FAQ
SurveySwap is a place where you are connected with other people that need survey answers. You help each other, by filling each other's surveys.
Being plagued trying to find respondents ourselves when we were students we decided to start SurveySwap. We try to make the exchange of survey answers as fair and efficient as possible for you. ☀️
You fill out surveys to earn credits, which will automatically turn into respondents. You don't have to activate anything. Just sit back and wait.
As long as you have credits you will get answers to your survey.
If you have any doubts, contact us in the Helpdesk chat, we try to answer within the hour but you will always get a human reply 🤗
Importing a survey from Qualtrics, Google Forms or any other builder requires proper placement of a credit link.
Your survey might be blocked because it received too many reports from the community. 🚫🚫
Possible issues:
- You didn’t place the credit link on the ‘thank you’ page of your survey software.
- The link is there, but it’s not a hyperlink
- The link is there, but you cannot copy-paste it
- The link is there, but very hard to see
- You forgot to place the credit link entirely, or...
- Something else completely
Solution:
Step 1: Test and take your own survey* with another device or incognito tab. You have to be not logged in.
*Take a screenshot or clear picture of the placement of the credit link (just in case).
Step 2: Fix the issues 1-5 above.
Step 3: Go to SurveySwap, 'Dashboard', ‘My Surveys’ click settings on the blocked survey.
Step 4: Click ‘Credit link’, and redo the instructions. (see image below)
Step 5: Your survey should be back online and will be tested.
If you solved all the 1 - 5 issues, you will be good to go. ✅
Screenshot of dashboard --> Survey --> Settings --> Credit link 
When you have tried e-e-everything: contact our Helpdesk in the bottom right corner.
Make sure you include the screenshot and we will get your survey unblocked ASAP 🤗
When the survey in your dashboard has the yellow/orange blocked status it means your survey is not active.
Usually, there's a text line under it that explains the issue, this can be:
-Missing credit link
-Wrong placement of the credit link
-Not enough credits
If it's an issue with the link, please check the other FAQ item on Credit Link issues.
You put your hard work into answering a survey,
and at the end of the survey there's no link... 🤬🤬
All for nothing... Right?
Wrong! We understand it's frustrating, but you will get your credits. 😘
Unfortunately, the step of placing the credit link is a bit confusing for some new users, please be patient with them, and help keep the system clean.
Solution:
1. Go from the survey tab (qualtrics / google forms) in your browser to the suveyswap tab.
2. The survey you just took should be highlighted in grey
3. Click 'report'
4. Select reason 'Survey doesn't contain a SurveySwap link for credits'
5. Add a message that helps the author fix the issue (optional).
6. Upon reviewal, you will receive the credit link via email and 1 bonus credit for helping us keep the system clean.
What are credits?
Credits are required for your survey to be visible to others.
When people complete your survey, your credit balance goes down.
When your credit balance is 0, your survey is offline and not visible to others.
How much is credit worth?
A credit is worth 1 minute of survey filling time.
If your survey takes 5 minutes to fill out (which we estimate), you require 5 credits to get 1 respondent.
You can earn credits by filling out surveys.
Credits cannot be sold for money. They help in the energy exchange.
Why do we use credits?
Because some surveys are longer and take more time than others. This would make swapping 1-on-1 unfair.
For example, swapping a 5-minute survey for a 45-minute survey means that one person only has to spend 5 minutes for a respondent, while the other has to spend 45 minutes.
By adding the 1 credit per minute system we eliminate this unfairness.
Credits vs Boost points
💰Credits 'pay' for respondents.
⚡️Boost points 'pay' for extra speed 2-3x of normal.
The mechanism works like this
Okay, to keep it simple, let's assume person 1 and person 2 both have a survey that costs 2 credit.
👩🦰Person 1 has 200 credits and 10 boost points
🧑🏾🦱Person 2 has 200 credits and 100 boost points
Some time passes...⏱
👩🦰Person 1 will have 10 respondents at a fast rate, due to the boost points, after which she has 180 credits and 0 boost points. She will receive the following 90 respondents at a slower rate due to the lack of boost points.
🧑🏾🦱Person 2 will receive 100 respondents at a much faster rate, after which she will be at 0 credits, and 0 boost points leftover.
