How it works: Panda Research is a market data company that claims to have paid out over $2 million to date. Users complete surveys, which can take anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes each. The sign-up and survey completion process are both easy and typical, but there are a few things you should be aware of before investing too much time on the platform:
From the get-go, new members will instantly earn their first $5. The process of signing up is extremely easy and simple – enter your email, create a password and confirm your account via email. Then, you will need to answer several basic questions that are on par with every other survey panel (i.e. about your marital status, kids, degree, race, income etc).
When brands want to find out what consumers think about their product and services, they turn to market research companies. Market research companies are the ones actually administering the surveys on behalf of the corporations looking for data/feedback. Think of online surveys as a type of focus group, except in this case, everything is done online.
In addition to the free offers, there are “paid” offers, too. i.e. Buy a bouquet of flowers through an online florist, get $7.00 back in your InboxDollars account. Lots of similar cash back offers for subscription box services and eCommerce sites. If it’s something you were already interested in, it’s not bad. Otherwise, no point in spending (read: losing) money in order to make money.
Rip off. I referred a couple people to Inbox Dollars that lived close to me and they closed out all of our accounts saying we were all in the same location and the same person. We provided IP addresses and even went to as far as asking if we could provide identification to show proof and of course it was negative. Lost a total of about $31. As for my neighbors probably the same or close to the same..
IOCS is a not-for-profit research organization that conducts studies and experiments on shopping-related behavior – things like how we, as consumers, evaluate products, how we make the buying decisions, etc. Although the focus is mostly on shopping related behavior, some of their experiments and studies include broader areas of marketing, psychology, and economics.
Prizes include: $0.25 tokens (after your next successful survey completion, get an extra .25 credit in addition to the survey credit; 5 tokens maximum can be sitting in your account), $5.00, $1.00, and $0.05 cash bonuses credited immediately to your account, or Scratch Off Progress which will be credited immediately to your account; win and you'll see the Scratch Off progress bar will move forward towards the next scratch off card.
They claim to also offer paid product testing opportunities. But it’s not really paid product testing, but more of getting cash back. Basically, besides surveys, you can purchase products and services through their portal and earn a certain amount of cash back for every dollar you spend. If you were going to buy something already, it’s a great way to get some of the cash back. But don’t just buy something because of the cashback.
When I first joined and I had issues I thought I’m new at this and will keep at it ti at least get one payout from them. After many surveys telling me that I didn’t qualify after completing the entire survey I got nothing while they got all my answers. This happened quite a bit and the ones that I did get paid for is a few cents for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. So it took me like four months to make $68 and wouldn’t you know what as soon as I make a request for my payout I get told I’m not getting anything because my account has been terminated.