Participant questions, answered

Everything below is the same set of rules a client or a partner sees when they audit us. There is no separate, friendlier version for members.

Reasonable question, and the honest answer is that you should not take our word for it. Here is what you can check instead.

The rules are written down before you need them

What holds a payment, what moves your score, what a first withdrawal requires — all of it is on one page, dated, rather than appearing after a dispute.

The company is not anonymous

We publish who runs the exchange and how to reach them on the about page. A panel that will not say who operates it is telling you something.

Nothing is charged, ever

No joining fee, no withdrawal fee, no paid tier that unlocks better studies. If any site asks you for money to take surveys, that is the whole scam.

Most consumer studies are in the low single digits for ten to twenty minutes. Business and professional studies pay several times that, because those audiences are rarer and clients compete for them. Screen-outs and full quotas pay a fixed smaller amount rather than nothing.

Every invitation shows the reward and the expected length before you start, so the number to judge it by is what it works out to per hour. The bands are broken down on the rewards page.

The balance moves as soon as the study reports back, usually within minutes of you finishing.

Getting it out is a separate step. Withdrawals open at $5. A first withdrawal also needs a verified email address, an account older than 72 hours, and a quality score of at least 60; after that only the balance matters. Requests move through review to approved and then paid.

Because the screening questions found you were not the audience the client is paying for. That is the normal outcome, not a fault — a study looking for people who bought a specific product last quarter will screen out most of the people who start it.

A screen-out costs you nothing. It pays a fixed amount, does not touch your quality score, and does not affect what you are invited to next. If you are being screened out of nearly everything, it usually means your profile is thin: the more of it you have answered, the earlier we can match you to something you actually fit.

A number between 0 and 100 that starts at 80 and is visible only to you. Finishing studies and passing attention checks nudge it up. Finishing far faster than everyone else, answering a grid straight down one column, or contradicting your own profile push it down.

You raise it by taking studies at a normal pace and reading the questions. There is nothing else to it, and no action that raises it quickly. Every change is logged with a date, a reason and the study it came from, so you can see exactly what happened rather than watching a number drift.

Yes to both, and the second one is the part that matters.

A hold fires on evidence from the response itself, and the notice names the check, the study and the date. Reply to it and a person reads your explanation. If it holds up, the reward is credited and the score change is reversed as well — reversing only the money would leave you quietly punished for something that did not happen.

We do not use “violated the terms” as a reason. That phrase exists so a company does not have to explain itself.

Your email address, the profile answers you have given us, and a record of the studies you took. Clients receive answers and a respondent id — never your name, your email address or your device.

You can delete your account from your settings. Deletion anonymises rather than erases: the email address becomes an irreversible hash, the profile answers are cleared, and the account closes. The payment records stay, because we are required to keep financial history, but they no longer point at a person. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Write to [email protected] with the study name and roughly when it happened. That reaches someone who can open your account and see the same log you can. If your question is about buying sample rather than taking studies, the sample team is the better address.