In addition to earning real cash and helping brands with critical marketing information such as consumers’ preferences, you can also earn so-called “spins”. You can use these to play the Billy the mascot’s Spin and Win game which will earn you additional money, survey tokens and sweepstakes. Consequently, you will bank even more cash after completing a survey.

Hi, I'm Zina! I'm a personal finance expert with a passion for helping millennials figure out their most pressing financial issues. My interest is personal -- I paid off my student loans in three years and have been helping others take control of their finances ever since. My work has been featured in the Washington Post, Fox Business, Time, Quicken Loans, LendingTree, Forbes, Money.com, Mint, and many more.  I currently live in Indianapolis, IN with my husband and two dogs.


Not counting the profile survey, I attempted 38 surveys and qualified for seven of them. That’s an 18% success rate, which is on the low end among the 12 sites we tested. Most of the time, I’d immediately receive a disqualification notice with a link to a new survey opportunity. For a few surveys, I answered questions for a couple minutes before getting the boot.
Hi! I'm Jeff. A personal finance nerd and entrepreneur at heart, I'm here to bring you all the latest cool ways to make and save extra money. I've been quoted in several online publications, including Entrepreneur, NBC News, GoBankingRates, Student Loan Hero, Business.com, Credit Karma, The Simple Dollar, US News & World Report, Lifehacker, MSN Money, Moneyish, Zumper, IdeaMensch, Discover Bank, PrimeRates, Credit.com, Yahoo! Finance, Club Thrifty, Guru Focus, Rent Track, Fit Small Business, Coupon Chief, and more.

I've made hundreds and hundred's of dollars with Inbox Dollars, sometimes cashing out 2 times per month. You have to have patience and stick with it! My account was cancelled when my wife and I had one at the sesame address but hey, rules are rules and it does state 1 account per household. I simply started over and I've made plenty since. Thank You!


It’s a very well-known scam. You cash the check, then they ask you to either wire some of that money back to them as some sort of fee or buy something for them and send the item to them. So, you deposit the check, then wire some cash to them thinking that the check you just deposited will cover that. A few days later, after you already send them the money, the check will bounce and the money you send to them will come out of your own account.

NO PAYMENT GUARANTEE. PandaResearch does NOT guarantee that a member will receive credit for a completed survey and offer. PandaResearch will make reasonable efforts to track and report your signing up for offers but does not guarantee the precision of the process. We reserves the right to refuse the credit to members for offers for variety of reasons, including, but not limited to , Lack of appropriate information, Improper signup, Improper browser settings, Errors in third party reporting, and / or any other reason.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that because they didn’t qualify for a survey, the company conducting it is somehow scamming them. Remember, companies want to gather data and feedback from their target customers. Remember the Starbucks example above? Well, if you are not a coffee drinker, it makes sense that Starbucks doesn’t want to spend money on giving you a survey on something that doesn’t apply to you!
InboxDollars is one of the worst programs. Unlike others, they have a very short “6-months of inactivity and we’ll close your account and keep your money” term. Plus, you earn next to nothing. I too stopped getting paid emails and tried to unsuccessfully qualify for surveys. As such, I mostly did the big-ticket things, like signing up for money back on donations to charities. I accrued $98 and log in monthly to avoid the “inactivity” thing. But, guess what? They just closed my account for not completing anything in six months. They don’t even hold up their own definition of “activity”. So, user beware–withdraw when you can, even though UNLIKE the other programs, they charge a 3% fee on what you’ve earned. Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy.
Interesting read, thanks for sharing. I suppose that online surveys may generate a few extra dollars on the side for some people, but it does require you to qualify for certain surveys online. In many cases you may not qualify, and will result in having to search for more surveys. This can be time consuming and in most cases not as profitable as may be expected.
How it works: There are two ways to earn cash with Survey Savvy. The first is, as the name suggests, by completing surveys (which typically pay between $1 and $3 each). However, you can also make passive income with Savvy Connect, which is a lightweight and unobtrusive mobile app that runs in the background on your computer and/or mobile devices, collecting anonymous data to send back to the company. Savvy Connect users can earn $5 per month per device, just for keeping the app installed.

Prizes include: $0.25 tokens (after your next successful survey completion, get an extra .25 credit in addition to the survey credit; 5 tokens maximum can be sitting in your account), $5.00, $1.00, and $0.05 cash bonuses credited immediately to your account, or Scratch Off Progress which will be credited immediately to your account; win and you'll see the Scratch Off progress bar will move forward towards the next scratch off card.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are people who do make a few thousand dollars or more a year with paid surveys. But that’s not the norm. If you do want to increase your earnings substantially, your best bet is to also join focus groups (we have a big list of ’em. Just do a quick search on Google for “moneypantry.com focus groups”). They pay much more between $50 to $400 or more per focus group secession.

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How it works: There are two ways to earn cash with Survey Savvy. The first is, as the name suggests, by completing surveys (which typically pay between $1 and $3 each). However, you can also make passive income with Savvy Connect, which is a lightweight and unobtrusive mobile app that runs in the background on your computer and/or mobile devices, collecting anonymous data to send back to the company. Savvy Connect users can earn $5 per month per device, just for keeping the app installed.

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Did ok first two payouts, then on third payout, got an email saying account was terminated. This is after I cashed out. Had to request check before Sunday for them to cut check on Wed. I did this on Friday, two days early, on Monday I get email saying account terminated, Did NOT get paid, so they waited until I did three months worth of surveys, requested funds then terminated, so angry.
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.

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this company stole my credits or rather disappeared them when they deleted my account in January saying I was not active for 6 months when I was currently active in doing offers. Customer service is a joke they speak broken English for 1 and 2 they have no access to any information for your account or the company. those same people are the ones who would talk to the better business bureau when you complained that they will not give you the credits that they owe you.
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.
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