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It's lucrative for businesses to really know their target audiences. Face-to-face focus groups used to be the main method of collecting consumer insight, but now that we live in an online world, market research has been able to capture the thoughts and feelings of an even bigger audience. Businesses and organizations can gather the opinions and feedback of customers who remain in the comfort of their own homes, which is a win-win for both sides.
Individuals like you can get paid to do surveys online, which is a pretty convenient little side hustle if you're looking for one. But is it too good to be true? Can it really be as easy as it sounds? While every paid survey company will go about the process a little differently, it's fairly easy money regardless.
Saturday, February 15th
Branded Surveys is a well-liked paid survey company with ratings from hundreds of thousands of users. They're one of the most popular options for paid surveys - and for good reason too. Branded Surveys has a clear, up-to-date, easy-to-use website where you can earn points just for signing up and creating a profile. Your profile matches you with relevant surveys where you can choose from over 300 types of rewards for your time. 500 points is the minimum cash-out amount and is the equivalent of $5 USD. Surveys take around 5-20 minutes to complete and users have the potential of earning around $5 to $100 per month depending on how much time they commit. Branded Surveys is a reliable place to spend your time, so they've earned our highest rating.
Swagbucks is a highly-rated company that offers multiple means of earning money. Whether you just want to focus on completing surveys or also play games for cash, receive incentives from major online brands for shopping online, or submit receipts from your grocery shopping trips to earn points, you have some options. When you rack up enough points, you can choose to get a PayPal transfer or choose from 131 gift cards. Swagbucks is a popular, reliable place to make money from taking online surveys or doing other tasks, so they've earned one of our top ratings.
Survey Junkie rewards members for signing up for their site and making a profile. From there you'll have instant access to a plethora of surveys that all clearly display their point value and time commitment. Each point is equal to $0.01 here and if you take around 3 surveys per day, you could earn $40/month towards PayPal or e-gift cards here. Their platform is one of the easiest to understand and navigate of any we've seen and they have many high reviews from members, so Survey Junkie is a great paid survey option.
Opinion Outpost has a sleek platform where you can sign up for free (although they don't offer a point bonus for doing so). They focus heavily on paid surveys, so you'll need to fill out a profile to get matched to the best ones. Many of them pay around $0.10 each, which is the equivalent of 1 Opinion Outpost point. You can redeem rewards for either PayPal cash or gift cards to popular restaurants and stores. Opinion Outpost has high reviews from members, with the exception of some issues with people who were denied survey completion after already spending time on it (for not matching the target criteria). If you can get past this, you'll likely have a really good experience at Opinion Outpost and be able to earn some good passive income in your spare time.
RewardSurvey sends emails to their members about once a week alerting them of new surveys available to them. These surveys rack up rewards that can be used as soon as you have enough to trade them in. Rather than earning cash or gift cards, RewardSurvey pays in magazine subscriptions. You can select from popular magazine and news article titles with 6-12 issues and have them delivered to your address as a "thank you” for taking surveys here. You'll get $30 to use as soon as you sign up and take your first survey. This rewards system won't entice everyone, but it's a straightforward process and a good option for anyone who loves magazines but doesn't want to pay for them on their own.
InboxDollars rewards members for taking surveys, scanning grocery receipts, taking advantage of brand deals, and gaming. Payouts for surveys are similar to what you'd find elsewhere, with payments between as little as $0.01 or as much as $5 per survey. You can earn extra points by referring friends, so this is for sure worth doing. There are a lot of gaming opportunities with InboxDollars, but some people complain that points aren't tracked accurately and therefore they miss out on payments they should have earned. This, along with InboxDollars' "F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, are two of the reasons that this paid survey platform hasn't earned a top spot with us despite having a lot of good partnerships with brands and the potential for earnings.
MyPoints is a legitimate company that has been around since 1996. By reading emails, booking trips, scanning grocery receipts, playing games, or taking surveys, you can earn points to be redeemed for gift cards or PayPal transfers. Although there are paid surveys available here, it's not the main focus of MyPoints, so this site is best utilized if you're a big online shopper or want to do a little extra work when you're grocery shopping and earn points for your purchases. They have decent reviews overall, but with some complaints about customer service and issues with accurate point earnings, we aren't thrilled about the platform. We recommend a higher-rated site to earn money for taking surveys.
