Tellwut: Full Review

Guest blogger Joe D., shares his experience with Tellwut and lets us share his review

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Tellwut surveys, polls, and questions launched in March of 2012 out of Toronto, Canada. For such a new online surveys website, they have created quite the stir among survey takers. With 35,000 members as of August, 2012, they are pretty small compared to the 500 pound guerillas of market research including Ipsos, Toluna, and NPD, yet they are certainly holding their own.

Innovative Website Concept

Unlike most online survey panels, who email their members periodic survey invitations, Tellwut is more of a daily polling website, where members can log in to their accounts every day to find new polls and short surveys waiting for them. Most surveys are user-submitted and cover topics from all ends of the spectrum such as “Kids still at home? When should they leave the nest?”, or “Tattoos – Yes or No?” You can see the results of the surveys you take too by clicking on the “results” tab which is pretty neat.

results

You can take as many polls as you want, although you will run out of open surveys at some point. New ones are posted to the site daily, so you don’t have to wait long until more polls become available.

Accumulating Points

There are currently four ways to accumulate points with Tellwut.

Become a new member:

  • 100 welcome points, for creating an account
  • 100 points for adding personal and shipping info

Answer surveys:

  • One answer polls: 5 points
  • Multiples answer polls: 10 points
  • “Business” polls/surveys: 15 points

Create and submit your own surveys: 10-30 points, depending on the length and options

Refer Friends: 25 points

Bonuses: Sometimes they offer special bonuses on Facebook for taking a certain survey, etc.

Redemption Levels and Prizes

amazon redemption

Prize redemption starts at 4,000 points ($10) for gift certificates and peaks at 250,000 for a Motorola Xoom Android Tablet. To break it down:

  • 4,000 points = $10 gift certificate to: Wal-Mart, Amazon, Home Depot, Best Buy, and more
  • 4,200 points = $10 gift certificate to Cineplex
  • 15,000 points = XL Tellwut t-shirt
  • 10,000 points = $25 gift certificate to Amazon, Wal-Mart
  • 20,000 points = $50 gift certificate to Amazon
  • 40,000 points = $100 gift certificate to Amazon
  • 100,000 points = $250 gift certificate to Amazon
  • 250,000 points = Motorola Xoom Android Tablet
  • 3,200 points – 5,000 points = Miscellaneous such as WWE DVD’s. These change all the time

tipNote: As a Canadian, you will receive Amazon gift certificates/voucher codes to Amazon.ca NOT Amazon.com. Amazon dot com gift certificates are only issued to residents of the USA.

 

TIP: As you can see, waiting until you have tens of thousands of points in your account is not really beneficial. Point values stay the same, and do not increase as you accumulate points. If you are looking to buy something expensive from Amazon however, it might be worth “saving” your points, rather than entering in dozens of voucher codes!

How Quickly Can You Accumulate Points?

There are a limited number of surveys/polls available daily for completion and on some days there are more available than others. On any given day however, you should be able to earn a few hundred points if you take surveys daily. With that in mind, it took me 12 days to get enough points to get enough points to cash-out, however out of this, I did not take surveys for 3 days. So really, it took me 9 days to have enough points to get a reward.

account balance

Others seem to be able to earn a $10 gift certificate once per week. On SurveyPolice, there is a thread where this is discussed.

How Long I Spent Taking Polls Each Day

I would say that on average, I spent about 15 minutes taking surveys and each poll takes a few seconds, or at most, one minute to complete. If you’re watching TV, are bored and have some time to kill, it’s really, really easy to do.

I really can’t stress that part enoughTellwut is easy. Some survey websites will make you completely set aside anywhere from five minutes to half an hour to complete one of their surveys. But with Tellwut, you can come and go as you please, completing as few or as many polls as you wish on any given day. This is one of my favourite things about the website.

Reward Processing Times

I got my $10 Amazon.ca gift code emailed to me the next day! I know that some of the gift cards are actually physically mailed, so this adds to processing times. But from what I read about others using the website, it should not take more than a couple weeks total. Awesome!

amazon email voucher

 

Pros

I’ll summarize these in point form, because I have a few:

  • 200 points credited to your account just for signing up and providing your contact info
Points

 

  • Polls are fun and easy – each one only takes a few seconds to answer, so you don’t have time to get bored
  • Easy to check out account history – all the polls you’ve taken and have submitted are all listed clearly in your account
  • No limits on how many surveys you can take daily; if you find open surveys, take them!
  • Ability to see immediately see poll results. Really cool to see what others think
  • Speedy reward processing times – I had my $10 Amazon.ca gift code e-mailed to me the next day!

Cons

left barFinding Open Surveys. The thing that I seemed to spend a fair bit of time doing on this website, was finding open surveys. When you’ve already taken a poll, it will show you the results of it, thus disallowing you from being able to attempt it again. But what happens is that the polls you’ve already taken are mixed in with the ones you have not.

So for instance, if I click on a topic (listed on the left), the open studies will show first and if I keep hitting “next”, I will start coming across polls I’ve already taken, and the results will be displayed. If you keep hitting “next”, you’ll eventually stumble upon some still open surveys. It’s a bit of a weird system, hitting “next” all the time, trying to find polls you haven’t taken yet…or maybe I just haven’t found a better way of finding open surveys.

Few Points for Referring Friends. Most survey programs will give you a decent reward for referring friends, but Tellwut only offers 25 points. I think this is a little lame. It will take you around one minute to earn 25 points with the website, and it’s a lot harder than that to convince a friend to join!

Motorola XoomUnrealistic Prize Option. I don’t know why they even bother listing the 250,000 point prize (the Motorola XOOM). I think it would take you a couple years to accumulate that many points…alternatively, you could refer 10,000 of your closest friends to Tellwut!!!

 

Final Thoughts

If you like taking short polls and are looking for an easy way to earn gift certificates, Tellwut is the website for you. It’s kind of addictive taking polls and because most of the surveys are user-generated, they can be pretty quirky, funny, and weird…very unlike most market research surveys.

The website is easy to navigate, and although sometimes it’s tricky to find open polls when you’ve taken a lot, if you’re patient and wait one day before logging into your account again, you’ll find new ones posted daily.

If you’re looking for a website that pays cash, has surveys about new products, movie trailers, etc., than you’re better off becoming a member of sites like My Survey, or Ipsos.

All in all though, if I could sum up Tellwut in one word, it would be: fun!

If you’re not a member, you can Join Tellwut here.

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