Last Updated on May 4, 2022
Is Branded Surveys a Scam? Answering surveys is one of the most common ways to start earning money online. It has grown to be a big industry since almost everyone of all ages and gender can sign up for websites offering online surveys.
Branded Surveys is a company offering online surveys and they have appeared on my survey radar just recently. Of course, as an affiliate marketer on the lookout for opportunities to make money online, I have the responsibility to warn you of these opportunities that might just turn out scams.
In these Branded Surveys review, we’re going to know how it works, if it’s something you should dive into!
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What is Branded Surveys?
Branded Surveys is a company offering people the choice to earn money online through their online surveys. They were previously known before as Mintvine in 2012 and had rebranded as Branded Surveys just recently – making them 8 years in the industry of online surveys.
The online survey website has partnered with big names in this industry such as Hall & Partners, Nielsen Research, Forrester Research, J.D. Power, GFK Research, and Harris Poll Online. These partnerships give Branded Surveys the advantage of having more surveys to offer for their members.
However, Branded Surveys only offer their services to residents of the US, Canada, and the UK. If you live outside these areas, then you should look for online surveys elsewhere.
How Does Branded Surveys Work?
Branded Surveys partner up with companies in the pursuit of launching new products or collecting information for market research. Branded Surveys are in charge of conducting research regarding the preferences of the market and audience of these companies through online surveys.
They consider this a win-win situation since companies get insights on the needs and preferences of their market while members of Branded Surveys can earn money and other rewards for answering these surveys. Everyone is making money and nobody gets left behind, how lovely is that?
These online surveys serve as platforms for general consumers to voice out their opinions on the products and services of particular companies. Branded Surveys take pride in enabling their members to earn money and helping companies make wise decisions to benefit their business.
Branded Surveys provide their members with a step-by-step guide on how to start taking online surveys and making money. It goes as follows.
Signing Up With Branded Surveys
Starting with Branded Surveys is simple and straightforward. All you have to do is sign up on their website with your email and you’re already inside the system.
If it’s your first time trying out online surveys, you have to remember to always fill up your personal information. I know this may come off as invasive to some and you may even have the impression that you’re just being scammed here.
Here’s the thing, every online survey website requires you to do this. This is not part of some scam or whatever. See, filling up your personal information helps companies and market research panels determine if you are fit for a particular survey.
The number of survey invites you to receive is dependent on the information you give. You can opt to not fill this up but it will take you more time to receive survey invites, thus decreasing your income potential.
Companies pay Branded Surveys so they can be provided with accurate data and information on their market and audiences. It’s only fair and comes off as common sense why they just want a particular demographic of people jumping in on their surveys. This accuracy and validity can only be achieved through this initial screening process.
You would also feel mandated to fill out your profile once your inside since Branded Surveys compensates you right off the bat with 100 points. We’ll talk more about this point rewards scheme as we go on.
How To Make Money Through Branded Surveys
There are many ways for you to make money through Branded Surveys. The primary way for you to make money is obviously by answering their surveys.
Qualifying for A Survey
This first starts when you receive a survey invite via email, or you can constantly check out your dashboard since that’s where they’ll usually appear. Not so hard, right?
Oops, not so fast. This is just the calm before the storm. See, filling out your personal information is just the determining factor in the volume of survey invites you to receive. However, you still have to qualify for the survey itself so that you can be compensated.
It’s important for you to understand that being qualified for surveys is always different for everyone. Some qualify for more surveys, while you can be one of those who can only qualify for a minimal number of surveys. This has something to do with the demographics of the market of particular companies.
You’re lucky if you’re part of the market that a specific company targets, hence, increasing your chance of qualifying for the survey. Some days could be abundant for you but you’re bound to come across times of survey invite droughts.
It’s for this particular reason why a lot of people are fast to accuse online survey companies as scams since they find it hard to qualify for surveys. This doesn’t make them a scam. In fact, for all I know this makes them more authentic because strict qualifications enable them to provide their partners with more accurate and valid information.
