Paid Surveys Online Vs Offline

The world of online surveys is great for the average person with a little bit of extra time. But what about the person who wants to take it to the next level? There are plenty of opportunities available for someone who is willing to go the extra mile and sacrifice a bit more of their time for a lot more money. I’m talking about offline survey opportunities. These can come in several different formats. You can be called up for an opinion conference, join a teleconference, or even do taste testing.

Global Test Market -Offers offline surveys and other opportunities like mystery shopping.

Lightspeed International - offers offline surveys.

The conference may be the easiest one to understand. These have been around for awhile and you can actually just stumble into these sometimes. The number of actual offline opportunities to share your opinion has been dropping though, since many people are able to do it online for lower costs. There are some things that just can’t be done over the internet though. I have been invited to three-hour seminars that were convened to discuss everything from politics to products. One in particular was a simple voter panel meant to find out what political ideals local residents had. $125 for three hours of my time without having to do any actual preparation besides digging out my ID. Pretty nice. I am from a very small town too. There are maybe a few thousand people in the county. There aren’t too many places where they won’t be interested in forming a survey group.

Telephone conferences are very popular of late too. These can take two forms. The first is just a basic interview. These are common for product testing. They’ll send you something to use…we’ll say shampoo for this. You use it for a week or so and then they call you at a prescheduled time that you can usually set to be as convenient as possible. A representative will then talk to you casually about what you thought of their product. It’s basically just a different spin on the old standard. I’ll give you a little tip from experience though. This is the one reason you might want to think about doing contest surveys. Those are sometimes just complex screenings to see if you’d be a good person for a higher level product test. The pay from these calls is all over the map, so I can’t state one standard.

The second type is the very fun teleconference. I will just tell you about one that I was on. I took a survey and signed up to be part of a panel meant to discuss some new recruitment pamphlets that the Navy Reserve planned to use. I would receive $75 for this one. The company sent me a packet of information for me to review beforehand along with a signup code for a simultaneous teleconference and online chat. I spent about 20 minutes reviewing the advertisements on the day before the call to form a few basic ideas. I then get everything in order for the hour-long call. I sign in and wait a few minutes for the other three people to join. I am then informed that I am the backup person, and since the others joined I would be bumped from the teleconference. A great tragedy, except for the fact that you receive full payment just for showing up and logging in on time. This is just one example. The point is that there isn’t much extra preparation to do and you’ll just have to speak your mind.

I also know of another good opportunity that my sister received from her survey connections. She received a position going to a Wendy’s taste testing center once a month for $25 plus an effectively free lunch. You never know what you’re going to find. These types of interesting invitations can pop up at any time. The simple truth is that there are plenty of little offline survey opportunities that let you earn a lot more with just a bit more effort.
As you can see, there are plenty of benefits to doing offline surveys as well as online surveys. They do require additional effort. You may have to drive to a testing center and you will usually have to do a bit more than rate your opinion from 1 to 10. The benefits will almost always outweigh this extra little effort though. Why not add a little bit extra to your survey portfolio?