Paid surveys can be a reasonable source of additional income for certain folks. On a strictly per-hour basis, they end up at around $5-9 an hour and can get tedious. But hey, you can do them during downtime on the job or late at night while watching Leno in your pajamas, while adding up gradually to hundreds of dollars over a year. Personally, I find myself being more and more picky about them as time goes on.
PineCone Research remains one of the more elusive and better paying survey companies, with a payout of $3 for each 15-20 minute survey. Thanks to Barry for sending me the most recent recruitment e-mail, which states that they are looking for new members who are male and 18+. Here’s the new PineCone application link. I’ve anonymized the link, but this still won’t last long!
*Two important tips to keep the PineCone gravy train running:
– Whatever info you sign up with, keep it up to date and follow it exactly. For example, if your profile says you’re 35 and in a later survey you state that you’re 46, you may mysteriously stop getting any new surveys.
– Fill the surveys out as soon as you get them. If you miss enough survey deadlines, they will also remove you.
Other Paid Survey Sites
In my experience, NFO MySurvey. and SurveySavvy continue to give me the most paid survey opportunities, even if I don’t do every single one. I’ve gotten multiple checks from both now.
I don’t get hardly any surveys anymore from American Consumer Opinion, Greenfield Online, or Lightspeed Panel, but that may be due to my long periods of inactivity. SurveySpot only gave me sweepstakes entries.
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I’ve thought about doing surveys in my downtime at work. However, I’m more worried about giving out my demographic information to unknown companies for a couple of bucks.
Don’t miss one of the earliest and the one that always gives points (the points are like credit card rewards and actually worth something):
http://www.harrispollonline.com/
Also, Mypoints.com gives out silly little surveys and give points for reading ads. The payout per hour is a lot better than Greenfield Online!
$3 doesn’t seem worth it, but since I’m working so hard to get out of debt I might as well give it a shot. Maybe I can train my cat to fill these out…
PineCone gives me $5 per survey. It is the most reliable and structured survey site I have come across. They require short unpaid household surveys every so often, but the paid surveys aren’t too bad for the money.
MySurvey has mostly given me small surveys between 10 and 50 cents, although I got a survey worth ten dollars today. Overall I’m pleased.
I’ve received several surveys for between 2 and 5 dollars for SurveySpot, although their system takes between 4 to 6 weeks to credit the money and there isn’t any way to see what your pending balance is…you have to keep careful track of what you’ve done and see how it matches up with your payments. I haven’t been paid yet but several others online have. I generally get 2 to 3 surveys every couple of days.
I get various offers through Lightspeed Panel…they pay in “points” but those points can be cashed in for money through PayPal. I just cashed in points for $10 and was paid today.
SurveySavvy has not given me very many surveys, seems like 1 every other week or so.
My participation in a few of these studies has led to other paid trial opportunities…I got paid to test a body wash, and I’m just entering a new panel where I keep track of the beverages I drink and I’m paid 60 dollars at the end of the panel.
These offers aren’t for everyone but they can add up over the course of several months.
Do you have to report this as income when you do your taxes? I wasn’t keeping track of the money I was getting from all these surveys last year and didn’t bother reporting it but I just realized I must have made close to $200 this year…
I’m a fan of the paid surveys, and I should get $3 in the mail soon from the Pinecone survey I did while eating breakfast this morning. Filling the things out is mindless and almost fun. As a college student on a tight budget, I don’t use the money in the most responsible way; getting $3 in the mail tends to equal, “Hey, I can go to Taco Bell this week!” Doing the PineCone thing has also saved me money since they sent me a moisturizer with sunscreen to test just as my regular one was running out and I was contemplating replacing it. American Consumer Opinion hasn’t given me very many paid surveys at all. My grandma still uses AOL dial-up, and I try to do Opinion Place surveys once a month to get her a small credit toward her bill.
I feel my time is worth more than $5 to $9 per hour. I usually spend my downtime at work reading up things what will help me earn more money in the future. It’s all about opportunity cost for me I guess. I’ll pass on the 5 to 9 an hour for the chance to increase what I’m making now by much more than that.
I started to do the Pinecone surveys after seeing it on this site a few months back and I have been pleased. They have all been $5 for me and they sometimes send samples to try (cold medicine and pork-kabobs so far… in a handy cooler I kept….). They pay for each phase of a survey ($5 for pre-survey, $5 for after sample survey). They have been VERY prompt in payment (check in mail 2-3 weeks later). It takes from 15-30 min for survey so that comes out to a 20-40k$ per yr equivalence for 0 overhead…. I dont recall them asking for social security number so not sure how they treat payments wrt to IRS.
I’m not an expert, but I think it’s supposed to be reported as self-employment/independent contractor income.
I do Pinecone, and it isn’t much money, but it is easy to do in spare time. I get a couple of surveys per month, so in a couple more months I should have earned enough to take my wife out to dinner. 🙂
Not exactly the same, but I use Shop N Check http://www.shopnchek.com/ mystery shopping. works out to about $9-15/hr, or more. They reimburse you for purchases too.
Dr J
I think people who signed up with Pinecone before a certain date get $5 per survey. Alas, I was once one of those people…
I get $3 for every survey from Pinecone, maybe I signed up after you, Jonathan.
pinecone is a scam!!!! I got one paid survey right away and the check came instantly. For the next two months all I got were surveys request for demographic type information that were unpaid. I finally quit after 4 unpaid surveys.
Pinecone is not a scam. They collect demographic information from you (for which you are not paid) in order to locate paid surveys from companies looking for data from demographics that you represent. This is in my mind superior to surveyspot and others’ method of padding the first half of all paid surveys with tedious ‘qualifying’ questions that cause you to spend nontrivial amounts of time filling out these portions only to be told that you do not qualify and will not be paid for your time. At least pinecone tells you this up front.
Sorry you haven’t gotten anything good from SurveySpot! I just cashed two $20 checks I had lying around from them and noticed I have another $9 in my account waiting to be cashed out. Maybe my demographic is more in line with what they want or something, because they are definitely the best survey site I’ve tried!
Thanks for the Pinecone link, too. I was approved for an account. We’ll see how they work out. As a very low-paid AmeriCorps member, I love the extra money I make from surveys. 🙂
Regarding Pinecone – I took my first survey and it was about 20-30 minutes of watching a video, viewing product info and answering really specific questions regarding it all. I thought I was near done, and then it said:
“Sorry you do not qualify for this survey.”
What a SCAM!
@ Dave P, nothing like that has ever happened to me through pinecone.
As of today, I’ve made a total of $80 through Pinecone–and last week I got a 4-pack soft drink that’s being developed.
So that’s $5 for taking the survey, $5 for the follow up survey after testing the product, and $5 for sending the packaging back to Pinecone. Sweet!
This has only happened to me once though. I’m super glad I got in there before they lowered the payment to $3.
What I did with $50 of my pinecone stash was do Jonathan’s sharebuilder (SHARE50) promotion. I’m scheduled to by $50 of VWO on Tuesday. And I’ll get my $50 back!