Rewards
What a study is worth, and why
Rewards are set by how rare your profile is and how long the work takes, not by how long you have been a member. Every invitation shows the payment and the expected minutes before you start, so you can judge the hourly rate rather than guess at it afterwards.
The headline number on a study invitation is close to meaningless on its own. Two dollars for eight minutes and five dollars for forty minutes are not the same offer, and the second one looks better in a list. That is exactly why most panels show you the reward and bury the length.
What the ranges look like
These are the bands most studies fall into. They are ranges rather than promises: pricing comes from the client, and a rare audience in a hurry pays more than the same audience next month.
| Kind of study | Typical length | Roughly worth |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer opinion | 10–20 minutes | Low single digits |
| Consumer, narrow audience | 15–25 minutes | Several times the above |
| Business or professional | 15–30 minutes | Highest band we run |
| Screen-out or full quota | 1–3 minutes | A fixed amount, always paid |
Business audiences pay more for one reason: there are fewer of the right people, and clients compete for their time. If you make or influence buying decisions at work, say so in your profile. It is the single change that moves your earnings most.
When a payment is held
A reward can be held. We would rather set out exactly when, because the alternative is you finding out from a balance that did not move.
Holds fire on evidence from the response itself, not on suspicion about you. Finishing in well under half the time everyone else needed. Answering a grid straight down a single column. Giving an answer that contradicts what your profile says, on the question that decided whether you qualified. The client flagging the response on their own side.
There is a distinction here that the research industry itself draws, and it matters to how we treat you. Someone rushing while distracted is not the same as someone running scripts across a hundred accounts. The first is a bad response; the second is fraud. They carry different consequences, and we do not collapse them into one word.
How to challenge one
Every hold names the check that fired, the study it fired on, and the date. That is the whole point of writing the rules down: you can argue with a specific claim, and you cannot argue with "violated the terms".
Reply to the notice and a person reads it. If your explanation holds up, the reward is credited and the score change is reversed — both, not just the money. If it does not, you get a written reason rather than silence.
Getting paid out
Your balance is money, not points, and it does not expire, decay, or convert into a different currency while you are not looking.
Withdrawals open at $5. A first withdrawal needs three things: a verified email address, an account older than 72 hours, and a quality score of at least 60. After that, only the balance matters.
The waiting period is not there to slow you down. Accounts created to be cashed out and abandoned within a day are the most common shape of panel fraud, and a short delay removes the economics of it entirely while costing an honest member nothing but a wait. Requests move through review to approved and then paid; a rejection comes with the reason and a route to dispute it.
If something here is unclear, the support page covers the questions people ask most, and how the panel works walks the whole path from signup to payment.