Have you signed up for multiple market research websites and survey panels, but are frustrated because you haven’t had any luck in finding surveys you want to take or you haven’t received any rewards yet? It’s easy to quickly become discouraged and never come back to those websites and panels again.

Before you write off participating in surveys once and for all, you should try changing and improving your survey-taking approach.

Yes, believe it or not, there are different approaches on how to tackle completing surveys. By incorporating the following tips into your survey-taking strategy, you’ll find the experience to be much more enjoyable and rewarding

1. Create Your Own Dedicated Email Address for Surveys

The first thing you should do before joining market research websites and survey panels is create an email address used strictly for participating in surveys. The majority of websites and panels send a lot of emails in one day including market research opportunities as well as other promotional content.

If you’ve already signed up for multiple websites and panels, you’ve probably figured this out the hard way.

Creating your own email address to use just for signing up for market research websites and survey panels allows you to keep yourself organized. You know exactly where to go to find confirmation emails, survey updates and more. These market research emails won’t get lost in your main email account, so you’ll be happy to know you’re not missing out on any participation opportunities.

On the flip side, you’ll also enjoy the fact that your main email account will be clutter-free! You won’t miss out on any important emails from other aspects of your personal life, like your credit card statements closing, updates from job recruiters or fun emails from friends, due to the mass influx of emails from market research websites.

2. Complete Your Member Profiles

Once you join market research websites and survey panels, you’ll most likely be instructed to confirm your registration in the website’s welcome email. You’ll do this and then you may think your registration is totally complete.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

The next step in the panels’ registration process should be to completely build your member profiles. There will be detailed instructions on how to do this on each website, so don’t let the thought of building a profile intimidate you.

Each website will clearly lay out directions on how to complete your member profile. Some websites just need you to take one quick pre-qualifying survey. Other websites are more involved and have multiple sections for you to fill out. Some of these sections could take you 30-45 minutes to complete, too.

It may seem like a waste to spend so much effort just completing profile sections, but it’s well worth your time. When you completely build your profile on each website, it will help the website match or pre-qualify you to surveys you’re interested in taking or that apply to your life.

When this happens, you’ll find the survey-taking experience to be much more enjoyable. It will also help you participate in more surveys which, in turn, will help you impact more brands and companies and even earn more rewards.

3. Take Your Time

Does your survey-taking strategy involve flying through surveys so you can take another one immediately afterwards? Now is the time to change your approach.

Just as it’s important to take time out of your day to complete your member profiles, it’s even more important to take your time while you’re completing surveys and other forms of market research.

Typically, surveys and other forms of market research are put together by market research firms, businesses, brands, government branches or individuals who need feedback on brand perception, event ideas, marketing campaign effectiveness, program initiatives, product launches, customer base and so much more.

There’s a purpose to putting a survey out there and these entities need real input from the people these things have impacted. Therefore, it’s super important you take your time in filling out the surveys or market research so you can help provide those researchers with real data.

So, slow down. Read each question carefully and thoroughly. Provide as many details and as much input as you can in your responses. It’s well worth the extra time in the long run to do this while taking surveys.

4. Be Honest

Your parents probably told you growing up that honesty is the best policy. The same goes for participating in market research.

As mentioned earlier, so many important decision makers in our society, research firms and major brands rely on surveys and market research as the main way to hear what consumers and citizens think about a variety of topics, so it’s important to be 100% honest when you’re responding to survey questions.

Taking your time while completing surveys is not the same as being honest. You must honestly answer every question you’re asked while you slowly and thoroughly read through all questions and directions. If you don’t say what you truly mean, how will companies improve their products? How will new services be created to help make life easier? How will new programs be created in your community?

Your feedback is so valuable and is truly needed by researchers and decision makers who put surveys and market research together. You owe it to them to make sure you respond as honestly as you can to what they’re asking.

5. Be Organized

When it comes to participating in surveys and market research, it’s important to be organized. Creating an email address to use just for signing up for market research websites and survey panels is the first step in the organization process.

The next step is keeping detailed logs of your participation. The best way to do this is either by hand with a pen and notebook or via a computer program like an Excel or Google spreadsheet.

In the notebook or spreadsheet, you should make a note of what website or survey panel the market research is from, the name of the survey or the survey identification number, the completion date, how much time you spent completing it and what your reward was for completing it.

Keeping track of all these details is helpful for a variety of reasons. Among the reasons, doing this will help you personally decide if participating in market research on a particular website or panel is worth your time. It can also help you keep track of your rewards. If you notice it’s been a while since you completed a survey or piece of market research and you still haven’t received your reward, you can then reach out to the website or panel so they can help you locate or receive your compensation.

Another important piece to being organized is scheduling time in your day to actually sit down and participate in market research. Many websites and panels make it easy to participate on your mobile devices so you can participate from anywhere, but this could lead to you not totally completing a survey because your break was over at work or your time in between college classes was up.

If you schedule a specific time each day where you dedicate your time solely to completing market research, you’ll find you’re able to complete many more surveys as honestly and as accurately as possible than if you just try to squeeze in a survey or two here or there throughout the day.

All five of these tips will help you be the best survey taker and market research participant as you can be. Being the best survey taker you can be will not only help you make an impact on our society, but you’ll also earn many more rewards. Who could ask for anything more than that?