YouGov is a popular website that pays you for completing online surveys. YouGov is a very well-established and respected global market research company. It is so well established in fact, that it floated on the stock market and it has a large enough profile to pop up on the Finance pages of the broadsheets every so often. With this in mind, I think it would be nicer if YouGov rewarded their survey participants with more money for the surveys they complete! It took me three years to earn £50 just for competing their surveys! I think this is an incredibly long time compared with other survey sites like OnePoll and Pureprofile, because these sites normally take me one year to earn £50. YouGov is worth sticking with, because I think that it does have other unique advantages, which I will later discuss in my review.

YouGov is really easy and simple to join. The web design is simple yet stylish and it is really easy to navigate yourself around the site. I got paid £1 for joining up which was good. YouGov usually pay me 50p per survey. Each survey can last around 20 minutes. If you're really lucky though, you might even earn 75p or even £1 for a survey! Sadly, these have been rare occasions for me :( YouGov emails me a survey invite and all I need to do is click on the link to complete the survey. The surveys are generally about political issues, brands, current affairs, and consumer goods and services. Sometimes they're interesting surveys, sometimes they're not - it depends what you're into!

YouGov also offer opportunities to win cash prizes. If you are prepared to log onto the YouGov members site once a week, there are usually one or two surveys that are available for all members, which once completed enters you into a prize draw where you could win between £25 to £1000. I haven't won any prizes, but I'm still hopeful!

Even if you are not in it to win it, I have learned that it is still worth while to complete these prize draw surveys, because they can give you more opportunities to be invited to complete more paid surveys in the future. I have learned from my experience of YouGov that if I don't participate in the prize draw surveys, the paid surveys arrive in my Inbox infrequently to say the least. YouGov only pays their members by cheque when your balance reaches £50, so I think it is in my interests to complete as many paid AND unpaid surveys for them as possible! I have found that it takes several weeks to receive my cheque through the post.

One aspect that I do like about YouGov is the fact that you get paid the full amount for a paid survey even if you don't qualify to complete it. YouGov is the only survey site I know that does this, and I am a member of a lot of good quality survey sites! I also like the fact that the money is instantly credited to your YouGov account and is made visible for me to see. I find that it feels quite gratifying to see the money gradually tot its way up to the £50 mark. This is also good, because being instantly credited in this way prevents me from being in the situation of having to chase them for any rewards that they might have failed to credit me with (Toluna, anyone?).

Another aspect I like about YouGov is that they have the best referral incentive compared to other survey sites. I receive the same amount of money that my referral earns for the first three months of their membership. I also like the fact that there is no limit to the number of people you can refer. It is really easy to refer to others, because YouGov supply their members with a unique link (and also banner), which you can use to either send to your friends or to post on your email signature, blog, website or wherever else appropriate. I don't profess to earn megabucks from doing this myself, but I know that people can potentially earn a lot from this. One thing I can say is that the referral scheme is certainly helping me to reach my second £50 more quickly than before!

© This is entirely my own work. Also published under the user name dnl05 on Ciao UK.