Terms & Conditions

I had a wonderful day yesterday. My PayPal account was credited with a nice chunk of cash for an actual research study I worked on a little while ago. I had to keep some statistics for them for a two-week period. I can't tell you what in particular it was about, though, because I'm sworn to secrecy. Yep! That's right. And I can keep a secret! For moolah, anyway.

For legitimate research surveys, you have to agree to their terms and conditions. Usually I check to make sure I'm not promising to pay for something. It takes just a few minutes to scan the legalese for dollar signs. This is important even when you are not entering any credit card information because some marketing sites get you to agree to have charges added to your phone bill. Not a good situation when you are not aware its going to happen and your budget is as tight as mine.

Another important condition for many sites is that agree not to discuss the details of any product information you may be exposed to. They are trying to gather objective information and if you blab to all your friends that you took saw a preview of an ad for so-and-so brand's new product, you are giving away what they are paying you to keep private. Just as you don't want your information shared with just anybody, they don't want their product or service info shared with the general public.

I guess I should also mention that in the terms and conditions you agree that your info may be shared with the site's "partners" and this could have a pretty broad interpretation. So, do not share any information that you are uncomfortable sharing. Many surveys will give you a choice to select "Prefer not to answer" on questions like income, age, sexual preference, and what have you. But they do need to be able to verify you are a real person and not a computer, so they will definitely want some personal information like name and address. Besides, unless they're rewarding you via PayPal, they're going to need your address to send you your checks! Additionally, they need to be able to divide the responses into marketing groups by age, sex, income, education, minorities, parents, etc. Moreover, you'll probably be asked some health information because there are a lot of medical research studies looking for suitable candidates. Or, they may have a customer that wants your name so they can sell you some health or life insurance.

One last thing about terms and conditions: make sure you have the choice to opt out at any time. If you find you're not impressed with a particular site or if you are getting to many e-mail invitations from "partners," you should always be able to unsubscribe and/or close your account. This will eliminate having tons of junk mail although from time to time this is still going to mount up. Worst case? Block the sender. This works both ways. If you do not follow their terms and conditions, they can usually suspend you or fire you without warning.Some sites will close accounts out if you are inactive for long periods, so if your having good success with a site be sure to visit often. You'll make more cash that way, anyhow!

So, as you can see, there are a lot of ins and outs and each site and survey are a little different. But you will soon catch on to what you do and do not want to agree to and then you can surf for cash along with me!