Survey Pago offers paid surveys as their only method of making money. It's free to sign up and they have 16 categories of questions for you to fill out to create your profile. Their entire interface is really simple and straightforward, but you'll only get 2-4 surveys per month, so you won't be spending a lot of time here. It can take up to a month to be credited for surveys you complete, so don't expect a fast turnaround on your PayPal payout or e-gift card. There aren't any customer reviews of Survey Pago that we found, so it's clearly not one of the most popular survey sites in the US, but it could be a low time commitment in addition to another paid survey site you're already using.
UniqPaid hosts surveys, games, and paid tasks for members to make money from. Unfortunately, we found their site to be really non-user friendly and confusing. Their surveys are all over the place and some of them take you to external websites. Some types of surveys are allowed once per day while others (if you qualify) can be taken as much as they show availability. They only pay between $0.05 and $0.15 per survey, which is pretty low. Even games only pay about $0.01 each, so it will take a while to earn any decent money here. UniqPaid leaves us with a lot of questions and we found almost no member feedback for them, so pass on signing up here.
SurveyPronto makes it easy enough to sign up for their site and start surveys, but they left too many unanswered questions for us to want to spend our valuable time here. The company doesn't list how long their surveys are or how much earning potential you can expect. We were denied for quite a few surveys, so we worry that it will take a lot of trial and error to find anything that you qualify for. You'll have to earn $30 in credits before you can actually get your reward, so this will take a long time. Members have complained that after working diligently on surveys to rack up their points, their account will randomly disappear or get wiped out and they will lose everything they've worked for. We don't trust SurveyPronto and don't feel like we could get a good grasp on their processes, which lands this paid survey platform near the bottom of our list.
Although there are quite a few ways you can make money through UniqueRewards, it may never end up in your wallet. Many members have reported playing games, taking surveys, and doing other tasks to rack up points in their account and never being able to get paid for it. There are so many negative reviews about people's poor experiences with this run-of-the-mill paid survey site and their lack of helpful customer service, so there is no reason we would recommend signing up.
Surveylama allows users to sign up for their membership and earn an initial 20 points, the equivalent of $0.20. They claim that people can make up to $300/month from their service, but based on how little most surveys pay, this is not likely the case. You don't have to answer a questionnaire to create a profile, so we suspect that there aren't many legitimate surveys here for you to match with. Their site is full of pop-up ads and it seems like their customer reviews are largely made up. There is nothing about Surveylama that makes us want to sign up for their service, so you should steer clear and use a more reputable paid survey site.
Some will give you a straightforward survey with a series of questions that align with your user profile. Other companies may have you watch video clips of ads and provide feedback about them, provide you with a link to use to shop online at their store and earn points back, or you might even get rewarded just for playing games.
There is no specific base pay that you can expect to earn from any given company. Each one will vary a bit, based on what they're having you do and how many participants they need. You probably shouldn't plan on doing paid surveys as your sole means of income since some pay less than a few dollars an hour, but it could provide a little bit of side money to use for something fun.
In some cases, you might start a survey only to find that your answers were rejected for not fitting the demographic they're looking for. So jumping on the paid surveys train will require some patience on your part, but in the end it's still a fun (and easy!) way to make a little extra money.
Rather than getting physical cash or a check in the mail for your efforts, you may receive gift cards, points towards shopping at a certain store, or payment through an institution like PayPal. You can usually decide which online surveys to take based on what they pay, how they pay, and how long it will take you from start to finish.
So when time is precious and there seem to be endless websites offering paid surveys online, how do you decide who to go with? What are things to look for in a trustworthy company? Here are a few things we recommend keeping in mind:
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched the most popular paid survey platforms available online. We hope this information directs you to some reliable companies that you can start earning cash, merchandise, and rewards from today!
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