How to Qualify for Surveys More Often (Top Tips)

One of the most frustrating parts of trying to make money with paid surveys is the fact that, at times, it can seem like every survey you attempt will just hit you with a message like:

“Sorry, you've been disqualified.” or “Sorry, you're not a good match at this time.”

This is especially annoying when you've already spent 10, 20, or 30+ minutes on the survey.

That's why knowing how to qualify for surveys more often is so important. Qualifying for even one extra survey a day can increase your earnings a ton, and save you a bunch of time.

That said:

There Are No Hacks or Tricks to Qualifying for Surveys All the Time

You really can't force your way into qualifying for surveys.

Sorry to let you down, but I had to get this out of the way first thing.

There are no tricks or hacks to qualifying for more surveys.

Pretending you're someone you're not in order to qualify for a survey may work once or twice if you're lucky, but in the long run it'll actually lower your qualification rate and potentially get you banned from receiving any surveys at all.

Not only can survey platforms ban you, but survey providers can also blacklist your IP address and identity.

With this all being said, don't lose all hope or exit out of this page. Although there are no survey qualification hacks, there are some legitimate tips you can follow to increase your qualification rates.

It's all about strategy!

Why Do Surveys Disqualify Anyway?

If you use a variety of paid survey sites, survey disqualifications are bound to happen eventually. There are three main reasons why:

The survey quota is full

Sometimes, you might encounter an abrupt ending to your survey session even if you just started it or were in the middle of answering it.

This is often due to the survey provider having already reached the maximum number of participants and responses that they need.

This can't always be avoided, but starting surveys soon after receiving them can help.

You've been screened-out from the survey

This simply means you weren't the person the survey provider was looking for. Not much you can do about this.

You were disqualified for a poor response

If you:

• Answer inconsistently (e.g. say you're the main shopper in your house on one page and then say you're not on another)
• Get tricked by an attention check (e.g. you answer “Yes” when a question explicitly tells you to answer “No”)
• Speed through a survey
• or similar

You'll most likely get declined. Survey providers are paying money for responses, and they have ways to disqualify people that they believe are providing low-quality responses.

Many of the tips below will show you how you can avoid this type of disqualification.

How to Qualify for More Surveys, More Often

With some sites, you'll never be able to qualify for every survey, but you can definitely increase your chances if you follow the tips below.

1. Fill Out Your Profile and Keep It Updated

Almost every site that offers paid surveys will have a profile page that asks for demographic information like your name, education, employment, marital status, income range, country, postal code, etc.

It's essential that you fill this information out as soon as you can.

Survey providers will use the information in your profile to connect you with relevant surveys. If you neglect this, you'll either get no paid surveys coming your way, or you'll have to deal with a lot of disqualifications.

Here are a couple of sub-tips to keep in mind:

• Fill out your profile honestly – Lying on your profile will only cause trouble. Only use your own, real info.
• Update your profile as often as needed – When you move, change jobs, have a baby, or something else happens in your life, update your profile.

Note that even with a filled profile, you may notice that surveys ask the same intro screener questions (e.g. how old are you, what's your zip code, what's your educational status, etc.). This is to match up your profile with your current living situation. If you're answers don't match, there's a chance you'll get screened out, which is why the above tips are so important.

2. Start Surveys Quickly

Surveys are typically have a specific quote to fill, meaning once they hit a certain number of responses, they go offline.

For example, a survey might only need 100 participants. Once it hits that, no one else can take the survey.

Quotas can be demographic specific as well. For example, a survey might need 5,000 participants in total, but of those 5,000, they might want:

• 1,000 people aged 20-24
• 1,000 people aged 25-29
• 1,000 people aged 30-34
• etc.

That's why, if it's possible, you should try to take new surveys as soon as they show up in your dashboard or email inbox. The quicker you are, the better chance you have of qualifying.

3. Pick Relevant Surveys Only

Trying every single survey you receive and hoping to qualify is like trying to catch fish with bullets. It might work sometimes, but it's not the best strategy.

Instead, pick surveys that actually relate to things you're interested in or at least things you can have a valuable opinion on. Because in the end, that's the whole reason paid surveys exist: to get valuable opinions from relevant people.

So, if you see a survey about barbies and you don't know a damn thing about barbies, you're probably wasting your time by even attempting that survey. If you see a survey on cars though, and you have driven a car before, you have a better chance at qualifying there.

Of course, not all surveys say what they're about before you take them, so this tip doesn't apply all of the time. Luckily, filling out your profile accurately (as mentioned in the previous tip) can weed out a lot of unrelated surveys.

4. Read Survey Questions Carefully

Surveys will often have attention checks which are essentially trick questions meant to identify people who aren't paying full attention.

Here's an example of a simple one:

This one is pretty straightforward. The instructions tell you exactly what to do. But, if you weren't paying attention, you might just click a random color. If you don't do exactly what the instructions do (pick green), you'll get disqualified.

Here's another example, this one a bit different:

With this one, if you don't read the “I swim across the Atlantic Ocean to get to work every day” part, you might just quickly click “Agree” or “Strongly Agree.” In that case, you'd be disqualified because the statement itself makes no sense.

