Best and Worst Paid Survey Sites
Over the past a year a group of friends and I have been trying out a lot of different types of internet “money-making” sites. These aren’t the “get rich quick” schemes that are promoted all over the internet, but rather websites that pay just a few cents a day. We reviewed various “get-paid-to-write” websites. Below is our review of several “get-paid-to-take-surveys” sites.
www.mommytalksurveys.com
This site is either a scam, or so riddled with website errors that it’s practically useless. The site initially looked promising; payouts for the majority of their listed surveys ranged from $1 to $3, with some going as high as $15. The $25 payout limit seemed reasonable as well. Unfortunately, all of the surveys go through an approximate 10 minute “pre-survey” that asks a lot of questions relating to the survey topic. Amazingly, no one in our test group ever seemed to “qualify” to take the actual surveys. This was surprising, seeing as how the surveys come with a statistical analysis giving your “odds” of qualifying for the surveys. Our test group only “tried out” for surveys that we had a 75% chance or better of qualifying for. We have no proof, but we all started to suspect that there are no “paid” surveys on this site, and the pre-qualifying surveys are providing the information that the client companies want. Don’t waste your time signing up.
www.caroladams.com
This is a good site, but our testers noticed that they do not seem to get as many opportunities to take surveys from this company as they did at the beginning of our experiment. The payout for surveys has also been cut in half. Whether this is due to a typical cycling of panel members, or just reflecting a decline in companies willing to pay for market research is unknown.
At any rate, payouts for surveys are usually just $.05, but many of these surveys take only 3 minutes or less. Based on your answers to these surveys, however, you can “qualify” to take longer surveys with higher payouts (usually between $2.50 and $4). Panelists are paid in “points” that can be cashed-out for a check or prizes. It was our experience that the checks usually were more valuable than the prizes. We typically got an invitation to a survey about twice a week. There are a few product testing opportunities, but they were very few and far between.
www.harrispoll.com
This site has some rather long surveys, and the payouts for them can really vary. Some surveys that took us over 20 minutes to complete paid only $1.50, while others that only took 5minutes or less paid over $2.50. Panelists are again paid in points, but the points are cashed out for gift certificates and merchandise; not cash. The gift certificates, however, are for big retail chains such as amazon.com and Burger King. The cash-out system is also weighted towards encouraging people to save up as many points as possible before cashing out, making this a site that will not earn much for a casual survey taker.
Members of our group also noted that these surveys seemed to be a hodge-podge of various questions; a typical survey might have questions about privacy concerns in the workplace as well as questions about your family’s monthly paper towel usage.
www.mypoints.com
On the surface, this looked like a fairly lucrative site. Offers arrived in our inboxes at least once a day, and the payout level for the surveys seemed average. Reading the fine print, however, showed that there would be no payouts to anyone who didn’t sign up for at least one “sponsored offer”, and that all points would expire a year from when they were first earned. The “sponsored offers” consisted of everything from credit card pitches to as-seen-on-TV products. None of them interested our team members, and thus we decided to label this site a dud.
www.synovate.com
This is one of the better survey sites on the web. Payment for surveys is in the form of points that can be redeemed for cash. The majority of surveys on the site paid between $.50 and $2, with more lucrative surveys being offered for participants who were willing to test products or fill out snail-mail surveys (typically no more than a $5 payout on these). You can apply for and get a check as soon as you earn $5.
New surveys arrived in our tester’s inbox about every three days, and after a few months we started to get product testing offers. After that, we received product to test about once a month. This is a site that rewards people who take their surveys most often with the better/more lucrative surveys. One tester left on a trip for month to discover that she only got about one survey a month for the next two months until she “proved” that she could be relied on again.
