Explanation of classifying factors:

** Cost to Join - Generally speaking, this is a one-time fee. 

** Gravity - This is a ClickBank number which is a composite expression of the level of activity, number of affiliates involved, volume of business, number of transactions and so forth.  Generally, the bigger the number the more business that is being done by that company.  This number changes daily and summaries are reported weekly.

We use the Gravity number to separate guide companies into three categories: Large (Gravity of 100 or more), Medium (Gravity of 15-99.99) and Small (Gravity of 5-14.99).

** Refund % - General: The refund rate is the strongest indicator of the value and quality of service provided by a paid survey guide company. Consider it a measure of the "no confidence votes" or "unhappiness complaints" made by others who have used the service in the last two to three months.

Every refund request is a tangible complaint filed by someone like you who signed up with that company within  two months of asking for the refund. They were unhappy enough to demand their money back. The more refund requests filed, the more votes against using that particular guide company.

So a high (9% or more) refund rate is an indicator of problems that you want to avoid. A low (3-6%) refund rate indicates a high degree of satisfaction, many happy clients who got paid cash for answering online surveys, that you would be pleased to join.

The ideal guide company will have a low current refund rate AND a relatively low average rate for the past three months.  We believe that this measure is best expressed in our new Composite Index, which includes measures in the last 2 weeks and the last 3 months. 

You can also check the old list on the "Past Rankings" page here on this site, if you like.  You can see what the refund rates have been, month by month, beginning over eight months ago, on December 5, 2006.

** Refund % - 6 mo: This is the six-month moving average refund rate. It has been added for clarity, since sometimes the half-month refund rate varies greatly from one time period to another. The six month average refund rate shows the company's history of past refund rates, for the 6-month period ending with this ranking date.

** Refund % - half-month:  This is the current refund rate, which is based on the experience of the previous two weeks up to the ranking date. It should be looked at in conjunction with the 3 month moving average to evaluate the specific paid survey guide company.

 ** Refund % - Composite Index:  Finally, we get down to making a choice among candidates. To do that we must put a weight on the 2 week results and on the 3 month results and look at them together. This we have now done with the new Composite Idex. 

The formula used is: (1.5 times the 2 week average plus the 3 month average) divided by 2.5

or [(1.5 x 2wks) + 3 mo. avg]/2.5 = Composite Index. 

In words then, the Composite Index is composed of 60% of the half-month average plus 40% of the 6-month average. This way of weighting the two averages seems to us about the right balance in importance between the two and gives us a single number which can be logically used to judge the past performance of all.