Ah, the allure of easy money. BigSpot knows their target audience.
- Inbox Dollars - Get paid to check your email. $5 bonus just for signing up!
- Survey Junkie - The #1 survey site that doesn't suck. Short surveys, high payouts, simply the best.
- Nielsen - Download their app and get paid $50!
I always need to preface my posts regarding online surveys.
It seems that whenever the topic comes up, a few people like to come out of the woodwork to call me a scammer for saying there are legitimate online survey companies. Real survey companies do exist people. It’s not the glamorous $75/hr jobs some websites try and lead you to believe, but if you sign up for enough companies and spend enough time taking surveys, you can easily make some extra spare change each month.
It’s true! Honest.
Also, a legitimate survey company will never ask you for money or to complete offers as part of a survey. These are not surveys, but scams. As long as you know that online surveys aren’t insanely lucrative and you never spend a dime to take a survey, you’ll do just fine.
Is BigSpot.com a Scam?
BigSpot.com, while free to join and use, isn’t exactly a survey company and they do tell you this upfront. Instead, what they’re doing is “matching” you with other survey companies. You fill out a small form with your demographics and they send you a list of survey companies they recommend you join.
You do have to decline a number of “offers” (read: spam) in order to get to the list of companies and this is where BigSpot.com makes it’s money. If you’re not careful, you could be giving away your private and personal information to a bunch of companies you’ve never even heard of. You’ll receive junk mail, credit card offers, spam, and just about every annoying type of direct mail offer you can imagine.
While BigSpot says they aren’t selling your information to these companies directly, your miss clicks here could technically count as your consent and you are basically sending your personal information to third parties.
So, I’d have to say that while BigSpot.com technically isn’t a scam, I still wouldn’t recommend joining them.
There is one redeeming quality to the site. Right on the main page is this paragraph…
Will I get rich?
No, silly. You’re not going to get rich taking surveys. You’ll have the opportunity to put some extra cash in your pocket each month and the chance to earn some really great rewards.
It’s a good relief from the usual scams that claim you could be making hundreds of dollars per hour and could even live off of the money you make taking surveys. They’re at least upfront about the income you could expect to earn.
In the end, you don’t need BigSpot. It’s just collecting emails to show you a list of survey companies.
Try These 3 Legit Sites Instead
BigSpot.com isn’t necessarily a scam. It’s not costing you anything, but they aren’t representing themselves fairly either.
You can skip all the hassle of shelling out your private information to a random company and join a few legitimate survey companies directly. Here are three that I highly recommend above the rest:
- Swagbucks – Login, answer questions, take polls, watch videos, make money. I’ve cashed out a couple hundred dollars in my first few months of joining. Absolutely a must join.
- SurveySavvy – This is my all time favorite survey company. I’ve cashed out thousands of dollars over the past 4 years from both my completed surveys and referrals. This one is highly recommended.
- PaidViewpoint – PaidViewpoint is a fun way to pick up some extra cash in your spare time. You answer short three question surveys every few hours. Some surveys were created by companies, other by users. Every survey you take has a chance at earning you cash. It’s fun, easy, and definitely worth checking out.
You can click here and check out a list of 15 additional survey companies. These are all legitimate companies that are looking for panel members to complete SURVEYS. They’re not looking for you to complete offers, you won’t have to spend any money, and you WILL get paid.
Always remember that survey companies aren’t going to be the answer to your financial woes. They can be a fun way to earn some extra money in your downtime, but that’s it.
Don’t join any survey site expecting a windfall of cash. That’s just not going to happen. And anyone telling you otherwise is looking to make money off of you by either scamming you or selling your personal information.
Stay vigilant.
I replied to someone with this, thought I’d post it for everyone.
OK so, I have signed up in my years to survey sites and found out come payday it’s not real. Oh god so many. But I signed up for surveysavvy, around the time “secret shopping” became well known (I’m old). They really do pay you, the full amount you earned from each survey, any time u request it your check. Problem is like 4-8 weeks to get it in the mail from the day u request it. Like all 6 checks (NOT huge checks), I forgot I even had money coming lol. Other than that, you’ll know if you earned money cuz you do a set of qualifying quests from the company, itll be all “sorry u don’t qualify” without doing the whole survey. Otherwise u get sent to their survey, where most warn u that ur about to popup or new tab over there. U finish, ur paid exactly what it offered….. I NEVER recommend doing the 60$ one where it tracks ur sh*t on ur device cuz that’s never safe no matter what. If u need cash even when u know u won’t qualify, judge what would get u booted and what would get u accepted and lie on the qualification questions. xD
Go ahead and put all ur real info on surveysavvy, they are legit. Know now, my first check was 34.00 after 2 months. My 2nd check was 18 after 2 weeks of surveys. My 3rd was like 25.00… and now years later, I only get on and do them maybe twice a year cuz I got bored only making that little after doing 10+ surveys that are 15-30 mins each. (But I get bored easy, so u may like it).
I have attempted to sign up for three surveys mentioned in the article and each time was denied registration. I suspect it is because I am not giving my birthdate info up. I have at least given one birth date falsely on purpose to see if that was the case but was still denied registration. I see two probs here, one being I must give my birth date to continue on through the site or two, the survey company ALREADY knows my birth date (since I gave a fictitious one) in which case, why do they bother to ask if the site already knows my business? I do not believe it is necessary for any site to know my birth date and in giving it away may cause identity theft as these dates or personal information is used on legal docs.
Demographics are what makes surveys significant. The whole point of them is to gather information on you and then match you with a survey that targets your demographic. If you’re worried about giving away identifying information, online surveys are definitely not for you.
Almost forgot SWAG BUCKS ROCKS Steve, Thanks again.
Has anyone tried Panda Research?
I agree with your post on BigSpot.com, I tried it and didn’t qualify for 1 thing for several months. After seeing your trial on a few survey companies, I tried Opinion Outpost and ICS. I have been with Opinion Outpost since I saw your post and have made over a hundred of dollars doing surveys from them, which I have turned into Amazon gift cards and like you addicted to online shopping. I tried Instant Cash Sweepstakes but it was taking way too long to get over the amount to start receiving anything, although once I got over the minimum amount they do send a check out like you stated. ICS just took too long for me and I cancelled my membership, but for someone else it might be what you’re looking for. I have been with MySurvey too and have done pretty good on there as well, even did some at home trials surveys through them for other companies and earned good points. Received 2-$25 Amazon gift cards and 2-$15 ones and spent them on Amazon as soon as I received the codes, which states it takes 7-10 days but in actuality it took about 4-6 days to received the gift card codes. Can’t Thank Steve enough for all the great reviews that has helped me earn supplement income at home during my free time. Have several friend’s I told about I’ve Tried That and it also helped them as well.
Thanks for setting the record straight. I assumed all along that it wasn’t legitimate because they advertise so much and they wouldn’t be making that much money if they were legitimate. I bet they’re ripping off thousands of people everyday and making millions from them. It’s so sad that people don’t do their research first. :(
I enjoy receiving I’ve Tried That . so far I have not been able to get into anything right now.I have a website of poems and I have been behind on that. My husband passed away Dec, 1st , 2010 and it has been pretty hectic around here. I hope to be able to get into something that will provide some money, so far my poems haven’t done that. Keep up the good work , we need someone like you to help people know what is going on ,Thank you , Clara Kish