How you can get boost points
You can earn boost points, or purchase them in the shop.
Earning boost points works by taking 5 surveys in a row. We reward active users.
Important note: You don't need boost points to get respondents, it only speeds up the turn-around time by 2-3x.
Your survey is online when it looks like this:
On the dashboard your survey will have a blue button that says 'online'. This means your survey is active and visible for others. If it says anything else, it's not visible to others.
What your survey needs to be online:
✅it is uploaded
✅it has a credit link at the (very) end
✅you have enough credits.
I can hear you say: "Okay, that's nice. But when do I have enough credits?"
Excellent question! How many credits are 'enough' depends on your survey length.
For example: (chronological)
1. Your survey takes 5 minutes, thus 5 costs credits per respondent.
2. You fill out a 6-minute survey and earn 6 credits. Your survey is now online.
3. Someone fills out your survey and 5 credits are removed.
4. You have 1 credit left over, which is not enough since you need 5 credits.
5. Your survey is not online, so buy or earn more credits.
The more credits and boost points you have the higher the chance that your survey is displayed to others. We advise having at least +100 credits and +20 boost points in your wallet for optimal speed.
The number of daily participants you receive depends, on a few factors.
Factors that make you receive participants faster:
- Having a lot of credits, about 100 in excess should do the trick.
- Doing multiple surveys in one session gives you boost points
- Having fewer filters for demographics
- Writing your survey in English
- Purchasing the top position to support us
Typically, you can expect between 2 and 40 respondents a day.
Nope, it's free. We believe that finding respondents should be easy when we help each other. If you don't feel like helping others with their survey, we do have an option to buy credits.
No one likes to fill in surveys. But, would you rather wait and do nothing for weeks and spamming your social group OR would spend a few hours filling in surveys and collect your data within days.
Of course! If someone volunteers to fill in your survey you won’t be charged credits.
We control the Facebook accounts, in case of fraud. Also, we have a special algorithm that can see how serious someone is taking the survey. For instance; if someone fills out questions too quickly, inattentive, just fills a straight line or many different other factors,, they will get a warning and will be punished with -15 credits if they continue.
If you need respondents fast and/or don't want to fill out surveys, send us an email at [email protected]
In the future we are are adding this option! This would mean you pay around €1,50 per respondent (based on 5 min questionnaire), meaning you can make €18,- per hour!
Actually it’s a big step in making surveys more representative, let me explain. Currently surveys are either filled in by first year college students (under force) of the same school as the person that creates the survey, or close family and friends.
SurveySwap will make the sample more representative by having many people from many colleges of different age groups take part in the sample.
We’ve added filter options for gender, country and age. Others filters like smoker status will become available soon. This ensures your sample will be representative.
If you don't feel like helping others by filling out their survey, you can also buy credits.
The price is around 25 - 50 cents per minute per respondent. This means if your survey takes 2 minutes to fill out and you require 30 respondents, you will pay 2 * 30 * .50 = 30 euros.
Your survey is shown on the following page: https://surveyswap.io/take-a-survey
It is only shown:
-When you have enough credits
-To people in your demographics (country, age, etc)
-We only display 8 surveys at a time*
-People can only fill your survey once
*This is to ensure the people that have filled out the most surveys get helped first. This way the system stays fair and balanced.
You can view results as soon as you receive a response, but where you view them depends on how you built the survey.
If you have built the survey with our builder you can find results by going to your dashboard, finding your survey and clicking on 'Settings', and selecting 'results'. You can preview the answers separately by clicking the plus icon, or download the data to excel or another program for further data analysis.
If you built the survey with Google Forms, Qualtrics, or another builder, you of course have to go to their site to find the results.
Yes, you can.
When logged in, go to the top-right menu (3 stripes) and click 'dashboard'.
Once on the dashboard, find the survey you want to increase the number of respondents for. Click on settings and then survey settings.
Once in the settings of the survey, click on increase the number under 'Number of required results for your survey'.
There are 2 ways to put your survey online.
1) Import a survey you already have created with Qualtrics, Google Forms or any other tool by using the credit link. In that case you should choose to import a survey when in your dashboard (see screenshots).
