How it works: LifePoints is the survey platform of a company called Lightspeed, which is owned by Kantar (one of the world’s largest market research and consumer data analytics firms). The platform was formed as a merger of two of the company’s other products, MySurvey and Global Test Market, and gives users a variety of ways to earn points that can be redeemed for cash:
How it works: Vindale is one of the oldest, most well-known, and most highly-rated survey companies around (boasting an “A” rating from the BBB and a great Trustpilot score of 8.1). The only thing that keeps this site from ranking higher on my list is the minimum cashout amount, which is $50. It can take a good amount of time and dedication to hit that mark. Still, the company provides high-quality surveys with good payouts, which makes Vindale a great choice for users who plan on filling out surveys regularly but less attractive for those who are thinking about just dabbling.
nbox dollars is a scam. They will pull you in by offering $5 to begin and another $7 for completing some other tasks. It all goes downhill from there. I quickly realized that filling out countless surveys. I really gave them a try, I tried and tried and tried. Finally I snapped and said “No More!” What happens is that once you start a survey and it could be 15-20 minutes of filling questions, they will reject you based on answering a question as “no”. So you could answer “yes, yes, yes” for multiple questions and after 20 minutes of tedious (and yes, boooring!) questioning you are rejected from survey by punching one lousy “No”. Then they offer “sweeps” which is a raffle ticket that will never win you anything, pathetic! So, after seeing what a sham I got myself into I just decided to get my $30 by strictly opening the “paid mail” and using “paid search”. I had opened the account with them 1.5 years ago and finally was able to collect my $30 (actually $27, they even take $3 for “processing fee” – a final slap in the face) after countless hours of filling surveys and opening stupid paid mail. They pay 2 cents per one paid e-mail so yes it will take a while. I will be closing my account with inbox dollars now that I recovered a small fraction of what my time is actually worth, and I recommend staying clear from them and finding another way of making $$$.
I agree with this. Inbox dollars is not a source to make a living income, it’s to provide EXTRA income. It’s possible to make the $30.00 in a month, or close to it, if you dedicate time to it, but it’s NOT easy(and not worth it if you have more going on in your life). I’ve been using them for years and have yet to encounter a problem with them. In fact, it’s better now than it was when I first started several years ago.
I do not know for sure and they are always subject to changes in their policies. You would have to check out the websites you are interested in to find out. Look for their payment policies or their regular policies as that may answer the question. In addition, you can look at their terms and conditions or FAQ’s. If that doesn’t tell you, look for their contact information so you can ask them directly.
InboxDollars makes you an offer you can’t afford to refuse – start earning extra money and even a full-time living online, at your own pace, in the comfort of your home or elsewhere and have all the money you can make at your fingertips, with minimum effort. For added convenience, you can now leverage legitimate and select reward websites to benefit from real cash plus prizes for your usual everyday online activities. Ka-ching!
Lately they keep disabling this service claiming I have an adblocker BUT I DO NOT! They advise me to make sure java, and flash player plugins are enabled. Which they are, the reenable this service just to disable it again. There’s a few problems with their scenarios a: enable java plugin – Mozilla no longer supports java. You have to download an older version to use java now. This version will support java until March 2018.
My InboxDollars experience started on a high note. After receiving the signup bonus, I earned another 50 cents for completing a short profile survey. I also appreciated that I could see a list of surveys available to me, along with the exact dollar (or cent) amount they’re worth. Most sites we tested use points, and determining a survey’s monetary value can be a hassle. This list also included the estimated time required for each of the surveys and, for some, the topic.
First, thank you for providing this extensive list. I wanted to offer a quick follow up. After reading your post I decided to give Survey Junkie a try and I’ve already closed the account. Yes, I can tell it’s well organized and it is definitely a user-friendly platform. The problems I experienced were first that not one of the surveys they emailed me about were available. I did, however, complete several surveys from the site itself and I found them to be lengthy – in itself, not a problem, but 3 out of 5 told me I didn’t qualify after I’d already invested 10 – 12 minutes filling out the forms. They got more than enough information from me to be useful which is an old and highly unethical trick in market research – which happens to be my background. All in all, it was a LOT of wasted time.
They claim to also offer paid product testing opportunities. But it’s not really paid product testing, but more of getting cash back. Basically, besides surveys, you can purchase products and services through their portal and earn a certain amount of cash back for every dollar you spend. If you were going to buy something already, it’s a great way to get some of the cash back. But don’t just buy something because of the cashback.
