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.
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.
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.
Signing up was a breeze. I simply went to the page that said I would get a free $5 signup bonus and entered my email to get going. I had to answer a few basic questions — things like income level, race, education, and health questions. After a few minutes of answering questions and watching a couple tutorial videos on how the site works, I had $5 added to my account.
Not a “scam” in the sense of the word, but really not a way to earn any type of money. If you can find the companies that do the surveys and do them on your own with out sites like this you will make a substantially bigger amount of money. The “scam” is they take 90% (if not more, to be honest probably 99%) of the survey payout for themselves. Its the same for the “offers”, they will take the majority of the offer from the company, and give you a small percentage, And if that was not enough, they also take a percentage of your payout. This should be illegal as it is criminal to do this to people.
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