Top Survey Sites to Make Money

One of the easiest ways to earn a few bucks is by taking surveys. You can start right away, they’re easy to do, no risk, and you can do them at your convenience. But let’s be real here, you aren’t going to replace a full time income by doing surveys. They have their place and I do them here and there, but they aren’t a way to get rich quick or to get rich slowly, you aren’t going to get rich with surveys. But, if you have ten minutes to spare, you do them while watching tv, you want to make an extra $50/month, you’re stuck at a job with nothing to do, then go ahead and earn yourself a little bit of extra income.  The sites I’m going to recommend below are all survey companies that I have signed up with and know are reputable. There are many scummy surveys sites out there, so be careful. A few rules to keep yourself safe: you should never be required to pay to signup or to take a survey, don’t give credit card or personal ID information, and don’t signup for other websites that you might get linked to from the survey. If you are unsure about a survey site being legit you can check www.surveypolice.com to read reviews.

I could list 50 different survey companies for you to sign up that I know nothing about, but instead I’m going to give you the six sites that I’ve registered with. There are lots more out there that are legit in addition to these, but the sites below have been good to me and I feel comfortable recommending them. Here they are in no particular order:

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American Consumer Opinion has been around since 1986 when people were mailing in their surveys or doing them by phone. Since then they’ve grown to several million members. An average survey takes about 10 minutes to complete and the questions are easy to answer. You must accumulate 1,000 points to cash out (which is $10). Sign up for American Consumer Opinion here.

Vindale refers to their surveys as “studies”. They also offer reward codes through social media and product testing (which I haven’t tried). They don’t deal with points, just dollar amounts. You have to reach $50 to get a payout (which is a bit high) and can get your money via Paypal or they’ll mail you a check. Click here to sign up with Vindale Research.

Swagbucks is a fun and different survey company. Not only can you make money with surveys, you can watch videos, play games, search the web, and shop online to make money. There’s lots of ways to maximize your Swagbucks potential and I’ll be writing tips about it soon. You can cash out your earning through Paypal or gift cards. The lowest payout is typically a $5 Amazon gift card for 500 swagbucks, but they also have better alternatives like a $25 Amazon gift card for 2,200 SB. Their payout offers vary but you can usually get better payouts with the big points that are discounted. If you haven’t tried Swagbucks then I recommend you do, they’re a fun alternative to the survey only sites. Sign up for Swagbucks here.

Opinion Outpost is a survey company where you earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards or cash via Paypal. They offer a $10,000 quarterly drawing that you get entered into every time you take a survey. Their minimum payout is $5 for an Amazon gift card (50 points) or $10 for Paypal (100 points) which is lower than most survey sites. Click here to sign up with Opinion Outpost.

InboxDollars is similar to Swagbucks in that it offers multiple ways to make money online in addition to their surveys. They reward you for redeeming coupons (which I love of course), shopping online, playing games, taking surveys, searching the web, clicking an email, etc. You must earn $30 to cash out. Their surveys typically pay between $.50 – $5.00. Use this link to sign up and get $5.00 in your account!

Amazon Mechanical Turk or mturk was the first survey type company I tried and I still do hits (as they’re called in mturk) with them today. I wrote a detailed article about mturk here. Mturk is an Amazon company and legit. They are not just a survey company, but offer all sorts of small jobs such as transcription, rating search results, translating, inputting values from an image, etc. Basically companies are paying you to be a worker and perform simple tasks that can be done online. The surveys are typically the best pay for your time unless you have a skill like translating French to English or are an experienced transcriber. There is a reddit forum that lists the best mturk jobs available that I use to maximize my time. There’s no minimum payout and your earnings are transferred directly to your Amazon account.

My advice is to sign up with each of these companies, give them a try, and then decide which ones you like best and want to focus on. Some of them, like American Consumer Opinion, don’t always have surveys that you qualify for every day so you need multiple survey companies if you’re going to do this on a regular basis. I setup a separate survey email account so my personal account didn’t get overwhelmed with surveys or offers and so far I haven’t had any spam in that account. I can log in to that email when I have time for surveys or quickly in the morning to see what’s available. And just to reiterate, you aren’t going to make a full-time income taking surveys, you can maybe make around $6/hr. But if you can do 30 minutes a day or set a goal of $5 per day, then adding $100 per month with very little effort can add up.

If you want to see my entire list of over 40 survey companies, click here! There are tons of good companies just waiting for you to sign up!!