Along with attention checks, you might also run into things called comprehension checks.

These are more often found in academic studies, and they're designed to test your ability to fully understand what you're reading.

Here's an example:

These require a bit more thought, but are usually not too difficult. If you get stuck, just re-read the instructions and answers a few times.

And to be safe:

Never skim surveys. This is how you miss attention checks and get disqualified early.

It can also get you blacklisted from future surveys because researchers want people who are paying attention.

Some surveys get really sneaky these days so you've got to stay on your toes!

5. Don't Speed Through Surveys

Although answering survey questions really fast might seem like a good idea at first, it's more likely just going to make the surveyor think you’re randomly clicking answers or not reading questions properly.

When that happens, you get disqualified and time is wasted.

Also, referring to the tip above, going too fast might make you mess up on attention checks.

For both these reasons, even if you could answer a question really quickly, it's a good idea to slow down, just to be safe.

At the least, wait until the survey page is fully loaded before selecting and submitting your answer.

I know it's annoying to have to purposely slow yourself down, but there's a lot of fraud in the survey world so you want to do everything you can to show that you're a legit participant.

6. Don't Go Too Slow Either

I know, I know, “Make up your mind!” Is what you're probably thinking.

The main problem you can face if you intentionally take a survey too slowly is that the survey quota might fill up in the time you're taking.

On top of this, intentionally taking a survey extremely slowly can just look weird to survey providers, so they might think you're filling out a false persona, not answering honestly, or trying to game the survey in some other way.

7. Provide Quality Answers

Many surveys will have written sections, and this is where you can really make yourself shine.

By providing quality, in-depth, and helpful answers, you can increase your qualification rate AND your chances of getting invited to more surveys.

8. Try Shorter and Mid-Range Paying Surveys First

A lot of survey beginners will go for longer, higher paying surveys first.

This can have two downsides:

1. Longer surveys are often looking for more specific respondents, so they can be harder to qualify for.
2. Getting disqualified part way through a longer survey is much more annoying than getting quickly disqualified from a short survey.

On the flip side:

Shorter surveys and ones that don't have as high of a pay rate are typically open to more respondents and are therefore easier to qualify for.

9. Be Open to New Ideas

If a survey is about laundry detergent and it asks you something like:

“Would you ever try a new, plant-based laundry detergent that comes in strips?”

There's a chance that they're looking for open-minded people to gather feedback on their new product idea.

That said, this can really go both ways:

Maybe they're looking for stubborn people so they can gather common objections to their idea, which can be useful for marketing purposes later on.

The real tip?

You can never really be sure what a researcher is looking for.

You can try to have an idea, but the more you try to “engineer” a qualification, the more your brain will hurt, and the more time you'll probably waste.

How to Always Qualify for Online Surveys

The only way to always qualify for online surveys is to use survey sites that never disqualify or screen out respondents. Which, these days, are pretty rare.

Here are a few:

• PaidViewPoint
• Google Opinion Rewards
• Premise
• Chicago Booth CDR

Keep in mind, even with these platforms, you may be disqualified if you answer surveys dishonestly or too quickly.

Also, with the survey sites above, you’ll notice something very quickly:

The paid surveys come in reaally slowly.

That’s because they have to be much more careful about which surveys they assign to who.

In other words, if you ONLY use the sites above, it's going to take you a long time to earn a good amount of money — simply because of a lack of available work.

Worry not though. If you're willing to deal with a disqualification here and there, try these sites that are known to give out fewer DQs:

• YouGov
• Crowdtap
• Prolific
• MTurk
• Tellwut
• Pinecone Research
• Angus Reid Forum
• E-Poll
• SurveyMonkey Rewards

With these you can usually get more work and therefore more consistent earnings.

Survey Sites That Pay You When You Get Disqualified

To make getting disqualified or screened out from a survey a bit less annoying, you can also try sites that pay you for DQs.

You won’t get a lot, but it’s better than nothing:

• Freecash
• Swagbucks (not guaranteed)
• Ipsos I-say
• MySoapBox
• Quickthoughts
• Branded Surveys
• Univox
• Survey Junkie
• Lifepoints
• ACOP
• Eureka Surveys
• InstaGC (Pays 1 point for first 5 DQs of the day)
• GamerMine

Keep in mind, paid disqualifications can vary depending on the survey provider and some may be capped to a certain number of DQs per day.

Note: If you purposefully DQ yourself from surveys to get small bonuses, you'll most likely quickly be banned from the survey provider you're using.

Final Thoughts

Hope you found this guide helpful! Survey disqualifications and screen-outs are extremely annoying, but the tips above should help you avoid them a bit better.

Still, if you want to earn money from surveys, you're most likely going to have to deal with a DQ at some point or another.

Speaking of:

If you want to explore something similar to surveys but with fewer DQs, I'd recommend trying focus groups and website and app testing. These have short pre-screeners (1-2 mins long) and if you pass them, you’re guaranteed payment.

Also, be sure to check out these other paid survey tips and tricks for more ways to optimize your earnings.

Best of luck!

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