There are four parties, not two

A market research agency has a question for a specific kind of person — say, people who bought a new phone in the last three months. It pays for answers.

A survey router or panel network aggregates thousands of those studies and finds people for them. It takes a cut.

A publisher — a site like this one — sends people to the router and receives a share of what the router earns for each completed interview.

You are the fourth party, and the only one contributing something that cannot be bought elsewhere: an honest answer from a real person.

Why the reward for a survey varies so much

Routers price a study by how hard the person is to find and how long the interview takes. A ten-minute study aimed at anyone might pay very little. A ten-minute study aimed at IT managers who buy cloud software can pay many times more.

That is why two surveys of the same length can offer very different rewards, and why filling in your profile honestly changes what you are shown. It is not a ranking of you; it is a description of who the researcher is looking for.

What a scrub is, and why it matters to you

Routers do not pay publishers for every completion. Some are reversed afterwards, because a quality check failed, a quota closed, or the end client rejected the interview. Across the industry this is a meaningful share of gross volume, not a rounding error.

That is why your reward stays pending for a while before it becomes spendable, and why a site that credits everything instantly at a generous rate usually cannot sustain it. We would rather show you a smaller number that stays true than a larger one we later take back.

Where Pineapple’s share goes

We hold back a reserve against reversals, then pay a fixed share of what remains to you. The reserve is a configured percentage, reviewed against what actually gets reversed, not a number invented to look good.

What is left covers payout fees, hosting, fraud checks and support. If the reserve turns out to be too high, the right response is to lower it — not to keep the difference quietly.