I think that elisajoy and oldbuddy should write their secrets in a blog. I see that they make a lot more than the rest of us, not that I have not tried. I definitely want to know oldbuddy's secrets. He made $4,000. Surveys are not the big thing anymore; since becoming 54, I have discovered that my opinion is not valued as much as it was before. Elisajoy is more the tasker. She is the leader most times in the tasks section. Good luck to both of you.
Ditto, "thanks" to knowledgeable members who give us helpful tips. Also ditto to the age discrimination with surveys. Do they think mature customers don't make purchases or that our opinions are not important? I have been disqualified at times after answering only 2 questions, one of which is age. Oh well, sponsors are the ones putting up the cash so they get to set the rules.
There are certain age groups which are overrepresented on survey sites like FC. It's not really to do with discrimination.
If you're a company that wants to conduct a survey, you might want to get 200 responses from each age/gender bracket (eg. Male 18-24 or Female 35-44). So the survey starts out open to everyone. But some of those brackets have a lot of matching FC members, and some have much fewer. So those in a bracket with fewer cohorts have a higher chance of getting in before quotas max out. In this way, the survey company might have been 100% "undiscriminating" in requesting survey completions, but it might seem otherwise if you're on the survey-taking end.
And, as an aside, it's not really discrimination for a survey-providing company to choose which groups they want to target. If you're paying for research, you shouldn't be obligated to pay for surveys from individuals who are not your customers or target demographic.