If you do manage to qualify for the survey, it would take you an average of 10 to 20 minutes to finish a survey. You would instantly see how long it takes to finish a particular survey on the dashboard before you take it. It’s your discretion if you don’t want to answer a 45-minute survey for a petty amount of points.
If you’re not lucky enough to get qualified for a survey, you will still get compensated with several points to steam off the blow a little bit. Gee, thanks!
Branded Surveys’ Point Rewards Scheme
This brings me to my next point – how much will you get compensated for completing a survey? Branded Surveys employs a point rewards compensation scheme.
1 point equates to 1 cent. Thus, you would need 100 points to earn a dollar. The amount of points you earn depends on the activity you do. Let’s shed more light on the different ways for you to earn points with Branded Surveys.
Online Surveys
An average consumer survey could pay from 10 to 300 points. Doing the math means a survey could pay for no more than $3. Considering how you can complete a survey within 20 minutes for $3 is the best representation of the low-income potential of online surveys.
See, if you’re thinking of handing in that resignation letter to stay at home answering surveys for a living, let me just stop you right there. Online surveys are not designed and built to be a full-time job, justifying its low-income potential.
This is specifically built for people with a stable full-time job who only wants to earn some side cash during their free time. It’s enough to earn you money for some coffee and could help you save money if you’re fond of buying from Amazon.
You can’t expect to make a living by answering online surveys. However, if you do plan on quitting your 9 to 5 job to stay at home with your loved ones – there are better ways for you to earn money online that could serve as your source of stable income without the worry that you won’t be having any invites for the following day.
Local Deals
These are provided by participating local businesses within your area to offer you additional opportunities to earn points.
Third-Party Offers
You can earn points by signing up for a variety of free trials for different products such as beta software, video games, and even home appliances.
Branded Leaderboard
This leaderboard tracks the Daily Top 50, Weekly Top 50, and Monthly Top 20 Leaders. The amount of points you get rewarded depends on which leaderboard you are included in.
- Daily Top 50 Leaders: 50 points
- Weekly Top 50 Leaders: 200 points
- Monthly Top 20 Leaders: 300 points
Regular Random Prize Draws
For every survey that you manage to complete, you have automatically submitted yourself to Branded Surveys’ random prize draws on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You can win a certain number of points depending on the basis of the draw.
- Daily Draw: 50 points
- Weekly Draw: 500 points
- Monthly Draw: 1000 points
The Branded Elite Program: The Concept of Badges
Before we move on to the other ways you can earn points with Branded Surveys, let’s first understand their nature of badges. See, the amount of points you earn mostly depends on your badge. The higher your badge, the higher you can earn. There are currently three badges, namely: Bronze, Silver, Gold.
The question is, how can you rank up from badge to badge?
You would need credits to earn a badge and to rank up. You first start with a Bronze badge the moment you sign up to Branded Surveys. Ranking up to a silver badge requires you to earn 60 credits, while you would need an additional 210 credits more to reach a gold badge.
1 credit equates to 10 survey points. Doing the math means you need to accumulate 600 points or $6 for you to rank up to a silver badge. Obtaining a gold badge, on the other hand, means you need 2,100 points or $21.
But get this, Branded Surveys indicates that you have to be an active member and keep participating for you to maintain your badge. All the points you have accumulated could all go to waste if you took a rest from taking their surveys. If you’re planning on earning that gold badge, make sure that you’ll stay as an active member.
Listed below are the ways you can earn points through their Branded Elite Program.
Bonus Points With Survey Streaks
Depending on the badge you hold, you can earn a percentage of the total number of approved points in your account for completing a particular number of surveys within 7 days.