I’ve been a member of InboxDollars for at least a year which is what it took to me to just get to $30. I didn’t mind clicking the emails but once I hit $25 or so, I stopped getting “paid emails”. So I forced myself to do surveys. Once I reached $28 it was 3-4 days before I even saw another survey offered (besides the 4 that are always there “peanut labs” etc). I finally hit $30 and cashed out but if course there was another hoop to jump through, they tell you that your account must “remain active” until a certain date (March 2nd) for me. Who knows what counts as active to them, so I continue trying to qualify for surveys hoping that counts, otherwise in officially done with them like so many. I was just shocked at how difficult they make it.
Updating review. I have been with I.D. for a little over a month & have made $17. Because I qualify for more surveys here, I make more money than I do with other survey sites. I am sure I would have made more if I didn't have 5 other survey sites I have to try to visit while I am online. I don't get online everyday. There are a few pros and lots of cons to this site. We all know that taking surveys can be tedious, and this site has options to play some of their cheesy games for a few cents here and there. The games give me a break from the tedious surveys and I enjoy them. They also give money for using coupons through them. It is not a lot by any means, but what other survey site does that? Cents add up; don't you ever pick up pennies off of the ground? The cons on this site are signing up for supposedly free offers, it can lead to spam junk mail if you don't read the terms. I do not like spam junk mail. Nothing is actually "free" from any of the offers, minus some other survey sites. I cannot complete the bonus because I don't have FB. One big thing that concerns me is when I leave the tab for I.D. idling it creates a virus pop up window and that I do not like. I searched online to see if anyone else is experiencing that, but could not find anything. So if the virus thing happens again, I will block and unsubscribe from them.
They tell me today that this are “popups” and they have no ads in the tv rotation (I’ve watched it since it came out and these were always there). They keep pushing out this java plugin explanation, this should not hold any salt the tv channel worked fine until the latest firefox update. If it is a “security setting” they are doing nothing to push me in the right direction of fixing it.
Above all, thanks for that great article. I really enjoyed reading it all for the last 5 minutes with a mug of coffee! Despite this article being next to perfect, if I can, I’d like to add one of the best survey sites, in my mind, to this list. It would be, “ClixSense”. They’re a really old, and huge, presence in the research industry and have partnered with many of those listed in this very post. So, signing up on ClixSense lets you take paid survey invitations from multiple survey sites and research firms, like Opinion Outpost, Nielson Media Research, YouGov, I-Poll, MySurvey, Toluna and more. Almost half of all of those survey sites are listed here.
In a few cases, InboxDollars directed me to “exclusive offers” instead of straightforward surveys. One required me to give my name, address, phone number and birthdate to earn money and enter a sweepstakes for a Target gift card. Another time, I was prompted to give my email address and choose between Coke and Pepsi in exchange for $1 and a sweepstakes entry. I didn’t want to give my contact information to what appeared to be third-party sites, so I clicked out of these promotions.
Me and my roommate had both accounts and used the same PC. they told us we can only use one account. it doesn’t make any sense because it’s not like we are using each other bank accounts, etc. inbox dollars also manipulates with how much money you can earn per surveys. if you make a couple of bucks one day, i guarantee you, you will not qualify for any surveys the next day! it’s all bogus. SCAM!
From the get-go, new members will instantly earn their first $5. The process of signing up is extremely easy and simple – enter your email, create a password and confirm your account via email. Then, you will need to answer several basic questions that are on par with every other survey panel (i.e. about your marital status, kids, degree, race, income etc).
A little late getting into this discussion. But my favorite so far is OneOpinion. I think it’s mentioned here. Survey Junkie cool. MyPoints is okay. Ipso, not so much. I did make 300 points today in about 6 hours and every single survey except one I was disqualified for. I was disqualified for the two pointers as well as the higher pointed ones. I’ve never had that problem. Yes you get disqualified, but not everyone out of 30 or so. One of them I actually made to the 98% and was disqualified. I think they didn’t like the fact I was female, except that was answered at the beginning.
InboxDollars pays anywhere from $0.50 to $5.00 per survey on average, and they can take anywhere from 3 minutes to 25 minutes to complete. However, some online surveys pay $20 or more if you qualify. Be sure to complete your profile survey. That way, you maximize your chances of getting high-value surveys that pay a more significant amount of money.
Second, there is nobody that’s making $3500 a month filling out online surveys. Sure, there are people who may earn $1000 or even $2000 a month, but they are in the minority. For most of us, it would be impossible unless you join every survey site that there is and spend every single waking hours filling out surveys. And that’s assuming if you are lucky enough to have that many surveys available, to begin with.
When brands want to find out what consumers think about their product and services, they turn to market research companies. Market research companies are the ones actually administering the surveys on behalf of the corporations looking for data/feedback. Think of online surveys as a type of focus group, except in this case, everything is done online.