How We Rank Survey Panels?

ESS October 22, 2017

EliteSurveySites is a safe place for legitimate paid surveys. We spend a lot of time and money evaluating survey panels’ legitimacy and quality. We don’t post any scam survey panels here or manipulate our ranking.

 

… and we don’t have an interest in doing this. All we want is to become more and more popular and trusted site. Everything here is free.

 

How We Pick Which Panel to List Here and How We Actually  Rank Them?

To rank panels on our site, we use many factors. In this article we will explain how we actually pick and rank panels. This way, people will get to know our style of work better. Here they are.

 

We Ask You to Rank Panels!

Let’s start with the latest factor that we included in our ranking a few months ago. We launched our surveys where we ask people to vote for panels. After getting about 1,000 votes, a page with results was launched. Here are the panels ranked by you only:

Best Paid Survey Sites by User Rating

On this list, only you tell us how to rank panels.

But we have another list where you will see slightly different results. Here is this list:

Best Paid Survey Sites

The reason why these lists are slightly different is because we use more criteria. Below we will list all of them.

 

Your Votes Become Our Primary Criteria

What is a better way to rank our best panels than by directly asking people what they like and what not? After launching the results of our survey, we have made changes in this list. Now the results in both lists are much more similar, but still not the same. The results in these lists will become even more similar in time, and one day probably the same if we get many votes.

 

We Rely Only on Reputable Paid Survey Companies!

Most of the companies listed on our site are reputable businesses. For people who are new to paid surveys, this will probably sound too strange, but the truth is that many of these companies have actually paid millions of dollars to people although they look like small companies. In fact, there are many survey panels that have been established for many years. And they had a lot of time to prove that they are legitimate, reliable businesses that care about their users and actually pay. So, if a company has a lot of years of evidence that they actually pay, then we can conclude that this will probably continue in time. No well established business wants to disappoint their customers for no reason, although some exceptions are possible.

 

What About New but Great Survey Panels?

Yes and no… A great new panel, fast payment, high paying offers, rising star, looks great, but … what is missing from the equation is a proven history.

Well, if we see that there is a new survey panel that started to perform great, sends high paying offers, has fast payment and people start to like them a lot, great! We will join them, start testing them, and start to evaluate their quality. But if it is very new, we will avoid listing them for a period of time.

Step by step, if they continue to perform great, we will start integrating them on our site. We will start by adding them in our surveys and let you rank them. After that, we will review them, but will let you know in our review that they are a new panel. In time, we will start adding them to our list of best surveys and possibly increase their ranking on our site. But we will do this slowly. Because again, we are very careful about what we post for people. We want to be sure that all panels listed here are tested, reputable and with a proven history. We believe that a panel has to perform great for at least a year in order to be ranked high on our site.

Why is our attitude to great panels negative only because they are new? Actually, we don’t have a negative opinion about new panels. But we are really very careful about what we post here because there are many people who trust us and can’t play games with that. On our site you will read: “EliteSurveySites – N°1 Source of Paid Surveys for Cash” And we do everything possible to have and keep this position!

If a panel is new and wants to be posted on our list and ranked high, they will have to wait for a while. They have to prove that they actually pay people, don’t scam, have great offers – all actual reasons that they should be ranked high here on our site.

EliteSurveySites is a very popular site, many people trust us and we can’t risk to post everything.

We really hope that you understand that we do this for your protection. We are not against new panels. Some of these new panels can become top one day, but others can start scamming people!!! Who knows? If a panel proves that they have to be listed here, we will be the first site that ranks them high. Why not? They don’t scam, they pay regularly, you get a lot of offers from them…. then they are welcome on our site.

Should I experiment with a new panel that is not listed on your site? Sure, why not! Don’t be afraid to experiment. The fact that a panel is not listed on our site doesn’t mean that we recommend you not to join them. We are not against testing new panels. As long as the registration is free, you find their legal business name and physical address on their site, you read their privacy policy and are ok with it, you are good to go. We only want to say that we will stay away from this panel for some time until this panel proves that it should be listed on our site.

And please report your experience with your panels (positive or negative). You will help us build the best list of paid surveys!

 

We Read Their Whole Sites

We check their business address on their sites, we read their whole sites and fine prints.

