PineCone Research remains one of the better paying and reliable survey companies, with a payout of $3 for each 15-20 minute survey. The hardest part is getting accepted, as they only accept applications intermittently.
Thanks to readers Tom and Bryce, here is the most recent application link at Pinecone. (It probably won’t last long.) Looks open to all ages and sexes. Only one person per household can sign up.
I’ve already shared my thoughts on Pinecone and paid surveys in general here. I call them Bored Money – not terribly efficient but you sometimes get to try some neat things.
The three survey sites that I have been most active with besides Pinecone are NFO MySurvey, e-Rewards, and SurveySavvy. I like it them because they consistently offer me paid survey opportunities, they pay upon request reliably (important!), and they don’t seem to mind if I don’t do every single survey offered.
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It looks like e-rewards is by invitation only. Do you know how I go about getting an invitation?
Thanks!!
Cinda
Too bad they never end up choosing me….maybe this time. Thanks for the heads up.
For e-Rewards you can sign up through upromise.com. You can only be signed up one way though. I was previously signed up through a non-upromise invitation. I didn’t think any of the rewards were that great. With upromise though, the rewards are pretty good in my opinion. And there are a couple perks that the upromise version offers that the regular e-Rewards didn’t.
The first perk is that with upromise you can get up to $50 dollars into your upromise account with $100 in e-Rewards currency (I don’t remember what all the non-upromise stuff was, but it wasn’t as good as up to $50 imo).
The second big one is that you can redeem your e-Rewards currency as often as you want into your upromise account. With the regular e-Rewards, you could only redeem any one type of reward once a year.
To sign up with upromise, if you hover on “earn rewards” (top left) it’s under “& more” For me it’s a banner type of thing right at the top of the page – and you get $2 bucks right now into your upromise account just for signing up.
I just switched to upromise program back in August and I’ve already got over $50 in e-Rewards currency (redeemable for $20 to my upromise account). I can handle waiting four months to more than double that to $50 into my upromise account.
If you want to switch to the upromise version, you just have to first cancel/unsubcribe from your current e-Rewards version and then go to the upromise website and enroll through their link. I did it all on the same day without a problem. Just know that with the upromise version all you can redeem for is money to your upromise account – there are no other rewards available.
Sorry for the long post, but thought people might want to get more buck for their time (at least in my experience) with e-Rewards as well as a way to easily sign up.
Someone fill me in on the pinecone website. I”m very skeptical of online survey sights.
I’ve found pinecone to be the best $ per work effort. Plus they will actually send you free stuff to try as well. They pay a flat $3 per survey, which usually take about 15 mins each. Surveysavvy tends to pay about $1-$2 for equivilant surveys, and I find the pinecone ones come far more often, and they pre-qualify you before sending you the survey. (Most surveysavvy links I get I don’t end up getting the money because they disqualify me).
Thanks for the e-rewards upromise tip. I have a Delta sponsored account right now, which used to let you redeem to any airline, but now it is only Delta, so I redeem for HHonors points, but I think upromise $ is a better deal.
I just signed up for pinecone the last time Jonathan posted a link.
They accepted me and I’ve completed two surveys. I have received a $3 check for the first one and switched to paypal now. It seems like a pretty straightforward deal, though I’m not a fan of the site.
Regardless, you can more or less navigate the program through emails. They send you an email telling you they’ve got a survey, with a link and your id and password in the email. You enter it at the appropriate place and your good to go. sign in to the website with the id and password they provided and you can view your account, available surveys, completed surveys and payments.
maybe someone can be more helpful thats been doing it longer, but so far, I’ve been getting paid.
Thanks for the upromise heads up PA CPA. I’ve got an account there, maybe I’ll do some surveys to add to my account. So, is erewards token economy bogus bucks? how much do you make per survey?
I have also had good experience with Survey Spot. Only complaint is that it takes about 30-45 days to credit your account. On the other hand, after the first month or two you will be “caught up” as the old surveys will be credited as you are doing the current ones.