12 surveys in 7 days
- Bronze: 5%
- Silver: 10%
- Gold: 15%
20 surveys in 7 days
- Bronze: 7%
- Silver: 12%
- Gold: 17%
30 surveys in 7 days
- Bronze: 9%
- Silver: 14%
- Gold: 19%
Referral Program
You can earn 50 points for every referral of yours that sign up to Branded Surveys if you have a silver badge. For gold badge holders, on the other hand, you will earn 100 points. It would be a shame if you’re a bronze badge holder because you won’t be qualified for their referral marketing program.
Also, if your referrals rank up to a silver badge, you’ll be rewarded with 50 points.
Poll Streak
Bronze badge holders earn 25 points for completing 10 consecutive polls per day. Silver with 50, and gold members with 100 points.
Daily Polls
There is one quick poll you can complete for every 24 hours that earns you 5 points if you’re a bronze badge holder, 7 points for silver, and 10 points for gold members. This is one way to keep members motivated and log into their accounts every day.
Cashing Out With Branded Surveys
To cash out with Branded Surveys, you would first need to have 1000 points in your account since $10 is the minimum cashout threshold. Once you’re ready to cash out, you can choose from a variety of rewards as follows:
- Amazon gift cards
- Virtual credit cards
- Branded Pay (for USA members only)
- Paypal cash payments
- Gift cards from their partners: eBay, Target, Home Depot, Walmart, Airbnb, Chipotle, etc.
These rewards can be redeemed within 1 or 2 business days, but Branded Surveys warns that there could be cases wherein your payment would have to be canceled or not approved.
This is what’s stated in their terms of service.
”In addition, User understands that payments come from revenue generated by the Third Parties. Therefore, User acknowledges and agrees that if, for any reason, an advertiser does not pay Branded, Branded reserves the right to withhold the Users’ share of said revenue.”
If in any case Branded Surveys does not get paid by these third parties, you’re mostly going to take the hit for it. I’m not a fan of this term but if it’s what’s stated there, what else can we do about it? If you don’t want to spend all your time and effort on something so uncertain.
Pros of Branded Surveys
- There are a lot of surveys invites you can receive.
- A variety of ways to earn points. You even have a bonus of 100 points the moment you sign up.
- You will still get compensated even if you don’t qualify for a survey.
- You can claim your points in the form of real cash or rewards.
- They have a very detailed point rewards compensation scheme for everyone to follow and reference to.
- Excellent rating on Trustpilot with a total of 24,671 reviews, scoring 4.4 stars. 67% of these reviews rated Branded Surveys with 5 stars.
Cons of Branded Surveys
- Low-income potential.
- Your redemption can be canceled if a third party doesn’t pay Branded Surveys. This brings so much uncertainty to members.
- It’s hard to qualify for a survey. You could end up spending a lot of time only to get disqualified halfway the course of the survey.
- Only limited to the US, UK, and Canadian residents.
My Final Verdict! Is Branded Surveys a Scam?
All in all, if you are searching for a way to earn some side cash in your spare time, Branded Surveys is a good place to start. It’s a decent online survey website to give you an opportunity to voice out your opinion about general products while also earning some pocket money.
It’s not a scam, that’s for sure. They have been in the game since 2012, and they have partnered up with big names in this industry.
Branded Surveys is not a scam, but it’s not something I would recommend to you. As mentioned, the income potential when it comes to online surveys is not very high. It’s not something you would want to get involved with if you’re planning to hand in that resignation letter and make a living from home by answering surveys.
If you just want side cash on top of your regular income, then I’d urge you to sign up with Branded Surveys if you feel like it’s for you. Other than that, this is the only recommendation I can give you.
You might be feeling lost now if you’re planning to work from home and quit your job since Branded Surveys wouldn’t really suffice your needs. I’d suggest you create and build your own online business now.
Unlike online surveys, this gives you a higher income potential, the assurance that you won’t have any surveys to answer tomorrow, and the next day because you don’t have to, a stable source of income, and most of all, your freedom. Check out my Wealthy Affiliate review now if you want to know more!
If you want to add something to my “Is Branded Surveys a Scam” review, feel free to drop me a comment down below, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible! Cheers!
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