 

We Personally Test Survey Panels!

We are a team of survey panelists who make money with paid surveys exactly like you. Of course, we don’t reveal who we really are. We don’t want panels to know us, so this proves that they treat us exactly the same way as they treat you. To these companies, we look exactly like regular survey panelists. We complete paid surveys, we get paid, we face all of the advantages and disadvantages of these panels like you. The factors that we pay attention to are:

  • Does the panel have free registration?
  • Types of payments.
  • Payment delays.
  • Total amount of payment per month.
  • The money/hour ratio.
  • Number of offers we receive per month on average.
  • Number of high paying offers that the panel provides.
  • Disqualification – the average percentage of surveys that we have been disqualified from vs total number of surveys; points for disqualifications; reasons that we have been given for this disqualification.
  • Customer support.
  • All other small problems.

We’ve been doing this for many years.

Our advanced and detailed testing process is exactly one of the things that make us different from other paid survey sites. Thousands of sites provide paid surveys but we can guarantee that 99% of these people haven’t made a cent with paid surveys! And this is pretty obvious …

Note! Many people ask us for legitimate surveys in countries outside the US. Unfortunately, EliteSurveySites is not able to test panels from all countries. But in the last few years we started to put much more effort in evaluating panels from many more countries. And finally we have launched:

Legit Paid Surveys in 100+ Countries

With this list we prove that we care about all people in the world! We are still working on this list. Visit it from time to time for updates.

 

We Work with Freelancers

Freelancers are people that are not from our team. We ask them to register with some panels and start making money. We pay them to report everything to us. We work with freelancers especially in countries where we can’t evaluate the panels. Note that after receiving many requests from people from many countries, we will work more on this tactic.

 

REPORT!

Please report!

Do you feel some panels have to be deleted from our site? Let us know why.

Do you feel some panels have to be added? Let us know why.

Do you want to see some panels move up or down on our list? Which ones and why?

EliteSurveySites team reads very carefully all of the messages and comments that you write to us. During all these years, we have received many reports (positive and negative). Your reports really help us improve the quality of our site, but also help many people like you with paid surveys.

We are really thankful for people who report.

 

Only Free to Register Companies!

There are some sites that want you to pay money to register. EliteSurveySites has no tolerance to panels wanting you to pay to register. You don’t have to pay to anyone to start making money with surveys. In fact, they should pay you. We mention this because there are many sites who want you to pay if you want to start making money with paid surveys. That is ridiculous. Typically these sites look like this:

“Start Making $50-100 with Paid Surveys

Join Now, No Catches”

… “activation fee” is only $50

 

Over the years of hard work in evaluating survey panels and providing you with the best ones, we have paid for many products like these hoping that we will start making millions with paid surveys. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. What we have found was only some information on paid surveys, tips how to make money and a list of (even not evaluated) companies, or copied lists from sites like ours. In brief, people are trying to sell you educational materials about how to make money with paid surveys, which, we can say, is a scam.

On our site we provide much more advanced education on how people can make much more with paid surveys. We also provide you with a list of the best companies available. And we do this for free, no catches.

Conclusion! Don’t Pay Anything! It’s totally FREE to start making money with paid surveys.

 

BBB Rating

We check their BBB rating. We report it here (most of the companies listed here are with A+ BBB rating). We read carefully all BBB complaints.

 

We Read Everything Online!

For every company, we read reviews, forum posts, blog posts (especially these that are from people’s personal experience with survey panels although there are not a lot of them… ), people’s comments under these reviews. But we also try to understand how truthful this information is.

 

We Discuss with Them.

During all these years, we have established a great connection with some panels. If we don’t know anything about them, if we receive complaints against them, we ask them directly. And don’t get us wrong. The fact that we know one company and not another doesn’t make us rank one higher than another … really. You are the most important to our site. We work for you, not for these survey companies. We want you to feel comfortable when you visit our site.

Although we said that we discuss terms with them, we are not a complaint site. We do this only in order to decide if we should include a company in our best lists and where to include them. We are not an official complaint site, like BBB, for example.

Note also that all of the companies listed on our site are third parties. None of these companies are our business. If we open a survey panel, we will let you know.