprofile has been one of the most consistent sources of cash from paid surveys and pay per click ads for me for several years. This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see another $27.26 direct deposited into my bank account. This was in addition to the $26.50 that was deposited in late May.

How did I get two lots of cash you ask?

Whilst it is against the rules for a person to run two accounts with separate email addresses, it is perfectly acceptable for every member of your household to join and do paid surveys and click on ads. Our family has two accounts with Pureprofile, I fill in one, and my wife does the other.

The surveys and ads are sometimes the same, but often they are different as some are targeted to specific demographics and I guess some companies just aren't that interested i what I think about womens products :)

Bank Mystery Shop

Interesting assignment today, a mystery shopping company that I joined a few weeks ago asked me to do an evaluation at a bank branch to assess the performance of their clients service and sales staff. The assignment took me about 20 minutes in the branch and afterwards a quick survey that took about 10 minutes to complete. The fee for the mystery shop was $25 plus travel expenses.

They have a few assignments for me coming up next week, evaulating a car sales office and a department store. If you are interested in the name of the mystery shopping company, send me an email and I'll let you know where to join.

Cheap Caltex Fuel Cards?

Joined a new program on the weekend that looks quite interesting....Aussie Fuel Cards.

Basically its a reverse? auction where you make bids on Caltex fuel cards with the aim of being the highest 'unique bid' and whatever that figure is, you end up purchasing the fuel card for that price.

They claim that you can buy fuel cards for 95% below their face value. Might pay to read the strategy guide on their web site before you get to far into it....

Let me know how you go with it......Aussie Fuel Cards

Mystery Shop at very popular cafe

Fancy a free lunch or dinner at a popular cafe, plus get paid $25?

On Saturday I took the family for lunch at a popular international brand Cafe (can't say the name) on the Gold Coast to do a mystery shop. The shop covered having a drink at the bar, an entree, main meal and dessert, and then making a purchase from their gift shop. (Allowance for the shop was $15 for the bar, $85 for the meal and $20 for the gift shop)

The meal was very nice and everyone had a great time, all up it was a great way to kick off a long weekend. I had to complete a post shop survey of about 120 questions and write a brief overview of my opinion of the cafe and service. Payment was $25 for this.

I can't publish the name of the cafe or the agency that organises mystery shops for cafes and restaurants on the Australian Paid Surveys blog, but if you would like to find out, send me an email.

YAY! Finally a $20 Bunnings Gift Voucher from WDYT

Its taken a while (maybe a year?) but I have finally got a gift voucher from 'What do you think?' They have been sending a regular volume of paid to click emails lately and a few little surveys. Each email ad click is worth 5 points and their surveys range from 10 to around 200 points. You need 2000 points for a $20 Gift Voucher. WDYT is currently ranked at number 9 in my list of paid surveys and rewards programs, is it worth joining? only just I guess.

Paid $60 for an hour drinking some beers...

I did a short survey with Lightspeed Consumer Panel on Thursday that paid me $2 for about 5 minutes of survey answers. At the end of the survey I was asked whether I would like to participate in a Beer tasting focus group, naturally I said ok.

A lady from Research International rang me on Friday and arranged for me to attend a focus group on Saturday. Can't say too much about the actual focus group, but it involved drinking a new beer range from a popular brewing company and answering some questions. All up it took about 1 hour and I was paid $60.

The money was great because it meant that I could buy my oldest boy a second controller for his new playstation. Unfortunately it also meant he could play against me in his AFL game and he seriously kicked my butt, but no matter, I grounded him till he's 15 :)

Read: All about Focus Groups

MyOpinions

Joined a new survey panel, My Opinions. I will review it shortly, but it looks good. I have already had a few surveys worth a few dollars each. Points can be converted into cash and transferred via paypal ($50 min) or you can convert your points into RewardsCentral points (1 for 1)

Focus Group with LightSpeed Research

I have been invited this week to a focus group through Lightspeed Research. Giving my opinion on various types of imported beers should be very hard work....

Lightspeed have also made some changes in their online surveys. You can now earn reward points as well as competition entries. Reward points can be used to order gift vouchers, buy products or transfer cash through paypal. I have completed some surveys through them this week and ordered some cash through paypal.

Make sure you are signed up to LightSpeed Consumer Panel.

Jumbo Rewards

Another Rewards Program, most of the opportunities to earn points come from buying or doing something with reward partner sites. Reasonable option, but would prefer RewardsCentral (EmailCash) at this stage. Check out Jumbo Rewards.

Fat Cat Rewards

Joined another 'rewards program' called Fat Cat Rewards. Lots of offers to take up that pay you a reward. $10 bonus on sign up, min pay out is $50 via paypal. Lots of the offers are dodgy competitions. Be careful if you sign up to this one..... Fat Cat Rewards.

SnapDollars - trying out a new rewards program

Here's a new program that I joined during the week: Snap Dollars

It looks bright and colourful....

Several options for generating money - free trial offers, reward emails, etc. Seems a little bent on promoting gambling sites and dodgy mobile phone competitions, but I will give it a try and see how it turns out.

At this stage, I would prefer something like SpiderMetrix where you can do surveys and review web sites to earn money.

The 3rd Economic Stimulus Package?

$210 in Cheques and Gift Vouchers in April

$50 from EmailCash (now RewardsCentral)
& $20 Gift Voucher from MarketView


$50 & $20 Target Gift Voucher from Your Voice


2 x $20 Bunnings Gift Vouchers from Valued Opinions

I suppose $210 in not a huge amount of money these days, particularly when the Australian Government is going to great lengths to stimulate the economy, but for a couple of hours of easy work, its still nice as an extra amount that helped us out with things like buying winter clothes for the kids.

This month I have picked up gift vouchers from Your Voice (Coles and Target $70), Values Opinions (Bunnings $40), MarketView (Coles $20) and a cheque from EmailCash (now called Rewards Central $50).

I am already looking forward to May as I can see a cheque from GlobalTest Market, a direct deposit from Pureprofile, and another gift voucher from Valued Opinions on the way.

MarketView - another source of gift vouchers

Slighty excited, I got my first gift voucher from a new player in the survey rewards arena. I joined the MarketView survey panel just before Christmas 08. The surveys have been coming reasonably regularly and they usually pay somewhere between 300 and 500 points ($3-$5) per completed survey. The screen-out is also quite generous at 50 points (50 cents).

Each survey takes around 5-10 minutes to complete and you need to complete about 5 or 6 surveys to get 2000 points to order a $20 gift voucher. There are higher value gift vouchers, but I wanted to test the ordering process to see how long they take to get the gift voucher out to you in the mail. I selected the Coles/Myer one as it is easier for me to use than some of the others.

You can join the MarketView Survey Panel Here