To Brian: Pinecone is completely legit. After you sign up, they will email surveys to you (I usually get 0-5 per week). A few weeks later you get a check in the mail for $3. No tricks, no gimmicks. I have changed my payment method to Paypal as this usually pays out the next day and I feel kind of silly walking into my bank with a stack of $3 checks. 😀 Occasionally they will send you somthing to try out (I have received sodas and cat food (for the kitty, not for me) amongst other things.
I use pinecone and mysurvey. Pinecone sends checks out pretty quick after you complete a survey. Only beef with them is that they sometimes send out little surveys you’ve to complete that do NOT pay you. I’ve probably made about 30 dollars this year from them, and another 30 from mysurvey.
I signed up for pinecone one time and I guess I didn’t get accepted. I never heard another word from them. I usually do American Consumer Opinion surveys, the screeners only take a minute and the actual surveys usually take less than 10 minutes. You don’t get alot though, I’ve only done 3 paid surveys in about 6 months. I rarely get surveys from mysurvey, I think I’ve only ever gotten one survey invite.
I haven’t used the others, but I signed up with Pinecone about a month ago and have already made $15 from them.
Nothing to write home about, but everyday before I open the mailbox I say a secret prayer that there will be a check in there for me, and now that actually has a ‘snowball’s chance’ of happening!
E-rewards “currency” is bogus money/points you trade in for either prizes or $ if you have a upromise account. You can get 6 “dollars” for a short survey. I’ve gotten 30 “dollars” before for one I did. Personally, I think the best part is you can get from 30 “cents” to I’ve gotten 2 “dollars” for just attempting a survey (ie got rejected).
So compared to other services, how often do you attempt but not get into a survey? In the past two months I’ve had 18 attempts for which I’ve gotten $7.65 for the times I didn’t actually finish surveys…as opposed to nothing at other places. (which equates to roughly $3.80 in real money assuming I redeem for $50 in my upromise account)
You also get the equivalent of $3 for filling out the profile surveys (so $5 for the profile surveys and $2 bonus from upromise).
E-Rewards: If you sign up for e-mail newsletter from the airline frequent flier or hotel loyalty miles that you like, sooner or later you should get an offer to join E-rewards. The “E$” currency is fake, but you can convert to airline miles pretty easily.
My e-rewards is not through Upromise. How much E$ does it take to convert to $1 in Upromise funds?
Just checked: $25 in E-rewards = 500 Delta / Northwest / Continental Airlines miles or 1,000 Hilton HHonors® Bonus Points.
Each survey e-mail says the payout and the estimated survey length. Some have decent ratios, others aren’t. My usual vary from E$5 to E$25 and from 3 to 45 minutes.
I’ve been using PineCone for +6mos, thanks to Johnathan!
Great program, real simple straightforward surveys (sometimes they can be a little tedious), good bored money to earn.
I personally have stuck with getting a check in the mail; while getting $3/pop is nice, paypal fees would quickly add up w/ the frequency of payments from PineCone.
Matt,
When you use the Paypal you get the full $3 (no fees on your end). As soon as the money hits my account I initiate a transfer to my bank account (again, no fee).
Hi, I am interested in signing up for pinecone research. I am spending about 6 months abroad in Europe working for a family. I have a bit of down time during the days and ok….so do I need to be at home to test products for the survey or can I just use all my information, parents address etc…and just take survey’s online about things, like looking at a magazine ad or something?
I’ve been finding lately that when I complete two pinecone surveys in the same day that they only cut a check for one of them as though the other one was never completed. Has anyone else been having this problem?
Stephanie:
The other may have been one that was only worth a sweepstakes entry. I took 3 Pinecone surveys yesterday and so far 2 have paid out to my Paypal account. Usually sweepstakes entry surveys are fairly broad surveys that don’t focus on a particular product.
Nah, I’m talking only about ones that end in -1001, I’ve been with Pinecone for a while now so I’m familiar with how it works.
I even had a survey this week that I took and just now had to retake it because they claimed I never did it =(