For importing a survey see other FAQ question.
2) Create a survey with SurveySwap. You should choose to 'create new survey' in your dashboard (see screenshots). This way you don't need a credit link.
We will focus on creating a survey in this answer.
__
Step 1. Choose new survey bottom left
Step 2. Choose create survey to create survey with SurveySwap
3) Watch this video and create the questions for your survey
Do you see this? 
Solutions:
There are multiple reasons why you don't see surveys on the survey overview page, the solutions to each are different.
1) Ad blockers
You have an adblocker that is disabling functions on the site. We use certain caching and css to display the top 8 surveys on the overview page. Ad blocker sometimes interfere with this.
First, try to see if you have the same issue when you open surveyswap on a different browser, also try an incognito window. You may have to login again. If you see surveys on the other browser or the incognito window, it's most likely the ad blocker.
Simply, make surveyswap.io an exception by choosing "don't run on pages of this site".
We don't show you ads. Promised ;) 
2) Expand your demographics in your profile
The surveys displayed on the survey overview page are only the survey you are eligible for. This means if you select 'German' as a language in your profile, that you will only see surveys written in the German language.
Usually, this is a good thing. But when you are from a country like Namibia, and only selected 'Afrikaans' as a language, you will see very few surveys. In this case, SurveySwap might not be the best solution for you.
If you speak one of the most spoken languages make sure you select it in your profile!
3) You are doing a great job (!)
It's possible you have been very active and took all surveys available for your demographic (read point 2). Good job!
In this case, simply wait for new surveys to appear. This should be within 24 hours.
4) Other ways to earn credits
Other way #1: leaderboard bonus
If you took many surveys (see 3) you might even be in the top 5 survey takers. If so, you can get daily credit bonuses.
First, you need to see your name in the "Top 5 Survey takers" or another tab. 
If you are in the top 5 list:
1. take a screenshot of the leaderboard
2. go to Instagram
3. tag us in an Insta post/story @student_surveyswap.
4.You will receive the bonus credits in your dashboard's credit history.
Other way #2: inviting friends
We award 20 credits to any fellow student or friend you invited to the platform. Simply have them register using your share link. You can find this on the left side of the dashboard. Make sure they confirm their email (which might end up in the spam). 
Other way #3: Support us by paying for credits
We know many students and researchers don't have a lot of money. That is why we started this platform, we care about research and want to give the world free survey respondents.
But, money really does help us to keep this platform alive. If you want to support our mission and help put food on our table, go to the shop and buy some credits.
We put a guarantee on the number and quality of responses.
This means you never pay for respondents that you (1) don't receive, (2) are of low quality.
So, if you choose to support us and maybe skip a weekend of drinks and entree to parties, thanks! We really do appreciate it! :)
You can find the shop here.
Nope! We don't pay our panel.
This is actually why we have better data than most paid panels.
People that use bots and VPN have nothing to get here, so our panel consists out of real people.
No, sorry, you cannot. ❌
But what you can do is skip surveys, and new ones will appear. ✅
But why?
We understand it would be nice to simply browse a list of surveys and do the ones you like most, but we can't do that.
Let's look at the goal of this website, we are trying to make the exchange of surveys as smooth and fair as possible. We are creating a situation that's best for the entire community. ??
If we let everyone choose, we get a few unfair situations:
1. Users that haven't filled out many surveys yet, still get many respondents if their survey has a more fun topic.
2. Users who did fill out many surveys may still have to wait a long time for their results.
✨That's why we use the credit system. ✨
It's like standing in line. We all would agree that people who have waited longer should be helped first.
Similarly, users with a higher credit balance, are users that have filled out more surveys and should be helped first.
We can only do that by giving their survey a higher ranking and by limiting the survey list (in our case to 8).
But that doesn't mean your survey isn't displayed if you have lower credits
It only means they are helped faster.
We hope you understand our decision and support it.
So get your credit balance up, and start getting ahead in line yourself ?
You can toggle whether you want your survey to be visible to others by clicking the online/offline button.
When your survey looks like this, it's online and other people can take it.
When your survey looks like this, it's offline and other people cannot take it.
