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Chapter 4: How to Avoid Survey Disqualification

Survey disqualification is one of the reasons so many people give up on surveys early on, but it doesn’t have to hold you back!

As you learnt earlier on in this course, survey sites are paid by large corporations for their market research operations.

Unfortunately if your interests don’t match what the company is looking for, or if a survey company can’t use your answers then you may be disqualified.

In some cases you won’t be sent any surveys you don’t qualify for, in other cases you may need to answer a “pre-survey questionnaire” to determine your relevancy towards the questions. Sometimes this can even happen mid-way through a survey, which means you waste time answering half of the questions, only to find you haven’t met their criteria, presented with a “disqualified” message or “sorry you don’t meet our criteria”.

You are not the first person to come across this!

It’s not possible to completely avoid it either, however there are some things you can do to reduce your chances of this happening. Before we continue, let’s first tell you that many of the most trusted survey panels will reward you for your time regardless of whether you met the criteria or not. Don’t expect a lot, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

*NOTE* Disqualification is not a bad thing, it won’t go against your account and won’t mean that you are sent less surveys, all it means is that you weren’t quite the person they were looking for. Do keep in mind however with a complete profile, regular disqualification is not a good thing, update your profile with new information such as going on holiday, buying a new car or a new mobile contract.

So what can you do?

There are some things we can’t control such as our age, education, where we live etc… Some companies who release surveys may for example only be interested in women from a particular state, young professionals or people with a particular car model.

Of course you can’t change your personal information before each survey so that you qualify for them. If you do then survey companies will likely pick up on this at some point down the line.

There are many ways that survey companies can determine whether you are being honest or not, which we will discuss further in this course. The bottom line is, if you are dishonest you will likely lose your account and all of the money in it.

However there are some things we can control, and decrease your chances of disqualification. Now let’s talk about the things we can control:

• Complete your profile survey correctly. If you spend time to complete your profile survey correctly, the survey company will know many more things about you and will send you surveys where your chances to be qualified are much more higher. So, instead of rushing with registering to many paid survey companies in a day, register to one but spend time and complete all of the details they ask correctly. Fortunately for completing these surveys most of the companies reward you with points, so you don’t waste your time. Keep in mind that it is highly recommended to update it at least one time for several months. Also update it immediately, if there have been some changes in your life, for example you buy a car, you get a degree, you start going to some restaurant that have been listed in your profile survey and so on. This increases your chances to qualify for more surveys.

• When you find a good paying offer, complete it as fast as possible. It is obvious that people rush into highest paying offers at first. But the problem is all surveys have quotas. And if the quota has been reached, you won’t be able to complete the survey, no matter that you meet its criteria. So check for new offers often and if you find any good offer complete it immediately. Unfortunately some time you can start an offer, complete it and at the end you see that you have been disqualified, because the offer is full. This means that if for example the offer needs 100 people to complete it, these 100 people have completed it before you.

• Don’t rush. Pay close attention to the questions you are being asked. One of the common reasons that panelists become disqualified is because they didn’t read the questions correctly and as a result gave inconsistent/un-useful answers. Consider the average time to complete a survey, the panel may already tells you this, so try to stick to that time frame, for example don’t rush through and complete the survey in 10 minutes if they expect you to complete it in an hour. This is just one sign that you haven’t read the questions correctly and provided quality.

• Get in early to avoid disappointment! – One of the most common reasons people are disqualified or “screened out” of new surveys is because they were too late in applying. Of course a marketing company’s budget is not infinite, so they can only afford to pay for so many responses. Most, if not all surveys will have a cutoff point as to how many respondents they can accept. To combat this, it’s really a case of checking your emails, or your account regularly, if you’re finding the emails are simply getting lost in your inbox, consider creating a separate email address just for your paid surveys.

• Seek shorter surveys – One of the easiest ways of avoiding disappointment, (and your time wasted), is by only pursuing the shorter surveys, i.e. 10-20 minutes, instead of 30-60.  It’s a simple idea, but if you want to avoid wasting too much of your time, it’s a good way of building up your survey profile early on.

• When to “stretch” the truth. While the best advice is to always be upfront and honest when completing paid surveys, there are occasions when you may need to “stretch the truth”. The majority of survey websites tend to prefer responses from ordinary folk, as opposed to “professional survey panelists”. The reason or this is that professional survey takers who are used to taking surveys and may be more likely to provide “biased”, unoriginal answers. On the flip side, you can’t really earn huge amounts without registering to more than one survey website. The types of questions you can expect to receive are: Have you completed any surveys recently? And “do you belong to any market research companies”. You may also be asked whether you work within specific industries, which would also pose you as a “professional”, who may have biased opinions, to avoid disappointment you should “stretch the truth” here.

• Make a list of your “personas” – If you are going to go down the route of making up information, then take notes about the answers you have given, it’s surprising how tricky it can be to know which information you gave, when and where.

It’s important to note that related questions may be spaced out across the survey, so it’s easy to give different answers to the same question if you aren’t taking your time.

In addition

Don’t rush. Just read carefully and give your honest opinion, but do try to be timely because time is money!

Survey disqualification can be frustrating and can feel like a huge setback, but there are things you can do to improve your chances and help to avoid disqualification. With these tips you should have some advantage over the rest!

Daily Task 4

Today we have a great task for you. We will teach you how to make money without surveys. Yes, and it is NOT scams.

Most of these free money systems are scam you know, but we have something very interesting for you today …

This company is Nielsen

How it works:

They pay you money to install a tool on your PC or mobile phone. Then they track your behavior.

For those of you who have problem with that:

• They have great terms and privacy that actually protect you. They just collect information for statistical purposes, before you join read that.
• You can unregister at any time if you have problems with that
• It’s just some free money for you, ok not a lot of money, but why to waste them …

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