Curion Insights Offers Product Testing and Research Gigs

Want to earn money testing products or answering survey questions? Curion Insights may have just the gig for you.

Curion Insights is a market research firm that enlists individuals to weigh in on a wide array of topics — from cosmetics to kids — promising pay that averages $50 per hour.

How it works

Consumers sign up with the site by answering a handful of basic questions about your age, ethnicity, family status and preferences. The site will then prompt you to take a series of more detailed screening tests to see what type of research studies might work for you.

The screeners pay only a token amount for your time — typically 10 to 25 cents. However, by completing those screening surveys, you are assigned to special interest panels that qualify you for better-paying market research and product testing gigs.

When Curion thinks you might qualify for a research assignment, it will contact you by email. The emailed invites provide details of the research, including where it will be held, when and what it pays. You’ll then be asked to complete another, more detailed, screening survey to see if you meet that specific panel’s requirements.

Curion Insights review

Like many sites that promise to pay generously for consumer opinions, Curion Insights can’t promise regular work. However, when you do get a gig, it’s likely to be both engaging and lucrative.

The site’s focus is on testing new products. This could be anything from a face cream to chocolates. What they’re looking for are people who can weigh in on all the decision points that could make this product a failure or a star. This might be taste, touch, smell, packaging, or its effectiveness at solving some problem.

To get the right testers, the site will ask a lot of questions about what you do, the products you use, and the problems you have. Those initial screening questions put you into a category of user. If the site thinks you might qualify for a study, it will send another, more-detailed questionnaire.

Screening pay

Thus, for at least the early weeks or months that you engage with this site, the vast majority of what you’re doing is answering screening questions that pay just 10 to 25 points per questionnaire. Each point is worth a penny.

Knowing that people find answering lots of questions for a token amount a frustrating experience, the site has monthly contests for the frequently rejected.

If you’re disqualified from 5 tests, the site will automatically enter you into a monthly drawing for $100. (There are two winners per facility, per month.)

You can get entered into contests for referring friends to the site, too.

Two types of tests

If you are tapped for an actual study, it will fall into one of two categories — Central Location Testing or Home-Use Testing.

With Central Location Testing, consumers go to one of the six Curion facilities and test products, such as food and beverages or home and personal care products, under the supervision of Curion staff. The site also has people come to its locations for focus groups, which can last from 45 minutes to an hour.

To take part in these tests, you naturally need to be within traveling distance of one of the site’s six facilities. These are located in Old Bridge, NJ; Redwood City, CA; Deerfield, Ill; Irving, Tx; Duluth and Sandy Springs, GA.

Home-use testing assignments involve picking up a product, or receiving it by mail, and testing it at home. If you’re tapped for one of these assignments, the assignment will specify what you need to do and when. In many cases, this will involve testing product over time and recording how it works, possibly with selfies and written reports.

Assignment invitations

All assignment invitations come via email and include the type of test they’re doing; the time involved; where the test will be conducted; when; and what it pays. You determine whether to pursue the opportunity (by taking the screener) or pass.

The site says that its projects typically require 30 to 60  minutes and pay between $40 and $250. But, on average, projects pay about $50 per hour.

In other words, its well-paid work, when you can get it.

Payments

All payments are made in gift cards through a site called Tremendous.

Product testing projects will note in the invitation when you’ll receive payment.

To cash out the points you get by taking screening questionnaires, you’ll need at least 1,000 points. That will get you a $10 gift card.

Recommendations

Because much of what Curion Insights does is done in person, you have a much better chance at getting these gigs if you happen to live near their testing facilities. But, even then, you’re not likely to be tapped more than once a month, if that. You can sign up with Curion Insights here.

Those who want to do product testing and research more often may also want to sign up with other sites that provide similar opportunities. These include WinnWinn Research, UserInterviews, Respondent and Rare Patient Voice.

What their users say (from Indeed)

Great consumer research spot! Free parking in the lot (as well as free street parking next to the building). Quick in and out–these guys are super organized and the check-in process for participants is quick and friendly. They maintained Covid protocol when I was there, and everything was explained clearly and professionally.

from Glassdoor

Fun to try new products and get paid for it. But you have to take a lot of screeners to qualify.

From Reddit

I’ve been doing legitimate focus group stuff for 15 years (started with Schlessinger, I can’t even remember what they’re called now, the company keeps getting bought out and changing names) and most of the time you don’t make it through the screener. That’s just the way it goes. They’re looking for something specific, so they spam 10,000 people with the screener, and then the 8 who happen to answer every single question right wind up actually participating.