Survey clubs are get-rich-quick schemes disguised as real online survey resources. That is, they claim to know the best online survey companies to sign up with, but they are really just trying to make big commissions at your expense. Here's how they do it:

1) They make you sign up for free membership to access their online survey company list. However, by giving them your personal info, you set yourself up for getting spammed. Spammers use crawler programs to scour the web for e-mail addresses and other personal info, and the ones entered in a survey club's database are prime targets. By signing up, you are making it easier for your e-mail address to be harvested.

2) Survey clubs post referral links for every single online survey company in their "Top 25" list. They obviously do so in order to earn referral bonuses. They have no interest in informing the public of the best online survey companies; they only want to pick up as many affiliate bonuses possible. One survey club called Survey Club claims that it took 260 hours to determine their "Top 25" but my guess is that they spent about half that time looking for all and only the online survey companies that have affiliate programs.

3) Survey clubs list a ton of online survey companies to make you feel like you are maximizing your earning potential. Unfortunately, these same online survey companies yield, you guessed it, referral bonuses for the survey club. The more survey companies they list, even if half of them are paltry, the more money they make on sign-ups. Never mind that the member won't make any actual money--he/she signed up, so the survey club is happy.

4) Survey clubs have affiliate ties to shady third-party companies, the ones who flood your e-mail inbox with dreams of enhanced virility or millions of dollars with no hard work. At the time of this writing, there was an ad at Survey Club for referral-ware software that you had to qualify to use. How do you qualify? By giving the company your personal information, that's how. At another time, they had an ad for a secret shopper program. Survey clubs get kickbacks from their scammers-in-arms, again, with no regard to your financial well-being. Survey Club is not the only one who does this. All survey clubs work pretty much the same way: clutter a page full of online survey companies that yield affiliate bonuses whether or not they pay the panelist, link to other internet thieves who make their scam operation sound exclusive, and collect personal info for e-mail crawler programs to harvest. It's all a scam.

Copyright 2006 The Paid Online Survey Center
(PaidOnlineSurveyCenter.com). All Rights Reserved.

Anthony Serrano

Anthony Serrano is the webmaster of The Paid Online Survey Center. He is a Southern California native, but a New Yorker at heart. He went to an all-boys Catholic high school in California, where he played no sports and contributed to clubs by taking up space on the roster sheet. Enraged and perturbed by the communist theocracy of the aforementioned four-year prison, he nevertheless graduated in the top 10 of his class. With only a few study guides at his disposal, he "tested" well enough to earn a National Merit Scholarship and gained admission to NYU's College of Arts and Science in 2002, graduating there with a B.A. in Economics and Philosophy in just 3.5 years.

He turned down corporate associate positions at Ernst & Young and The Bank of New York in order to become an entrepreneur and have more flexibility in choosing a career path. By harnessing his experience in the financial services industry and his technological know-how, Anthony plans to sell his own brand of customizable personal computers very soon while attending law school.

Anthony runs The Paid Online Survey Center in his spare time as a way to tell people of his interesting yet little-known hobby: completing online surveys for cash and prizes. It is a non-profit website that is operated and maintained primarily for kicks. Any revenue goes to renewing his website domain rights and buying blank DVD-Rs at Fry's when they're on sale.

Also in his spare time, Anthony enjoys training in muay thai/Thai boxing, weightlifting, solving sudoku puzzles, and reading. He rarely watches TV, and he likes to listen to East Coast hip-hop from the '90s. He can't stand improper grammar, bragging/overcompensating, and political bias, but he tolerates White Castle cheeseburgers and Miami Heat losses.

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