Are Paid Surveys Legit and Do They Make You Money

Online Paid Surveys are a great gig to make some extra money fast. There are little to no prerequisites involved and you can start crunching surveys for money within minutes.
Are paid surveys legit and do they make you money? Let’s find out!

In this post, I explain how they work, what you can expect, and on top of it, I will give a top 3 (+bonus) of the easiest or best-paying survey sites.

Interested? Let’s dive into it!

What Paid Surveys Are

As you might expect already, these are online questionnaires for which you will get paid, in various forms, for completing.

Why Would Anybody Pay Me to Answer Questions?

Because your data is very valuable to marketing research companies that want to know more about their focus group.

Let’s say that company X is going to extend its product range with something that targets men, in the range of 40 to 60 years old, that are interested in dying their hair.

What this company would like to know is how big the audience of men in this age range is, and if they are interested or could be interested in, a product to die their hair.
Maybe the group is too small, maybe most of them are bold, maybe they don’t care if they become gray.

Or maybe this is something that men in this category have been wanting for ages!

Either way, it is better for a company to find this out before they invest a lot of money into the product.

That is exactly why they try to find as many people as possible to ask if they are interested or not. Online Surveys are a great way to do marketing research.

Will This Make me Rich?

Short answer: It depends, but no.

Without getting all too philosophical, ‘rich’ means something different per person.
If you live in a country with an average monthly income of $5000, then this most certainly will not make you rich(er). Whereas the monthly average income is $1000, surveys can make a difference.

But What About All Those Claims I See

Based on my experience, it takes a lot of time to earn those higher numbers.
How much you earn all depends on the surveys and how many you can complete.

Simple surveys that only take a minute or 5 will earn less than surveys that may take 20 minutes of your time.

Surveys that are targeting a specific focus group will also pay better, but the chances of you belonging to this focus group is smaller.
Generic surveys pay less than specific ones.

So, the longer and more specific a survey will get, the better the reward.

Yeah, Yeah… How Much?

Can you make $50 dollars? In a month, investing just a little bit of time? Sure, no problem.

How about $200? It will take a lot more time and you have to have some luck finding a high-paying survey, but yeah.

$500? You would have to be crunching a lot of surveys for that. The amount of time that it will consume is high. If you happen to have other options to earn an extra, it would be better to do that first.

I made a calculator that will show you what it will take to make the amount you have in mind. Go check it out here: Can You Make $500 a Month with Surveys?

So Why Do It?

For one thing: you can do it everywhere and whenever you like, it is something you can do without thinking too much and it also pays better than doing nothing…

Try this: Calculate the possible earnings for everything you can do into dollars per minute. This is handy as most surveys will tell you how much you can earn with them and how much time it will take (in minutes).

Now imagine that you are on a train and it will take half an hour.

Do you have jobs you can do in that half-hour, including taking surveys?
What is the job that will fit into that half hour and earns you the most?
Do that one first.

Payment

Most common are payments made through PayPal and by means of electronic gift cards. Some offer to post a cheque and some offer Payoneer, Skrill, or even Bitcoin payment to your wallet or Coinbase account.

Scammers

Where there is money involved, there are going to be scammers.

Please take these tips and keep them in the back of your mind all the time:

• If it seems too good to be true, you know it isn’t right.
  Find reviews, Do Your Own Research.
• You should never have to pay ‘membership’ fees to join a platform!
• If part of the process is actually buying a product, move away…

Tip: Join Multiple Programs

There is no need to stick to one single provider. In fact, it makes more sense to join more than one program.

The number of surveys you take is directly related to how much money they can make you.

The amount of available surveys differs per platform and per profile.
Another factor is the country where you live. Some sites targeting mainly the US will have fewer surveys available in, for instance, Italy.

Tip: Also Do Low-Paying Surveys

A lot of sites will start by offering you easy, fast, but low-paying surveys. The longer you work with them, the higher the reward will become.

Your profile will grow with you as you take more surveys, so it is important to participate with as many as possible.

The good news is that these low paying surveys will not take you a lot of time, so try to fit them into your ‘lost’ moments, like waiting and commuting.
Maybe take one waiting in a queue for your latte macchiato?

Top 3

I have an extensive list available on my survey longlist page, but if you want to start right away then this top 3 will get you up and running in no-time:

#1 Survey Junkie

This is by far one of the most popular and best-paying survey providers out there. You will find this on top of almost all lists, except for the lists with surveys available outside the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

If, however, you are a resident of these countries then this is your number one choice of survey sites!

You earn points for every survey taken and the height of the reward varies between $2 and $75 dollar.

There is an option to join focus groups, which will increase your earnings.

If you’d like to read more about Survey Junkie then see this post or register right away.

#2 Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a microtask platform and one of those microtasks is taking surveys.

They provide you with a user-friendly dashboard where you can review how much a survey will earn you and what the estimated time to complete it is.

Even if you’re not eligible for a survey, and this will happen a lot, you will earn a Swagbuck.

What is great about Swagbucks is that you will receive an instant $5 for just signing up and you can do a lot more than just the surveys. They have great cashback and signup programs too.

If you like to read more about Swagbucks then check out this post I wrote about them, or register right away and earn your first Swagbucks right away.

#3 Opinion Inn

Opinion Inn has a really high instant signup bonus of 10 dollars. Just for registering. 

Their member dashboard will present you with a list of surveys you can take. It also provides you information on the survey topic and the reward.

If you find a survey you want to participate in, click it and walk through the qualification steps in which is determined if you are a match for the survey topic.

Surveys can make you $3 to $5 on average, but the range is between 50 cents for short and easy to $20 for lengthy surveys. I have read about rare occasions, where there may even be surveys that pay up to $100.

Opinion Inn uses Paypal to make payments. The minimum threshold is 25 dollars.

Bonus sites

These 7 selected survey sites will give you 10 options in total for finding a survey site that suits you best.

• Timebucks (also pays in Bitcoin)
• liLifePoints (various rewards per country)
• SurveySavvy
• InboxDollar ($5 dollars signup bonus)
• Vindale Research (UK, US, Australia, and Canada)
• SurveyTime (Instant Payment)
• MyPoints ($10 dollar signup bonus)

Conclusion

Are paid surveys legit and do they make you money?

By now you should have an idea of what Survey sites are, what they do, and why they will pay you for answering questions.

You also have learned that some of these sites are legit, but you have to stay on your guard as scammers will try to impose as a survey site.

And you know now that it is possible to create some extra cash with it, although you will have to answer a lot before you can buy a Tesla with it.

I Tried It

Well, not all of them, but nevertheless. I like it.
Not that I expect to make a lot of money, but it is so easy to fit them in whenever I have a couple of minutes to spare or if I want to give my mind a break.

Bonus benefit for everybody that read until the end: a lot of them have refer-a-friend programs which can earn you even extra.
Swagbucks, for instance, will give you 10% of what your friends earn (for the rest of your life).

What Do You Think?

Do you also like surveys? Do you think that they are a waste of your time?
Leave a comment and share this post if you like it. 

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