Hi, I live in South Africa and have made quite a few US dollars from various sites over the past few months. For me, Toluna is definitely the best, and they offer nearly daily surveys. You don’t always qualify, but when you do the survey reward is quite substantial. I have never had problems from them and at regular intervals receive money in my PayPal account. However, I cannot say the same of Panel Station. Even though I have sent various requests asking why I have not been paid they do not even have the courtesy, so far, to answer any of my mail – whether they were submitted on the site or sent via e-mail to their “South African” address. I must say that I am very disappointed with them, as they are recommended by quite a few other sites, as well as your own.
Surveys can be on many different topics, like your TV-watching habits, your favorite places to eat, what material of sweater you prefer in the fall, etc. Many surveys can take less than 5 minutes to complete, although some take longer (and pay more money). Despite the wide array of topics, the end goal of paid online surveys is usually the same: to get a better idea of what consumers are thinking and how they make decisions.
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.
If this is remotely true, it is absolutely the exception to the rule. Yes, they take all of your info, then you spend endless amounts of time filling out the prequal for a survey only to get disqualified. If you do happen to be qualified, well the 15-30+minutes you spend to “make” that 25-50 CENTS is NOT worth the time. Again the user claiming to make anywhere decent amounts of money from this is the exception rather than the rule. Don’t waste your time.
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.
Inboxdollars Amazon
No it’s not a scam, although lately it seems their partners may be scamming members. I have been an inboxdollars member since I believe 04. Last year they introduced the tv channel, just another way to earn first it was earn up to $2.00 a day viewing this channel then they capped it at .50 which is fine. It takes awhile, you see the same videos over and over again. The player eats up memory, retaining more than half of my 12gigs sometimes.
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Why would you put InboxDollars on your list? They owe so many people money, including my $36.00. I will never get it, and I contacted them 3 different times. Each time I got the same answer, which did not work. Then, someone else from InboxDollars emailed me with the same information, that does not work, so I emailed back. Now they ignore me. I am on my 4th or 5th email with no answer. I think my next step is to report them.
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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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.
Your review made me crack up laughing “inboxpennies” thats honestly what it should be called. You never qualify for a survey. Theyll make you take the whole thing thing when your almost done they tell you..sorry but you didnt qualify for this survey. Ive spent 30mins on a survey to be told I didnt quality. The only way to make ‘money’ on this site is to actually spend money on their offers. My spam folder is soo full because of this site its ridiculous. I still have yet to reach my first $30. Based on other reviews ive read it could take months just for them to pay me. Once I do finally get my money im done with them. Maybe ill try one that actually values their subscribers.
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I wanted to write a review for Inbox Dollars because at first it may seem like it's hard to ever make it to the 30 threshold but eventually you do; granted they don't offer a lot of high paying surveys but here's what I do like about them: so far every time I have an issue with a survey they always credit me, their customer service always answers without sending several emails that say the same thing over and over, they have other ways to make extra cash that are fun, innovative, and informative this is the site I seem to fall back on when I want to relax, take some surveys, play games, answer trivia, and search the web. What I'm saying is there isn't very many GPT sites that have Inbox Dollars dynamic.
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.
Here’s my experience with InboxDollars. I was a member for over 5 years. I cancelled my membership about 3 years ago. Frank is right. They should’ve called themselves InboxPennies, and that’s exactly what it’s worth, pennies. I didn’t take a lot of surveys because you won’t qualify for many of them. I also didn’t do any of the trial offers because I don’t trust giving out my credit card info to these crooks, plus I was looking to make money, not spend it. But, I did all of the paid emails, and they amounted to about 3 or 4 cents per paid email. The minimum payout is $30. I made about $2 or $3 a month. Now you do the math on this one. I remember it taking about 12 months or longer to reach payout of $30! I even signed up a few referrals and never made anything; I guess they figured it wasn’t worth their time. InboxDollars should be shut down. Getting paid pennies is a direct insult to anyone’s intelligence. There are too many of these type companies that sucker you into believing you’ll make some decent money. Nobody’s trying to get rich, but at least a real part-time job will pay you about 200 bucks a week. We all have been bamboozled and hoodwinked.
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.