Paid Survey Reviews - Are They Better Than Paid Surveys?

If you have been doing paid surveys then you may now have heard of paid reviews. This is basically the same but you leave reviews instead of taking surveys. Which are sometimes more interesting. Searching on paid survey reviews you come upon several different sites with reviews of paid survey sites. Are these reviews real? Do they have useful information? Can they be helpful? The answer is, "Well, it depends." This article explains, "Depends on what?"
When you are scouting around trying to find a good paid survey site, a guide company to help you get started with paid online surveys, you sometimes come across "Review Sites". Are these of any help? Is their information useful? Can you trust them?
The answers depend on what kind of review site we are talking about. Are we talking about real paid survey review sites or are we talking about bogus "review" sites of the various types that exist? Let's enumerate them:
Real:
1. Serious review sites. These will normally be comparing more than 10 paid survey sites, using objective criteria, measuring performance, making periodic reviews (since companies and conditions change rapidly), offering comparisons, and periodically coming to different conclusions in their rankings.
These are signs of a serious review site, and yes this type can be very helpful.
2. Semi-serious, Good ol' Boy sites. These will list 3-6 that "they have compared" and found to be good, they recommend them, etc. Web page goes up and remains unchanged for months or years. Maybe those paid survey sites were good at one time but now? Still some of these sites name well-regarded paid survey sites, so they may not be the best but they are not all bad.
This type of site can be of some help, better than nothing, but they are not the best.
Bogus:
3. Sham sites set up by or sponsored by paid survey sites as a kind of self promotion called "Paid Survey Review" in name only. You can see various of those scattered about. Look at the sites closely and you will see that they do not look "live", webpages are old outdated, details such as privacy policy and contact information are missing or non-existent. Site has no feel, no depth to it. Comparisons are short on details, sponsor companies always show up in the top 3. No discussion about ranking criteria, you are expected to take that on faith.
This type of site is not credible and is of no informational use. (Except maybe to note that the sponsors are not long on scruples or ethics!)
4. "Straw Man" sales pitches. Generally start off with something like, "We checked out 197 paid survey sites and 97% of them were scams. There were only three that were any good. But those three are really good and we have their contact information here" Reading a bit you will note that they often play it fast and loose with the numbers, saying one thing at one time and something else at another.
This type of site is a sales site, setting up "Straw Men" and then knocking them over to make the product they are trying to sell look better! What they have to say is self-serving, highly suspect and not at all helpful.
So to answer the question, Paid Survey Review sites can be either very helpful, somewhat helpful or totally useless completely depending on the site. So really you need to judge them for yourself now that you know what to look for. Just look for the signs as explained above and it will not be very difficult to distinguish which is which.